[UA] Re: Emoticons

[Chad Underkoffler]

> From: "Patrick None" <deadairis at hotmail.com>
> Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 03:13:13 -0700
> 
> > I admit that I generally ignore emoticons. I think they're 
> > stupid, I don't use 'em myself, and I tend to overlook them 
> > in email. This can sometimes lead to confusion and crossed 
> > wires. My apologies.
>
> You know, this is actually a fairly UAable topic. Emoticons
> are argued as 'stupid' by a number of people, mostly people 
> who consider themselves good with the English language.  
> Emoticons aren't necessary for communication, they point out.
> Humanity has been writing without them for a long, 
> long time. Proponents of emoticons argue of their use for 
> internet communication, fundamentally a different means of 
> communication then other written words. This is a summary, 
> since I'm rushed. but it seems very UAable - the concept
> of usefulness versus tradition, the practicality of 
> maintaining ANY form of communicatin (including magic?) in
> a static form.  Thoughts?

Personally, I try not to use emoticons, but end up using them
anyway upon occasion. Let me lay out the way I see it:

1. Emoticons are not *necessary*. As you say, written English
has not required them thus far. However...

2. The way email is generated and read is much closer to the
spoken word/verbal communication than a letter, book, or other
printed document. (Essentially quick, informal, conversational.)
This is a problem when you get formal writer/informal reader and
informal writer/formal reader match-ups.

3. IMAO, many, many more people are using email today than were
writing letters ten years ago. There's a wide variance in
education, age, race, culture/subculture, orientation,
language/dialect, expectations, mores, interests, whatnot in
these communicators who may not know well the individual(s) they
are communicating with.

4. In email, therefore, emoticons can be a *useful* (though not
necessary) shorthand. 

5. I think emoticons should be used as indicators of the
writer's emotions, not to indicate the emotional intent,
accompanying facial expression, or subtext of a line of prose.

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.

In terms of UA, I don't see the pro- and anti- emoticons
factions as being a conflict of usefulness and tradition so much
as a conflict of *usage* and tradition, akin to slang usage in
English or France's attempts to keep French pure.

I think a UA example of this is if an old-school grandpa Voudon
bokor gets bent out of shape when his hip-hop granddaughter uses
a Ken doll to migraine the landlord. "That's not the way it's
done!" "It's the way *I* do it, Pops!"




=====
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

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