:-o: The surprising power of emoticons (BBC)
Chris Baraniuk
It all started with an awkward moment online. In the early 1980s, computer scientist Scott Fahlman realised his words were failing him. When communicating with others on a forum, he found that it was difficult to convey that some posts were meant to be taken as a joke.
So one day, he strung together a colon, a dash and a bracket to make what is now an instantly recognisable character:
Since then, thousands of emoticons like this have emerged, conveying a diverse and complex array of emotions and concepts. And researchers are now realising that emoticons may hold a power over us that we didn’t realise – when we use them to communicate, they can transform our decisions and behaviour in unexpected ways.
To understand the scope of emoticons, you only have to look at the website curated by Vladimir Khotulev: it’s dedicated to compiling Japanese emoticons, also known as kamaoji, a breed of emoticon that is particularly diverse.
Collecting these symbols is perhaps an unusual hobby for a software developer in his mid-twenties living in Belarus – Khotulev is half a world away from the Japanese culture which fascinates him. But that’s the point: the language of emoticons articulates feelings in a universal way.
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more, including links: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141126-surprising-power-of-emoticons
~OE>:^( A man who is unhappy because there is an octopus on his head giving off smell rays
= new reply since forum marked as read
