Bitota Hearvey

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Zack De Piero
WRIT 2
10/14/2015
The Power of Emojis
In the genre of social networking postings you will always find emojis. An emoji is an ideogram
used in messages and are a visual representation of what the person is saying or how the person
is feeling. The use of emojis are effective in relaying the meaning of a post.
Before you understand the impact of emojis in social networks you must first understand the
conventions and purpose of a social network and its postings. In general, the purpose of a social
network is to keep up with what is going in your interests whether it be your friends, family,
favorite singer, favorite news broadcasting channel, hockey club, whatever. The purpose of the
posts being made is to keep whomever is interested in you updated on what is going on in your
life. Social network posts have several conventions that make them what they are: they tell your
opinion, feelings, current physical state, good news, bad news, etc. These posts can be happy,
sad, funny, depressing, thoughtful, or even confusing. They can be pictures, videos, links to
websites, and even music clips. Posts can be written as full out sentences or as super shorthand,
text message style writing.
Social networks audiences are generally affiliated with the younger generation given that 89% of
young adults, age 18 to 29, and 72% of kids, high school grad or less, use social networking sites
(Social Networking Fact Sheet). However, social networking is not just limited the younger
people; 82% of age 30-49, 65% of age 50-64, and 49% of 65+ use social networking (Social
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Networking Fact Sheet). This affiliation is due to the fact this generation, the new millennium,
has grown up with technology since birth and therefore, are more apt to try and apply new
technologies (social media and networking) in all aspects of their lives (Generation Y in Social
Media). Regardless of age, the audience of social networking posts will always be whomever is
interested in you. If you are a famous actor then your audience will be made up of fans, people
who do not like you, other celebrities, your personal family and friends, and entertainment news.
These are people who genuinely care about what you have to say, whether it is to upraise it or
critique it.
Emojis interplay in all of this in that they add substance to a person social networking post. This
substance comes in the form of emotion, humor, and understanding. An emoji comes in
different forms: faces, animals, flowers, fruits, foods, places, shapes, signs, etc. The purpose of
an emoji is to visualize what ones saying or how they are saying it. So when a person creates a
post on a social network they may choose to use the cringe face emoji, with the zig-zag mouth,
inward pointing eyes, and droopy eyebrows, to represent the uncomfortableness they felt about
what they were posting on. By reading that post and seeing that emoji paired with it, the
audience automatically knows the tone of the post is negative by the feeling of the person about
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that situation represented in the face of the emoji. Whenever an emoji is used, the context that it
was used with automatically is designed to appeal to a younger audienceteenager, young adult
and the tone, regardless, of whatever emoji used, will have a hint of comicalness.
The use and effect of an emoji varies depending on the social network it is being posted on. One
way to look at the use and effect of emojis on social networking posts is through Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram. Posts on Twitter have certain conventions that these emojis are paired

with. Twitter is not an appropriate place for formal relations, posts are shortat most 140
charactersand are about specific or passive aggressive vents on issues, what you are doing at
that moment, how you are feeling at that moment, what you are interested in, rebuttals to other
peoples tweets, and anything else in the realm of conversation. Given a limited character count, a
person making a post on twitter is constrained in how much he can say. On the contrary,
Facebook does not have a word limit, so a person is free to express themselves with as many
words and necessary to get their point across. Facebook posts range from informal to formal
depending on the purpose of the page. Some pages advertise serious corporations and some are
teenage girls modeling their outfit of the day. Instagram posts vary between a picture and a video
with a caption or statement underneath. As important as the picture and video arebecause they
are the central focus and purpose of the sitethe captions underneath add a lot of context to
what you are seeing. They tell where you are, what you are doing, a story, an irrelevant
comment, how you are feeling, an abstract statement, or it can just be as simple as one emoji.
Emojis, by themselves, are very powerful in getting a message across and setting the tone. On
Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook posts, emojis are commonly used for showing a
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current state of feeling or representing a persons facial reaction to something. On those sites it is
common for people to post videos or pictures and attach them with the laughing face emoji and
the crying down cheeks face emoji to show that that video is so hilarious, that it make you cry of
laughter. On Twitter @IEatLatinasWithAdobo posted a video of a guy who, for no reason, had a
problem with the fast food workers in the drive through, and this video was posted with the
laughing emoji so that before you even watch it, you know it is supposed to be funny ("Y'all Put
Ice Cream in My Ice Cream Cone"). In another case, @melmartella tweeted all my church

friends were talking about how ugly and awkward my smile is with several smiley face emojis
following the statement, showing the sarcasm of the post by making her seem happy at
something that she was displeased about (All My Church...). That tweet displays how an emoji
can change the whole tone and meaning of the tweet because the emoji makes her disdain with
the situation a little more lighthearted (All My Church...). In a Twitter, Facebook, and
Instagram post it is common for an emoji to stand in place for a word or a slang term. It can be
used as a visual shorthand or as way to spice up a post. The one hundred sign emoji is common
on twitter to use in place of the slang term, one hunnid which means all the way or keeping it
real. When people use that emoji in a post it signifies that in whatever their saying they either
agree with it all the way or that whatever they are saying is real and honest. An emoji setting the
tone, like in the previous example, is commonly done on Facebook and Twitter because clearly
exemplifies the meaning of the post by the facial image of the emoji. Also regardless of which
emoji you use, as long as it is used it adds a lighthearted, comical tone.

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How strong of a role an emoji has depends on the site it is being used on. On Facebook its role
is not as important as on Twitter given that people have enough space to explicitly say and
describe mean. Whereas, on twitter, with the word count limit, and emoji can convey a lot of
meaning in a short amount of space. On Instagram captions, as well as on Facebook and Twitter,
emojis help support the meaning of the message being conveyed. Many times the emotion face
emojis are used in a caption to show the persons feelings on the image or video in their post.
When you are dealing with the writers who actually writes these posts there are great
comparisons. No matter which site you are on, the writers purpose is to post about themselves in
one way or the other. The diction used is generally informal and colloquial, and there really is not

a sentence structure but rather, short phrases that get the point across. The audience being
appealed to when posting with emojis are generally people in a yonger generation age group, and
it uses pathos because a person automatically feels the comicalness of the post given the
animated emoji character with it.
This whole report dealt with the genre of social networking posts, however, that is just one many
genres that make up our lives. A genre is a repeated rhetorical situation whose content is
determined by us, the people (Dirk, 20). When dealing with social networking posts you notice
the reoccurring convention of posts being related to the writer one way or another. When you
think about it though, it was the parts of society using these sites that determined that personal
issues were going to be the sites main function of intent. Whereas, the commonality of these
posts could have been decided upon to have been about animals or astrophysics rather than self.
Genre is really important because it helps us understand the context of what we like, do, see, and
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hear. It makes a person a little less ignorant of trends of these senses. Genre should be
acknowledged by anyone who cares about the conventions making up our world.

Works Cited
"Generation Y in Social Media | Emplo.com." Emplocom Generation Y in Social Media Comments.
N.p., 23 Oct. 2014. Web. 12 Oct. 2015.
IEatLatinasWithAdobo. ""Y'all Put Ice Cream in My Ice Cream Cone"
pic.twitter.com/Oz8vROEAvw." Twitter. Twitter, n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.
Lowe, Charles, and Pavel Zemliansky. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. West Lafayette, IN:
Parlor, 2010. Web.
Mel. "All My Church Friends Were Talking about How Ugly and Awkward My Smile
Is #sarcasticsmiley." Twitter. Twitter, 26 Sept. 2015. Web. 15 Oct.
2015.
"Social Networking Fact Sheet." Pew Research Center Internet Science Tech RSS. N.p., 27 Dec. 2013.
Web. 12 Oct. 2015.

Did Not Meet

Expectations

Met Expectations

Thesis Statement

Exceeded
Expectations

X-

Use of Textual Evidence

from Genres
X

Use of Course Readings

X-

Analysis
Organization/Structure

Attention to
Genre/Conventions and
Rhetorical Factors

Sentence-level Clarity,
Mechanics, Flow
Bernice,
Other Comments

This paper has a bunch of potential, and I know that you can get
there. I think that the most important step you can take here is to
consider: what, exactly, am I arguing here? What conventions am
I hoping to analyze, whats their significance, and why?

Id also like you to weave in a LOT more textual support -- win

me over with evidence, then remind me about how/why this
evidence fits into your larger argument (think: analysis). Make
sure you work in the course readings too -- I think you might find
that they work pretty effectively right after the Intro as a way to
hash out how youre using these terms in your paper.
Please review my comments and let me know -- always! -- if you
have any questions.
Z
6.5/10