The written word, as we all know, is a wonderful thing. As
it has done over the centuries, it constantly shapes and remoulds itself to
suit our contemporary needs. What fascinates me most of all about text
communication is the ingenious ways in which we bend it so that it includes the
very non-verbal information it’s supposed to lack.
Perhaps the most obvious and well-known way of doing this shorthand
today is through the use of smileys. Those cute little sideways faces are an
easy way of showing happiness, amusement, cheekiness and sarcasm, although
technically they’re not as such an employment of the written word (they’ve
elbowed their way in). Of course, smileys exist for negative emotions also; but
the thing with negative smileys is they’re not quite really, well, negative
enough. The very word, ‘smiley’, after all, hardly sits with any attempt to
express genuine anger or despair; whether it’s a sad-faced open bracket you’re
using or a thin-lipped lower-case l, negative smileys are still just too cute
and clever to be taken all that seriously. Using them to communicate genuine
states of displeasure is a bit like announcing you’ve been made redundant through
an arrangement of alphabet noodles. For all their valiant efforts, they’re
ultimately best suited to expressing the milder side of negativity, such as
inconvenience or a smattering of frustration.
“That book I ordered by Huckleberry Hax still hasn’t arrived
yet :(”. That sort of thing.
yet :(”. That sort of thing.
