Are Emoticons the Future of Language? | Off Book | PBS Digital Studios

In the digital age, we increasingly use written language in place of face to face chat or phone calls. But the advantages email, chat, and text give us in speed come with limitations in communicating emotional tone. Enter emoticons and emojis. Not just a playful supplement to language, these new tools allow for complexity in tone and emotion never before possible in written language, as well as provide new opportunities for creative expression. Rapidly spreading throughout culture, emoticons and emojis fill a void in written language that few realized we so desperately needed.

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[amberbydreams]

I don't think emojis will completely replace written text, but i definitely think they're an important part of textual communication; they really set the mood of a conversation and prevent miscommunication of emotive quality uwu

[thingamabitch]

In Homestuck, there is no on-page dialog. Instead, it's presented as a chat log. WIth only the use of punctuation and the character's writing style and diction, the author has given us the tone of their speech with no description. Emoticons are a part of telling us how a character is speaking, or what faces they are making that are not in the accompanying panel. :3 Emoticons are already changing literature and I think it's cool. 

[normantveit]

Absolutely fascinating!  It's the beginning of a true interlingual, international language.

[TheLameBucket]

This was wonderful, I absolutely love this channel. Well made, thought provoking, enjoyable to view. Seriously, thank you PBS for making the internet just a little cooler. 

[DoctorChaggers]

Off book never fails to entertain me. 

[skate]

This just reminds me of the mayan's language, they used small 'icons' with words to tell a story, so this is not the future of language, but actually the past! amazing isn't it!? :)

[JodsLife]

sooo shy and embarrassed are essentially the same emoticon

[Zerepzerreitug]

This reminds me of the book _the Diamond Age_ by Neil Stephenson. While the book deals mostly about nano-technology and its impact in the future, it does mentions a new form of language based in animated pictograms which are essentially complex emoticon GIF's which can be displayed in any surface.
Given the movement and liberty of these images, they work as a way to communicate _any_ message to people, turning some into functional illiterates who never need to learn how to read the "old" and "stiff" letters.
It's a fascinating idea what will happen when emoticons gain movement with the increasing ubiquity of screens around us.

[yoshihirov]

I've just commented "<3" in a TED talk of a speaker I admire and they responded me in an email that they "need comments to remain on-topic to the ideas presented in the Talk"
):

[SoundKitten]

TOTES U GUYZ, let's go all the way back to hieroglyphics! We're in an age... that didn't take history lessons and thinks everything is "new".

[KnowledgePlaylists]

I'm a firm believer of the use of the equal sign, space, right parentheses smiley! = )

[thescowlingschnauzer]

It's funny we think of a book of emoji as groundbreaking. Many cultures have created pictogram languages to break language barriers, the most prominent being Chinese.

[entebrasTV]

Well condensed video, it covers the different emoticon eras: from 80s Lite Speak to emoji´s phenomenon. Interessting

[wadefaber]

great now we are going to revert back to pictographic writing, the human race is reverse evolving faster than I thought

[corduroy]

Mayans were doing that before it went mainstream

[JJtoob]

I need a list of the ones they used in this video. They are hard to read while having an epileptic seizure.

[Petulant_Petrichor]

I for one am saddened by the lack of the list of the emoticons used as slides in the vid in the about section.

[thescowlingschnauzer]

The future of language? Not in the near term. The future of punctuation? Absolutely.

[Phoboz]

Were all those flashing colors really necessary? I think you should warn people about that at the beginning of the video. Made it really hard to enjoy the content of the video. 

[symbolxchannel]

Emoticons have to be short and accessible to be practical...

In Asia, they don't use it as we do in America. *We use emoticons as a "shortcut" to express our state of mind*... In Asia, *they use them as pictographs and ideographs*, which is, in a way, only an extension to their "common writing".

I don't think they are using emoticons in an efficient way compared to us since their emoticons can comprise A LOT of glyphs...