emoticons

[Bob Fitzke]

I suggest the "smiley face" may have crossed the line.

Bob

Drew Danielson wrote:
>
> "Sonja L. Lanehart" wrote:
> >
> > I don't know if this issue has been raised on the ADS list before,
> > but I had a question from one of my graduate students in the History
> > of the English language class. He wanted to know if emoticons (e.g.,
> > :) or ;) or :( etc.) could be viewed as a change to the graphic
> > system of English. I wasn't so sure about that since they seem to
> > function on a couple of different levels when assessing meaning and
> > their physical existence. Any thoughts or ideas about where these fit
> > in the history of the English language?     --Sonja
>
> I wrote about this in a term paper for a discourse analysis class last
> semester (well, more broadly about a variety of genre-defining features
> from samples of synchronous and asynchronous CMC, but emoticons were
> part of it).  I think that at this point in time they are
> genre-specific, and only appear outside of text-based CMC in writing
> that refers to or imitates CMC (I have seen a few print and TV ads that
> uses them, but it's obvious from context they are meant to imitate
> text-based CMC).  They are definitely a novel orthographic feature, but
> IMH(student)O they barely exist outside of the genre that they
> originated in.  I don't see them as representing a wholesale change in
> orthography; they are still pretty much a genre-specific feature.
>
> Also, they are not variety-specific - "computer talkers" use them
> whether their writing in English or another language.