[UA] Re: Emoticons

[Chad Underkoffler]

> From: "Patrick None" <deadairis at hotmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 22:10:57 -0700
>
> > 6. "But I need to show I'm being sarcastic/that it's a
joke!"
> > My opinion is: if you can't make humor or sarcasm obvious 
> > using plain prose and *require* an emoticon to do so, you 
> > should delete that email unsent.
>
> If informal email can be accuratly mapped to spoken 
> conversation, then should this apply?  

Mapped through a written filter, by yes, it should apply.

> Since, its akin to saying that if you can't get the 
> humor/sarcasm across using some body language - lets say 
> primitives of a smile, or a clap on the shoulder - then you 
> shouldn't try to get the humor/sarcasm across at all.

Well, essentially, yes. Personally, I've always thought that
sarcasm (and other sorts of humor) rely on tone of voice/audible
cues much more than visual cues. I suspect than many people
who's sarcasm falls flat focus on said visual/tactile cues over
audible cues. But sarcasm's risibility comes from the thought
behind the remark, rather than the way the remark is performed,
IMAO.

> But to restrain from using emoticons in casual email seems as
> unccessary as not smiling, or clapping someone on the
shoulder.

Again, my opinion is that you use the medium to bring your
thought to best effect for the message. Over the phone, you use
tone of voice. In person, you use tone, facial expression, and
possible tactile interaction. In writing (email or other prose),
you use the words on the page -- this argument can support use
of emoticons, but I think a point you bring up below undercuts
such utility...

> And, last bit, keeping to an accurate mapping, many people,
> informally or formally, don't like emoticons -  and many 
> people don't like being smiled at by someone they don't think
> is funny already, or clapped on the shoulder by same.

Which is why, given an informal communication to any number of
people who I may or may not know, many of which do not like
emoticons, I eschew them.

> Lastly on this dry bit - which is to me the most UAable part.
> What if someone took the (to most researchers) indescrete, 
> basically unanalyzably complex aspects of conversation - 
> including body language - and made each unit discrete? 

People do this in the real world, but I can't recall their field
of study's name. Physiolinguistics?

> My initial thought was from being able to par down what 
> a certain group of people consider "basic," -  the emoticons 
> and the usage those emoticons see on the WWW - and extrapolate
> that into the real world by taking semantics, Chomskyian 
> theory on the "language structures within the brain," head-
> driven syntax (for a predictable range of response), and
> pureeing the whole thing with a  fine dusting of failed Self 
> checks.  Mind, I keep wandering back into "booogieee! its the 
> alter toungue!" land, but I really, really dig the alter 
> toungue.

Sort of a verbal version of the extra letters of the Alphabet in
Morrison's INVISIBLES or the words/symbols in Hite's GURPS
HORROR scenario "the Madness Dossier"?

Hm. I think I've seen that in fiction -- Delaney's BABEL-17 and
Vance's LANGUAGES OF PAO, perhaps? Then there's the Bene
Gesserit Voice...



=====
Chad Underkoffler [chadu at yahoo.com]
http://www.geocities.com/chadu/index.html
"Now that is the kind of puddin' that only two-hundred forty dollars can buy."
  -- Barry, $240 Worth of Pudding, THE STATE

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax
http://taxes.yahoo.com/

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua