Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Move along, nothing to see here!
ajcoleman22
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon Apr 16, 2018 8:45 am

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by ajcoleman22 »

The short answer is, yes. I work with a lot of Junior High and High School kids and every emoji has very significant meaning.

chenda
Posts: 3289
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 1:17 pm
Location: Nether Wallop

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by chenda »

:shock:

User avatar
TheWanderingScholar
Posts: 650
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:04 am

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

Yeah, it has its uses.

Even in old IRC chats emoji's were useful.

User avatar
jennypenny
Posts: 6851
Joined: Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:20 pm

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by jennypenny »

Use your words, people!

Salathor
Posts: 394
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2015 11:49 am
Location: California, USA

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by Salathor »

I think it's true that they are pictograms, yes. They are not hieroglyphs, which describes (as far as I'm aware) specifically the Egyptian writing system.

Dream of Freedom
Posts: 753
Joined: Wed Aug 29, 2012 5:58 pm
Location: Nebraska, US

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by Dream of Freedom »

I googled hieroglyphs vs pictogram.
Early pictograms were of this nature. But let's say you want to write down a word for something more difficult, like "belief". It's hard to draw a picture for such a thing, so instead ancient people used "the rebus principle". Instead of trying to directly represent concepts, instead they used a small set of standard symbols (hieroglyphs) that represent sounds. The word "bee" in English sounds like the first part of be-lief, and the word "leaf" sounds like the last half. Thus, in a hieroglyphic language, (pictures of a bee and a leaf) might represent the sounds of the English words "bee leaf" or "belief"
https://www.quora.com/Ancient-Egypt-Wha ... roglyphics

And that hieroglyphics are
a writing system of ancient Egypt, Minoans, Maya and other civilizations, using pictorial symbols to represent individual sounds as a rebus
https://wikidiff.com/pictogram/hieroglyphic

So, I think they are pictograms, because they lack the rebus principle.

Frita
Posts: 942
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2018 8:43 pm

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by Frita »

Hieroglyphs may stand for individual/multiple phonemes, be representative the the word depicted, be metaphoric, or be used in place of a multiple-meaning word.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.planet ... rmat%3Damp

How will texts with emojis survive for 5,000 years? It seems to be so tech dependent. Can modern kids use technology from 15 to 30 years ago?! LOL

Jason

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by Jason »

Were hieroglyphs universal? Like could you walk into any cave in any culture and they'd have the same representations? Some things like "belief" or "shithead" or "fat ass" I could see being uniform across the cave board. But what about "dinosaur." It could be "dine oh sore" or "diner? sure!" or even "Dinah Shore" although I'm guessing you'd have to have a super visionary cave artist draw her up back in the day. Are emoji's universal? Like a kid in San Fransisco can text a kid in New Dehli with the same emojis? Would it be offensive to text a cow emoji to a kid in India? Do they have Chinese looking people in China in their emojis? Are they different in each country? Or used differently? Or interpreted differently?

For instance, there are two thumbs up - a caucasian thumb and an African American thumb. I always use the latter. But most people I know use the caucasian thumb because well, admittedly, I only text white people. But does an African American use the African American thumb? If I happen to text an African American, would he think it would be cultural appropriation if I used the black thumb? Or just downright racist? It seems more complicated these days then back in the hieroglyph day when people used symbols because they were illiterate and not lazy or trying to hide things from their parents, and despite their differences, everyone generally looked like hell.

BeyondtheWrap
Posts: 598
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2010 3:38 pm
Location: NYC

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by BeyondtheWrap »

No, they are not. Emojis represent emotions. They do not represent language. You cannot write instruction manuals or epic poems using just emojis. Emojis are used to specify a feeling, usually held by the person using them, and help give context to whatever sentence is written using language. Emojis are more akin to ideograms and pictograms.

Hieroglyphs are an actual writing system that maps to language. They can represent actual words (making them logograms) that can be strung together to form actual sentences that you can read out loud. In other cases, hieroglyphs represent sounds that can then be put together to form words. Hieroglyphs have a long history, so they were used differently at different times. Can you write an epic poem in hieroglyphs? Yes you can.

Fun fact: most writing systems currently in use are descended from either Egyptian hieroglyphs (such as the Latin alphabet) or from Chinese characters.

Jason

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by Jason »

When I get home, I text my wife the house emoji. That's not the conveyance of an emotion. That's a shortcut to spelling "I'm home." There is also a croissant emoji which I would use if someone asked me what I was eating. It does not necessarily mean I feel like I'm a croissant or that I feel like eating a croissant. It's just the communication of data that answers a factually based question.

User avatar
C40
Posts: 2748
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:30 am

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by C40 »

Jason wrote:
Sat Jun 01, 2019 7:29 am
For instance, there are two thumbs up - a caucasian thumb and an African American thumb. I always use the latter. But most people I know use the caucasian thumb because well, admittedly, I only text white people. But does an African American use the African American thumb? If I happen to text an African American, would he think it would be cultural appropriation if I used the black thumb? Or just downright racist? It seems more complicated these days then back in the hieroglyph day when people used symbols because they were illiterate and not lazy or trying to hide things from their parents, and despite their differences, everyone generally looked like hell.
The norm is that you use the emojis that match YOUR skin color. Not the recipients. Most emoji use (the ones with people or hands at least) is representing YOUR body language, emotion, etc..

A differing example would be if you write something like "Wow, you didn't seem to know about the surprise birthday party at all, you like :o :shock: " with the skin color of the emoji's being the person you are talking to because you are depicting them.

Also, those are NOT African American emojis. They are dark skin emojis. Not every person who uses a phone and has dark skin is an African American.

Jason

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by Jason »

So what thumb do I give The Dalai Lama? It seems like a toss-up.

User avatar
C40
Posts: 2748
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:30 am

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by C40 »

Jason wrote:
Sat Jun 01, 2019 2:52 pm
So what thumb do I give The Dalai Lama? It seems like a toss-up.
This one.
Image

Jason

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by Jason »

Thank you. Now I don't have to spend all that time writing "Hello, Dalai!"

Campitor
Posts: 1227
Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by Campitor »

I don't think we are at any risk of sliding back into picture based communication. Drawn pictures are a way to to articulate a set of ideas or feelings that may be too nuanced, complex, or too long to express in written form when time or audience attention span is too short.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15906
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by jacob »

Augustus wrote:
Tue Jun 11, 2019 10:33 pm
In the future, scholars will read ancient articles with emojis all over the place.
I've yet to see any emojis in print (maybe I'm just reading the wrong books). I thought the general consensus was that the digital age would be something of a dark age as far as history is concerned. Unless one takes great care to update and maintain digital information, it rots pretty quickly due to incompatibility issues.

User avatar
C40
Posts: 2748
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2011 4:30 am

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by C40 »

I think emojis may have a much shorter lifespan than digital information as a whole. The corresponding codes won't make sense any more compared to back when they were simple and the characters like " : - ) " were converted to the :-) image. Now there are so many emojis that seeing the code won't make sense. Also, even right now, emojis often don't work right, as I experienced when my Android iOS became a bit dated (and couldn't be updated anymore) and many of the emojis my friends and potential girlfriends sent me showed up as blank squares. That makes it difficult to interpret messages.

Campitor
Posts: 1227
Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by Campitor »

Emojis are a means of conveying emotion in a succinct manner. Since certain emojis, such as the okay symbol, mean different things to different people, it loses it's effectiveness as a means of communication over a broader audience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture

And emojis only work in response to written context. Try using only emojis to communicate a lunch meeting date, place, and time. You would need thousands of emojis to communicate effectively versus using a limited number of characters (26 if you're an english speaker).

User avatar
jennypenny
Posts: 6851
Joined: Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:20 pm

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by jennypenny »

Campitor wrote:
Sat Jun 01, 2019 6:14 pm
I don't think we are at any risk of sliding back into picture based communication. Drawn pictures are a way to to articulate a set of ideas or feelings that may be too nuanced, complex, or too long to express in written form when time or audience attention span is too short.
I'm not sure I agree with this. We used art to communicate ideas, but we don't use it to communicate in real time. That kind of communication is definitely a step backwards as far as nuanced communication. I keep coming back to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The reduction in language skills and particularly vocabulary size worries me when combined with the emergence of emojis as acceptable language.

Maybe this is a reaction to the recent (50 years) bloat in mass-produced literature that was discussed in the Range thread. Dunno. Still, it worries me that we'll reduce our thinking skills to a handful of easy-to-represent concepts like we've done with our communication skills.

Jason

Re: Are emojis hieroglyphs?

Post by Jason »

Umm...television, anyone? You don't think Lincoln vs. Douglass was slightly different than Trump vs. Clinton? And the winner of the latter admits to his winning because of his employment of a technology that limits communication to less than 280 characters? That's characters. Not words. Billy Graham purposely reduced his use of vocabulary, I think to like 250 different words to simplify his message for the masses. Now we're down to 280 fucking characters.

Emoji's are not drawn communication like Van Gogh let alone hieroglyphs. Those had to be created by the user. Now people are just picking pre-packaged ones they want to use. And I would add, McLuhan matters. With a cave wall and a painting, the observer had to be physically present to view the picture/painting. Personality and proximity are no longer required.

Post Reply