If you ever get a text from me, most likely you will also get the emoticon of a facial expression or heart or something that I feel adds to what the words cannot. I have often wondered, is this childish?! Is this helpful, silly, unecessary, and I have come to this conclusion: When we talk to people in person there is a nonverbal body language that each experiences, that one does not get through text messages or IMs in general. I find that these emoticons can really help out, if say a message is sarcastic and you don't want it to be taken seriously, loving but could be confused as otherwise, ets.
So when I read this comment on the opposition of using emoticons, "Attacks are often centered on the ambiguity of the emoticon" in the article titled, Conventional Faces: Emoticons in Instant Messaging Discourse, I personally disagreed. These emoticons I find narrow down the ambiguity of words that could be taken out of context.
In my experience, I use emoticons strictly for text and some emails and social media posts, I have never used them otherwise. In that same article the opposition states, "Emoticons, specifically, have been scrutinized by language scholars from fields as diverse as psychology, neuroscience, and sociolinguistics as “an unnecessary and unwelcome intrusion into a well-crafted text”"
I would say that is a big leap, to suggest that they are an "unnecessary and unwelcome intrusion into a well-crafted text". I would say that it depends on the text, and often times texts are on limited time, and people don't have the ability to craft with words the lengthy text it may take to fully express the idea and could use an emoticon instead. I know personally, since I write very long texts usually, that a friend of mine says "I always know when I get a text from you because my phone goes off multiple times"....meaning multiple texts. They come out of order and are confusing for her, and so I try to shorten them now.
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