Emoticons :) :| ;(
(source: www.thirdeyehealth.com)How it begins?
Funnell (2007) explains that emoticons were invented by Professor Scott Fahlman who suggested to his university collegues that when they make a joke online, they should put a little sideways smiley face at the end of it. From then onwards, emoticons were know universally through out the world.
Define Emoticons..
Thompson and Foulger (1996) describe emoticons as "pictographs" and their use in virtual community to express emotions or as surrogates to nonverbal communication.
Why emoticons are used?
Rezabek and Cochenour (1998) explain that the use of emails eliminates visual cues such as head nodding, facial expression, posture, and eye contact that can be found in face-to-face communication. With that, emoticons are replaced as virtual cues to augment the meaning of textual electronic messages.
For example, let's compare these two sentences, with and without emoticons.
- "I am happy for your good results."
- "I am happy for your good results :)"
Well, with adding one smiley emoticon at the end of the sentence definately interprets a more honest gesture as compared to the other one. Professor Fahlman who was interviewed by Funnell (2007) says that it is useful today to have icons that act as emotional makers in the electronic communications.
(source: istockphoto.com)Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) argues that meaning of images is always related to, and in a sense dependent on, verbal text. Thus, emoticons interpret a set of verbal text written as well as the emotions of it.
Apart from that, Shriver (1997) explains that research showed that people's comprehension may be improved if key points are presented in both words and pictures, allowing readers to acquire information visually and verbally. Therefore, emoticons and texts in an email must be combined together when reading. A ":)" emoticon with a positive good sentence from the writer showed that he/she is positively agreeing with his/her statement in the email.
Email etiquette: What makes for good and bad email?
Define Email Etiquette..
According to Baker (2003), etiquette can be referred as the rules governing socially acceptable behaviour. Therefore, we can conclude that email etiquette is proper way of writing an email professionally without any errors. Schwalbe (2007) explains that most of the emails are garden variety, without the proper direction to the main topic.
Issues discussed: What makes for good and bad email?
Based on the article 'Emoticons and Email Etiquette (2007) discussed that back to the olden days, people started off an email with Dear Sir, or Dear Madam. Fortunately, this etiquette has not disappeared yet until now.
To further elaborate, the definitions of good and bad emails are based on the intertextuality and genre of the particular email. Intertextuality refers to the process of making sense of texts in reference to their relations with other texts (Schirato and Yell, 1996). Genre depends on how we make sense on the type of texts, as culturally defined and expected combinations of field, tenor and mode. Thus, an appropriate genre for the email with the combination of an appropriate intertextuality of an email will lead to forming a good email.
The cultural factor of an email sender also influence the types, culture and context of email written. Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) implies that the interpretation of the message or writing is highly depend on the cultural and situational context of the readers. For example, Westerners might find it difficult to understand the overly formal emails from the Asians due to the differentiation of cultures.
My Personal Opinion:
By using emoticons will affect the email etiquette. This is the same as small capitalization and wrong ways in adressing the reader. Emoticons will show an email to be seen as less formal, thus it leads to producing bad emails.
References:
- Kress, G, Van Leeuwen 2006, 'Chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication', Reading Images
- Schirato, T, Yell, S 1996, 'Framing Contexts', Communication and Cultural Literacy: an introduction, Chapter 5, pp.90-117
- Baker, A 2003, 'Email Etiquette', West Virginia University
- Rezabek, L.L, Cochenour, J.J 1998, 'Visual cues in computer mediated communication: Supplementing texts with emoticons', Journey of Visual Literacy, vol.18, pp. 201-215
- Thompson, P.A, Foulger, D.A 1996, 'Effects of pictographs and quoting on flaming in electronic mail', Computers in Human Behaviour, vol.12, pp.225-243
- Schwalbe, W 2007, 'Emoticons and Email Etiquette', abc.net.au, viewed 13 June 2009 <http://abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2064342.htm
- Schriver, KA 1997, 'The Interplay of Words and Pictures', Dynamics in Document Design: Creating texts for readers, Chapter 6, pp.361-441
So long.. and so good T.T
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