Face-to-face in textual world

In the article, email with words may seem boring and sometimes receiver may not understand what the senders sent. Therefore the use of emoticons appears to make the sentence seemingly more meaningful. Emoticons or today is called as smiley is nothing but the combination of colon, hyphen and parenthesis. It was set that some sentences send via e-mail may be sensitive and might hurt the receiver’s feeling, for example:

Yes, you look pretty ugly that time...
Yes, you look pretty ugly that time... : - )

Adding emoticon like shown above is a form of pleasure, or a joke that one wants to make. Multimodality is a need for design and development of multimedia-based to stimulate the readers (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001). Emoticons are added in today’s society technology to have a face-to-face communication.

According to Lowe, (n.d) stated that emoticon are a form expression that goes along with the text. This is because face-to-face communication is essential and therefore the emoticons are used to representative of our expression through text (Microsoft, 2009). Technology today allows people to send instant message or e-mail with emoticons may bond one and another and avoid any miscommunication.

However, not all emoticons can be nice and please to look at. According to Blog & Internet (2009) emoticons evolve into more adult feature, whereby creating what is known as ‘assicons’ and ‘boobiecons’. Is nothing but an insult of other people using parts of a person’s body? For example,

Yes, you look pretty ugly that time... (__!__)

Adding that emoticon representing ‘a fat butt’ is an insult to the receiver. However the evolvements are not entirely bad and negative. Today, game creator uses emoticon to represent the avatar. According to Kayne (2009) stated that avatar is a personalized graphic file or rendering that represents a computer user.

(Source: Picture taken from Kombo.com)

Whether is in virtual online or instant messenger, the emoticon is a trend that is famously used by all aged people. However it depends on the person who whether want to use it appropriately or as an insult to the others.

(Source: Picture taken from Walkers News)
example of phone avatars

(Source: Picture taken from ratemyserver.com)
eample of perfect game with emoticon and avatar

References

1. Blog and Internet, 2009, Neatorama.com, viewed 12 June, <http://www.neatorama.com/2009/05/05/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-emoticons/>.

2. Kayne, R 2009, What is a Computer Avatar?, wisegeek.com, viewed 12 June, <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-computer-avatar.htm>.

3. Kress, G and van Leeuwen, T 2001, Multimodal Discourse: the Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication, Arnold, London.

4. Lowe, RGJ n.d, A Brief history Of Smiley’s, Nerd Times, viewed 12 June, <http://www.nerdtimes.com/emoticons/>.

5. Microsoft 2009, Express yourself with emoticons, Microsoft.com, viewed 12 June, <http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/windowsmessenger/getstarted/emoticons.mspx>.