Myth is a type of speech when using emoticons. Today, we have the use of social media. Usually, people often use emoticons when carrying on a conversation involving social media or even text messages. The use of emoticons is a trend because people use them to express themselves based on their feelings, what they celebrate, etc. The use of emoticons has also become popular because the designs they carry show the emotion the author of a text is expressing in the form of technology.
Myth is a type of speech when using emoticons because it is like using pictographs from ancient times; only the use comes from using technology instead of centuries-old carvings. Michael B. Hudson argues in Examining How Gender and Emoticons Influence Facebook Jealousy “that emoticons have the potential to alter the interpretation of a message significantly, both in terms of direction (positive or negative interpretation) and strength” (88). The use of emoticons is also different from communication in ancient times because sometimes, emoticons can be misleading. Emoticons can also establish how people perceive a message and their reaction to certain emoticons, based on how the person he/she is speaking to reacts to this message. As for an emoticon being misleading, for example, an individual can send a happy face emoticon to someone, but the emoticon might look different based on the recipient’s device, which can cause confusion or curiosity about what the emoticon received is supposed to mean.
Various emoticons are used in messages and posts on social media and text messages, and more are probably in the process of becoming modern designs to express emotion. Roland Barthes claims, “the very history of writing, in fact, justifies this generic way of conceiving language: long before the invention of our alphabet, objects like the Inca quipu, or drawings, as in pictographs, have been accepted as speech” (109). Barthes is applying to myth being a type of speech as a form of symbols becoming used with the meaning behind it. He also states on page 109 in Mythologies that “pictures become a kind of writing as soon as they are meaningful.” With this statement, Barthes’s words can also apply to emoticons because various people are using emoticons as a form of expression.
Also, another word that can be used in contrast with emoticons is emojis. Emojis are often used and always don’t look like faces. Emojis can be anything, such as an animal, a place, food, weather, activities, etc. Emojis have become popular over the years because they can easily be used to display expressions rather than typing how one is feeling word for word. It seems easier to use because it’s an image being used versus wordy explanations that can take up a lot of space in a message or text.
As far as social media and text messaging go, emoticons are a type of speech. With myth being a type of speech, people can ask: If we have ancient carvings from the past to show expression, what will become of the technological use of emoticons in the future? Will someone come up with a way to show expression beyond using emoticons? And if so, how will emoticons be archived? Emoticons can also become a myth when it involves a form of speech and how the recipient perceives it.
Works Cited
Hudson, Michael B., et al. “Examining How Gender and Emoticons Influence Facebook Jealousy.” Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, vol. 18, no. 2, Feb. 2015, pp. 87-92. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1089/cyber.2014.0129
Barthes, Roland, and Annette Lavers. Mythologies. Noonday Press, 1972, p. 109.