There was a time when communication across distances used to be a big deal. People wrote letters that would take several days for reaching the destination.
Even though it reached and the other person would send a reply to it, it was never like a conversation.
Moreover, only limited amount of matter could be communicated and sharing something of emergency kind was of no use.
The evolution of technology has made it a lot easier to communicate across the borders easily.
While voice and video calls have taken the distant communication at the next level, the value and importance of text messages can also be not denied.
For one reason or the other there are forums and individuals that prefer using text chats over the voice or video calls.
The problem with the text chat is that it often fails to deliver the emotions you are saying the words with. For instance, you may say something like “You are right.” The sentence may be said in an agreement, or in anger or in disappointment or X Y Z anything.
When the conversation accompanies voice and facial expression, there are nonverbal cues and vocal tone to determine which emotion or message the certain words carry with them. A text message lacks this ability.
Nevertheless, it is the story of the past. With the development of social media, the development in text messages has also occurred.
In order to make text messages more lively and emotionally expressing the use of quick imagery, including emoji, stickers and gifs, have been becoming increasingly common.
While this imagery is a method of expressing, demonstrating, facilitating, inducing or enhancing certain emotions and feelings at the reader’s end, it is also a tack of stating things without saying anything. A picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it?
Sometimes, we don’t really have words to say something. At that time also, this imagery serves the purpose of communication.
Some other times, the emoji, gifs and stickers also help hiding your negative feelings that you get over the course of a chat. Instead of saying something bad, you may simply use some imagery to turn the direction or lighten the of the conversation, or simply quitting it on a not-so-negative note.
In other words, the use of imagery serves several functions in text communication and their importance cannot be undermined. Nevertheless, people have personal choice over which form of imagery (emoji, sticker or gif) they prefer.
As far as I am concerned, I must state first that I am not into social media too much. (HIVE is the exception). I don’t use facebook or instagram at all. Twitter is a rare thing. Occasionally, I do have chats on whatsapp or discord.
Owing to the lesser use of social media, I don’t have a single sticker saved on my device. In fact, just yesterday I wanted to respond to a greeting message with a sticker, and I realized that I never happened to save any 🤦♀️. No worries. I sent some 💕 ♥️instead.
I also love to respond with gifs, but to my dismay, my slow network is not very supportive in this regard. It takes forever to display the gifs, let lone the time I would spend selecting the apt one. On whatsapp, the gifs do appear after a while. On discord, they never appear 😠. I am left with no option but to use emoji.
Here are some of the emoji that I use often 🥰👍💖💗😀❤️🙀🤔😵💫🤦♀️😄😊😉😏😃🙈😍🌹🤞😍🙂🙃😆🤣😂.......
However, there is this 👉 emoji 🙏I am confused about. It appears in response to the word Thanks but for me it conveys a message like begging or asking for pardon. I think it is due to cultural differences. May be in some cultures this gesture is an expression of gratitude but for me it has a different meaning.
Anyways, emoji is the kind of imagery I use the most in my text chat. What about you? Which kind of imagery do you use for supplementing your words?
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This is my participation for Hive Learner’s featured contest. You are invited to participate.
