Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 42
Posts 21 - 30

Can a GIF Work Better Than Words?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.9.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, GIFs, language threat, word/writing
Summary | An interviewee claims that using GIFs allows her to express complex feelings and emotions in a a couple seconds. GIFs are becoming more and more popular (i.e. on Facebook, Tumblr, etc.). Words and emojis are becoming old-fashioned.
Image Description | GIF representing three men looking at their smartphone.
Image Tags | gifs, male(s), smartphone

Emojis: The death of the written language?

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Newspaper | CNBC
Date | 24.6.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, misunderstanding, word/writing
Summary | People are using more and more emojis, which can be seen as a threat to written language. Indeed, people are starting to replace words with emojis in order to communicate a feeling or emotion, and according to the author of the article, this is worrying. Moreover, using emojis can lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication. Finally, if school start to incorporate emojis in their curriculum, it can be perceived as a regress back to hierogylphics.
Image Description | Getty image of a keyboard composed of emojis, and image of a series of Apple emojis representing diversity.
Image Tags | emojis, keyboard

Emojis on council tax bills: Council puts crying face on residents' statements

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 14.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, law, politeness
Summary | Lambeth citizens are getting emojis on their tax correspondence with their local authorities. To be exact: crying face emojis. One resident tweeted her tax calculations with a crying face emoji next to het balance due. Many find this distasteful since many people struggle to pay their taxes and emojis are just inappropriate for government communication. Emojis are one of the fastest growing languages ever recorded in history and they have surpassed their precursors, Egyptian hieroglyphs, which took centuries to develop.
Image Description | Tweet showing the tax document with emoji.
Image Tags | emojis, Twitter

Emoji-Übersetzer gesucht

(Emoji translator wanted)

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Newspaper | Hamburger Abendblatt
Date | 16.12.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat
Summary | A firm in London is looking for an 'emoji translator', someone who is versed in communicating with emojis. The candidate should be able to correctly interpret the intention of an emoji choice. The firm is hiring emoji experts to meet the massive growth emojis have experienced in the past years. They argue it is the fastest growing language world wide.
Image Description | N/A

Soziale Medien: Auf dem Weg in eine Post-Schrift-Gesellschaft

(Social media: on the way to a post-literate society)

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Newspaper | Berliner Zeitung
Date | 8.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, politics, social media, Twitter
Summary | Dystopias are being written about what is going to happen to society in the age of increasing digitalization of life. Predictions include that we will lose the ability to read and write because we will be able to do everything through voice command. We can already order piza at Domino's by using emojis only. The new literacy culture is limited to 140 characters and resembles in fact more an oral culture in which the truth is what is screamed the loudest.
Image Description | Reuters photograph of an eye with the Twitter logo mirrored in it.
Image Tags | logo, Twitter

SMS, tweets, e-mails... Et si on se parlait vraiment?

(SMS, tweets, emails...What if we really talked to each other?)

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Newspaper | Le Figaro
Date | 27.1.2017
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, technology-free
Summary | Since we're always stuck to our screens, have we lost our conversational skills? Nonsense. Many people complain that new technologies have killed "real life" communication, and that emojis are replacing words. The author of the article claims that this trend is not true; nowadays people communicate a lot. Fanny Auger, director of the School of Life Paris, noticed that her class "How to have better conversations" is very popular. The focus is on finding inspiring and stimulating exchanges.
Image Description | Photograph of four young people drinking coffee, laughing, and looking at each other.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Les « emoji » constituent-ils un langage à part entière?

(Are emojis part of a fully-fledged language?)

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Newspaper | Le Monde
Date | 15.3.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, research/study
Summary | In 2015, an emoji was chosen as the word of the year, and two years before that, the novel Moby Dick was translated in emojis. Emojis are everywhere; are they becoming a new universal language? Two linguists conducted a study and revealed that emojis are like a cultural mirror. They also investigated emoji use in different countries and revealed geographical differences in the type of emoji used. Emojis are not a language; they are a complement to language. Some people might think it’s a language because emojis look like hieroglyphics. Emojis are mostly used to transmit emotions.
Image Description | Photograph of a hand clicking on several emojis on a screen, and screenshot of Andy Murray's tweet composed of emojis.
Image Tags | emojis, hand(s), tablet, Twitter

L’emoji, un caractère envahissant

(The emoji, an invading character)

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Newspaper | Le Monde
Date | 10.5.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat
Summary | The Unicode Consortium (UC) was accused of spending too much time on emojis and not enough time on minority languages. Michael Everson complained because his propositions (e.g. coding medieval punctuation marks) have been ignored by the UC. However, the UC only counts 1500 emojis out of 120000 characters. Accoding to linguist Gretchen McCulloch, emojis are not a fully-fledge language; they are a complement to language.
Image Description | Screenshot of a new text message with with many different emojis.
Image Tags | emojis, text

Apple transforme son emoji pêche

(Apple transforms its peach emoji)

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Newspaper | Le Figaro
Date | 3.11.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, spelling
Summary | Not everyone agrees with the new iOS update; some emojis have disappeared. For instance, the old peach emoji was replaced by another emoji that looks more like an apricot. Changing emojis is another way of saying "you should write this way and not that way", which is similar to a spelling reform. Emojis are becoming political. Finally, emojis are not a threat to language; they are a way to complement it.
Image Description | Images of the old and new peach emojis, and photograph of a cap with the message "make peach (picture of the new peach emoji) peach (picture of the old peach emoji) again".
Image Tags | emojis

'I don't think people are going to talk': Kanye West says everyone will communicate through emojis in the future as 'words get in the way'

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Newspaper | Mail Online
Date | 21.11.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat
Summary | Kanye West thinks that people won't talk anymore in the future; they will use other (visual) means such as signs, emojis, or body language.
Image Description | Photograph of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

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