Emojis in our digital life 😃📱

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Happy, grimace, tear, laugh, heart… Emojis have become an integral part of our daily text interactions. At first, they were mainly used by teenagers in their text messages and on social networks. Today, we are witnessing the generalization of their use! They are everywhere 😅

July 17th is World Emoji Day, so it’s a good time to take a look at how they are used in both personal and professional communication.

A retro moment is in order! 📱🔁

If we take a closer look at emojis, we might even consider that it was our caveman ancestors who created the very first emojis… Oh yes!

After all, a horse drawn on a cave wall with a burnt stick, isn’t that cool? Then the Egyptians also built an extremely complex language based on symbols (more than 5,000 hieroglyphs).

After hieroglyphs, we had emoticons, which were created in 1982 by Scott Fahlamn. And later on, emojis.

Emoji is simply a contraction of « e » for image and « moji » for character. They were invented by Shigetaka Kurita (we’ll let you pronounce the name😅) who worked at DoCoMo (a famous tech company in Japan). He simply revolutionized the way we express ourselves in the virtual.

Emoji, smiley and emoticon: three terms to be distinguished ‼

They are often used as synonyms, but they are distinct concepts:

• An emoticon is a collection of typographic characters used to represent a facial expression. It can be vertical (a smile :), a face that sticks out its tongue 😛 ) or horizontal (perplexity o_O, a face that cries T_T). Do we remember it or not? Besides, who hasn’t used it?
• The smiley face is a round yellow face, with different eyes and mouth depending on the desired expression.
• The emoji is an image that can represent many things: a facial expression, an object, an animal, a fruit, a concept…                                                                      So don’t be fooled again!

The value of emojis: For increasingly virtual exchanges 😎

Emojis are part of visual communication. As they are understood by everyone, whatever their culture, they are of obvious interest when it comes to conveying a short message, which can then be more impactful. This is particularly true on social networks.

For example: A laughing face completes a text message by conveying your state of mind: you don’t need to specify your current emotion.

Photo by Zhuo Cheng You from Unsplash

In other words, the use of emojis would make communication more efficient, more productive and more complete.

In other words, emojis have truly created a new vocabulary, a universally recognised form of 2.0 expression.

What about the professional sector? 🤔

So, with widespread teleworking, company employees have had to deport their usual exchanges to online messaging, which has helped to disembody social relationships.

It is hard to miss them. They sprinkle our personal communications, and increasingly, our professional communications. Whether it’s in a chat between colleagues or in an email from a client, it’s no longer rare to see a smiley face (or several) punctuating our sentences!

Photo by Wu Yi on Unsplash

🤔 What to make of this trend? Blurring of the boundaries between work and personal sphere? Loosening of language? Or just another tool to make yourself understood?

Emoji are smiling at companies ☺🏢

Thanks to ever-evolving technology, colleagues can now exchange and warm up conversations without seeing facial expressions, appreciating body language or hearing the tone of the speaker. A simple smile to punctuate a sentence can totally change the recipient’s perception.

Above all, emojis help to create a cordial atmosphere in office life by making professional exchanges more informal, more natural and more fluid.

But! But!

The interpretation of emojis is not universal. They can therefore reinforce a semantic ambiguity.

An example: A friendly wink to some may have an ambiguous meaning to others. In this case, emojis can become a source of misunderstanding.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Emojis in the workplace can make you look incompetent 👎🏾

This practice in the world of work raises doubts about the professionalism of those who have adopted it. For some, the way one behaves at work is different from the way one behaves at home, and there is a need to separate the professional and personal spheres.

Furthermore, the use of emojis at work is not recommended for all industries. While it may be acceptable in some professions, it is totally forbidden in others (e.g. lawyers)

It may sometimes seem inappropriate to use emojis for exchanges with superiors. It is true that many companies are very open-minded and advocate proximity between managers and executives.

Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

A strong interest for brands 🎯

It is often said that « A picture is worth 1,000 words ». It’s proven: the human brain connects images to an emotional experience about 60,000 times faster than when it interprets a line of text… So owner and CEO don’t hesitate to use them to increase the engagement rate and create more links with internet users.

So, to sum up… 📝

You need to know how to use emojis and adapt it to the context and the interlocutor :

• For more user-friendly communications
• To benefit from the stimulation of brain activity caused by a face emoji
• To give rhythm to our speech
• To convey the intention of a message                                                          Omnipresent and constantly reinterpreted, emojis form a new category of punctuation that everyone makes their own in their own way. Despite their playfulness, they are not a substitute for human interaction.

So tell us, what is your favourite emoji and why 😉😏

Sources: Blog Du Modérateur, Le Point