Article:
Language Decline due to Emojis?

dc.creatorBeißwenger, Michael
dc.creatorPappert, Steffen
dc.date.accessioned2024-06-14T11:15:04Z
dc.date.available2024-06-14T11:15:04Z
dc.date.issued2023
dc.description.abstractOver the past decade and driven by the prevalence of messaging apps, images have become an integral part of digital personal communication. This article addresses the emoji phenomenon from a pragmalinguistic perspective. Starting from examples from journalistic media describing emojis as a potential ›threat‹ for language and linguistic competences, we address two aspects of scepticism towards emojis in relation to the (German) language: (i) the question of whether emojis are capable of making language obsolete as a means of interpersonal communication (= ›end of cultivated written language‹) and whether they have the potential to replace language in the form of a pictorial symbol language which is considered less expressive; (ii) whether the high-frequency use of emojis in some domains of linguistic activity threatens the function and expressive power of written communication (= ›language decline‹, which impairs the expressive capacity of our language). Based on authentic examples of private WhatsApp communication from a linguistic corpus, we show that the use of emojis in written everyday communication does not make language ›poorer‹. Quite contrary to the fears expressed in the public discourse, emojis take on important functions for securing understanding and shaping relationships and, thus, have to be considered a multi- modal device which support the organisation of interpersonal communication in the digital world.en
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/22333
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/23767
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherHerbert von Halem
dc.publisher.placeKöln
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:1614-0885
dc.relation.ispartofseriesIMAGE. Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Bildwissenschaft
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
dc.subjectdigital personal communicationen
dc.subjectemojien
dc.subjectpragmalinguistic perspectiveen
dc.subject.ddcddc:700
dc.titleLanguage Decline due to Emojis?de
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeArticle
local.coverpage2024-06-16T03:01:30
local.source.epage177
local.source.issue2
local.source.spage158
local.source.volume19

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