From the humble ‘msn’ emoticon back in the early 00’s to Apple’s ‘memoji’—a personalised emoticon meant to mimic the facial expressions and appearance of an individual, emoticons have been on an evolutionary journey so to speak. On the surface these cultural icons may be seen as a language or a trend. Yet, in a world where our bodies are always cultural sites of conversation tied up in the reproduction of gender, racial and social hierarchies 👨 👩 (Butler,2009), how we experience the body or choose to represent it online is linked to these societal structures. The journey of emoticons then can act as a window into embodied experience that is located and influenced by the politics of society (Bourdieu, 1977). ‘Emoji’s’ or the most recent ‘memoji’ are in a way a ‘rematerialisation’ of the body✋ (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015). If we treat the online as just as real as the offline we can see that collective representations of the body are just as crucial as the individual experience of the body.
Recent studies on the effect that emoji’s have on us have found that we use them to add meaning to our conversations and convey emotion yet, they also impose meaning on us. This can be seen in the ways they reproduce norms in society but also in the ways in which they challenge societal norms. For example, up until 2016 there were limited emoji representations of jobs for women who could either be receptionists or dancers 😬 . Yet, recent additions to the ‘emojiverse’ have sought to challenge normative gender roles for women by adding 88 new job roles for women 😁. Since 2016, new skin colour options for emoticons entered the market, highlighting the strive towards representation and the lived experience of embodied individuals in virtual spaces. Through emoji’s we learn about ourselves, the world and the visual art of communication. It may be hard to see an emoticon as a form of embodiment but if we accept Dourish’s line of reasoning: conversation, for example, is embodied not only through the speech patterns that are carried as physical disruptions in the air. It is embodied in the way that it happens in the world, ‘through the engaged participation of two equally embodied people’ 👫 (Dourish, 1999). In this way, emoji’s are embodied due to the people who use them, through the physical interaction between the individuals using them and the social web of meaning that is ascribed to them as a result of the user that selects them.
References
Bonilla and Rosa, J. (2015). #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist, 42(1), pp.4-17.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice.
Butler, J. (2009). Performativity, Precarity and Sexual Politics. AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana, 04(03), p.I-XIII.
Dourish, Paul. (1999). Embodied interaction: Exploring the foundations of a new approach to HCI.
Justine, I. (2019). New Memoji in iOS 13!. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-PTeqoTGAU&t=140s [Accessed 26 Feb. 2020].
The Digital Body 