The Emoji Primer
Attached you will find my project. I had a mini meltdown when it didn’t convert to pdf in the correct font, and somehow Dr. Chill got it to do so with seemingly minor stress. So multiple thanks to her.
–sincerely–
?
Attached you will find my project. I had a mini meltdown when it didn’t convert to pdf in the correct font, and somehow Dr. Chill got it to do so with seemingly minor stress. So multiple thanks to her.
–sincerely–
?
Hey Graham,
This was such a cool project and very impressive – I’m also glad it’s not in comic sans:) <- emoji?
One of the most striking aspects of your project was understanding emojis as a distinct language with its own grammar and syntax that has to be translated. I found it surprising that while I could understand an emoji just by looking at it – if I tried to convey the meaning through the English language – I struggled. I ended up using many words to achieve an imprecise translation as opposed to the compact meaning understood through the emoji.
One question to consider – who is the intended audience? I think the tone of the grammar book oscillating between a patronizing grade school grammar book but at the same time engaging the reader in complex discussion of symbol/word meaning. I also hate grammar books and the small exercises at the end of each chapter.
I also found the role of Apple with regard to Emojis and who has power over the language to be intriguing. They have so much power over the entire emoji language as demonstrated in your discussion of the Emoji Equality Revolution. The project raised interesting conversations about the democratic nature of language and the agency each user has in shaping its meaning and value. A discussion about the role of Apple and static power structure of the emoji language would have been worthwhile.
Overall, killing the emoji grammar discussion. I thought you were really creative in creating terms to discuss the aspects of emojis that you wanted to talk about even when there weren't any terms.
Hey Graham!
I love the interactive-ness of your book! I get to write in it, read tweets as if on a twitter feed, put my name and date at the top of each page.. etc etc. It’s awesome! I wanna print out my own copy and fill it out. I also appreciate scholarly attention to emojis, as you probably gathered from my project.
I really like your select of emoji info to include… like the diversification of them with the 8.3 iOS update. Also your book is just so beautiful.. I’m very impressed. Your chapter divisions are very smart and aid in learning.
I perceive your project as an interactive emoji textbook that shed light on the complexity of emojis, how they can be used grammatically and otherwise to convey meaning. You give both sections (what are they and what can they do) equal thought and they build on each other.
Something to think about… hm. My brain is so very full of emojis rn. Some of your sentences were really hard for me to draw meaning from! makes me wonder how difficult mine were to everyone… our own sentences make more sense in our own minds, obviously. What kinds of emojis need to be introduced so that we can better communicate in them?
I was blown away by this project. Setting aside the content for a second, the interactivity and presentation alone was more than enough to impress me. Doing a project in the form of a workbook could have immediately devolved into corny aesthetic structures or organizational patterns we have seen a thousand times before, where the visuals merely exist to mirror textbooks and don’t add anything to the actual content: where the visuals are just that – strictly visual additions. But you found a way to put a fresh spin on textbooks where every visual addition had an actual purpose and goal, and interactivity was not merely encouraged for interactivity sake but to actually engage the reader in the text and get them involved and actually thinking about the content and how that applies to them personally. Usually when I think about workbook exercises, I think about repetition and busy work, but you managed to include interactive lessons that were neither boring and repetitive nor unnecessary. Even the little added touches of the table of contents, glossary of terms, and name, date and Chapter number at the top of each page drew me further and further into your project in ways I didn’t suspect beforehand.
In addition to the structure, the content was perfect. Right from the start we were clued in that this workbook would be different. The intro, “Did You Know?,” and especially “What Are people Saying About These New-Fangled Things” sections set the tone right off the bat and let me know that this was actually going to be a textbook accessible to the modern generation, and willing to take in a broader range of views and contributions than much scholarly work usually allows. In the initial “What Are people Saying About These New-Fangled Things” section, you included quotes from Google, random Twitter accounts of normal people, linguists, writers, web journalists, and bloggers – all revealing valuable information and all contributing to the conversation. Your project somewhat leveled the playing field, and gave an equal voice to scholarly writers & thinkers and bloggers and web journalists or Twitter users. By taking in a larger range of voices and appealing to more than just an academic crowd, you opened up the text and made it much more accessible, without sacrificing smart, witty commentary and theoretical analysis in the process. I value that more than almost anything: your ability to combine the entertainment with the academic, the linguists with the laymen, and the public with the private. This was extremely well done.
Another unexpected surprise with your project was the poignancy and relevancy of the content. it was not merely theoretical, but covered important gender and sexuality issues facing our country today. you managed to take a seemingly innocuous set of pictograms and relate them to larger concepts of sexuality acceptance, gender norm, spheres of influence, problematic stereotypes and gender roles, and the inclusivity/exclusivity flaws of a “universal language.” Your workbook covered everything from exercises to social commentary to a grammatology to a section of newly invented phrases and words coined for this project. I was blown away with the scope of your work, and how you didn’t sacrifice clarity or focus even with your broad range of coverage.You did a magnificent job.
Overall, I couldn’t stop thinking about how you turned simple little pictures I send in my phone to a friend into powerful social and theoretical commentary that really got me thinking about the institutions and invisible social structures around us that govern what we do and how we act without realizing it. I wish you would put this online on some sort of website so that it may be accessible to even more people, and can spread its voice to even more corners of the world. I would love for you to make this PDF available to download online, and send it to students all over the country, to show them how learning can be updated for the modern generation. Incredible job.
Dear ? ,
I love emoji discourse & I love reading this in conjunction with Sam’s project (grammar + storytelling in emoji). Frankly, I just want to take a moment to be like, “Dang this is so cool.” Let’s all take that moment.
Okay, great. For me, the best part of your project is its format; the workbook style makes it so fun to read, and like everyone else I love how interactive it is. And I love your writing style here, which merges the casual, the instructive, and the academic so well. Stuff like “Emoji Equality Revolution (a term I’ve just made up)” and “(but it’s probably overkill)” really immersed me in your world and helped me buy into the workbook premise. One thing I think would be helpful in coherence (for me) is including a section at the end with answers (to the workbook questions that had concrete answers, that is). Some of the exercises really were pretty hard to complete (which is part of the experience of learning how to translate, I know).
Your points about said Revolution, the emoji gender gap, and cultural differences behind various emojis are also hugely relevant and important to consider, even (especially?) in the context of this new language’s grammar. I think you did a great job of weaving in the cultural/societal implications with the more cut-and-dry grammar topic. I also think your ending is really apt — essentially, like, who knows what’ll happen next for/with emojis? We don’t know, but we’re also part of the culture shaping it. That’s way cool.
You and Sam have honestly made me so excited about the future of emojis. I love it.
This project is really cool!!! I loved learning about the history and origins of emojis. Additionally, it was neat to read debates about a symbol/index/icon and if it is considered a word, or if as an image it can communicate in ways that words cannot. It was clear you spent a lot of time researching the subject, but it was also striking how you translated this research into an interactive component, engaging the reader. I enjoyed having to think for myself throughout the process.
Through your textbook, I learned that I take emojis for granted as a form of communication. I also never considered the implications of gender and the actions of the female vs. male emojis. I think that tied to how we are enculturated and because I use emojis so frequently, I never paused to think about its effects on our identity and the way we are socialized.
I am curious as to whether or not you considered an answer key, if you would consider it, or if you intentionally left it out? That seems like a key part of a grammar textbook, but I also see in that some questions were left up to interpretation.
This project is delightful—serious, funny, insightful, original, dialogic, and beautifully designed. I love the way you take emoji seriously, but not too seriously, and also infuse wit and ingenuity into the textbook primer. You write in conversation with your sources and your readers, encouraging us to think more about those little symbols we love to send and mock. Your writing is wonderful—deeply intelligent, lively, and utterly unpretentious. Like your classmates, I also appreciate the way you draw attention to the race, gender, and cultural biases attached to these seemingly innocent creatures (I find it a little ironic that the box in which I’m invited to draw the emoji I identify with is colored in “flesh tone”!). Finally, I think you do a brilliant job combining words and images to illustrate and communicate your ideas.
Here’s a question: do you think this primer may subtly reinforce the cultural tendency to belittle emojis as superficial and “lite” because of its own dependence on working with web-accessible sources? When I go to the library catalog and search “emoji,” I get 702 results, including books entitled How to Speak Emoji (2015), The Story of Emoji (2016), The Great Emoji Quizbook (2016), and The Semiotics of Emoji (2016). EBSCO host offers 697 results, including some in academic journals. I understand and appreciate the importance of including bloggers, tweeters, and non-academic voices in the Emoji Primer, but why leave out the scholarly perspective? Especially when you have a remarkable ability to grasp sophisticated theoretical ideas and engage in scholarly debates while still maintaining a confident, natural, unpretentious writer’s voice!