Emoticon is so very often and widely used in our lives that even a famous politician’s slogan is an emoticon-based logo. Nowadays, the emoticon has become one of the most recognizable symbols, perhaps a universal way of expression excelling language. Type :) in a text and it will be understood in most of the countries on Earth. Throughout the 30 years since its advent, there have been changes that no one would possibly have imagined.

   
 
Emoticon, often referred to as smiley, is a term combining two words, emotion and icon. It is a textual representation of a writer’s mood or facial expression by using punctuation marks and letters.

The origins of the emoticon :-) can be traced back to September 19, 1982, which was proposed by Scott Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. The exact text written by Fahlman is as follows: “I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-( ”

However, emoticons as a form of expression go back much further than Fahlman’s smiley. In the mid- 19th century, they were being used in a crude form in Morse code and a few decades later in the U.S., satirical magazine Puck. In this manner, it can be said that people already acknowledged the need of signs to effectively and clearly deliver the message in text-based conversations.

At first, as Fahlman has suggested, the emoticon was just supplements to convey a sense of feeling to the receiver. Nowadays, however, the digital age has brought a proliferation of expressions and styles on emoticons. Falhman’s idea has been developed to incorporate more letters with different shapes implying different feelings such as :-D and :P. Also, the emoticon has developed into an essential form of language that expresses our exact feelings of the moment.

With this trend, so used to using emoticons in Kakao Talk, the most famous mobile messenger in Korea, some of the younger generations say that they feel they are not delivering their ideas well enough without emoticons. “I use emoticons to compensate for the lack of emotional capabilities in just text messages. Emoticons can convey my mood of facial expressions,” says Kim Gyeong Ri (’12, Liberal Arts).
   
 
Emoticons seem to have both positive and negative effects on the language. Old-school language purists sometimes scoff at the emoticon, regarding it as a lazy excuse for not expressing oneself in real language; why not just say “I am so glad” rather than just “:-).” But according to Kim Yun Hee, a professor in Korea University (KU) who majored in Korean Language and Literature, this argument overlooks on the biggest benefit of emoticons. “The positive influence of the emoticon is the efficiency that tears down language barriers,” said Kim. Now that they are automatic, your computer makes them for you; type in <3 and you end up with a big red heart that shows you love them, which can be understood regardless of age, race, religion and culture. “It is more time efficient and an easier way to communicate, since one emoticon can imply the complicated emotions of users in just one emoticon. Also, emoticons act as an ice breaker, showing more intimacy between users as well,” Kim added.

However, she believes too much abusive usage of this new cyber language can blur the border between casual and official writings, sometimes acting as a barrier in communication which makes the message ambiguous. Professor Kim said, “I have even seen students using emoticons on academic papers, which should be a serious and official assignment for students. As a professor, I believe that using emoticons on official writings can make the paper look frivolous, taking down the formality of it.” When asked about the solutions regarding emoticons’ negative effects on language, she suggested, “Formal education is required for young students to train their ability so that they can know the use of ‘correct’ language in appropriate situations.”

   
 
Emoticons between cultures seem to vary. The emoticon in Western style is written from left to right. Thus, emoticons have the eyes on the left, followed by nose and the mouth like :-) and :-(. Since recent years, however, fewer and fewer people have kept using the nose, thus transforming the eyes-nose-mouth :-) into eyes-mouth :). Yet, Asian emoticons are usually horizontal instead of vertical, not requiring the readers to tilt their head. They often use round brackets to suggest the sides of a face, with other characters inside to suggest features. Also, Asian emoticons emphasize the shape of the eyes. (^^) represents a happy face while (ㅠㅠ) means sad. To apologize, you can type (_ _) or m(_ _)m to suggest a low bow. This difference reflects the cultural background that Asians put emphasis on the eyes for emotions while western culture highlights mouth for emotions.

The history of emoticon usage in Korea started from the 1980s. At first, it was simply using simple letters and signs to show and describe the emotions. In the 1990s, with the development of messenger services such as MSN and NATE ON, such emoticons were replaced and developed into a picture icon form. Then, the third generation of emoticons was characters that were made by users themselves or the companies, which then advanced into commercial purposes for sale. These days, emoticons are diversified from character emoticons to cartoon emoticons or even emoticons with motion. Emoticon is considered to be a new blooming field of business industry; customers can even purchase emoticons. According to Kakaotalk, daily sales for emoticons exceeded over one hundred million won, which is more than one hundred thousand dollars. It is even famous worldwide in countries like China, Japan, the U.S., or even countries like Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE). With its popularity, it is expected that new forms of emoticons, like talking emoticons, will be widely used in the not too distant future. Emoticons are still in evolutionary progress.


   
 

The digital emoticon is 30 years old and has already come a long way. Perhaps, in another 30 years, people from different countries and different cultures will all be communicating in one language; the language of :-).

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