The Future of Communication: Emoticons and Emoji You know this dilemma well: You're about to send a message via email or some form of messaging, but you're worried that the right tone won't come across. What if you're trying to be humorously sarcastic, but the recipient thinks you're being serious? Or what if you are trying to be friendly and sympathetic, but the words come across as cold and uncaring? If you were communicating in person, you could modulate the emotional tone of your message by smiling, using your voice to accent certain words or syllables, shrugging your shoulders, rolling your eyes, or otherwise sending nonverbal signals that help say what your words have trouble saying. Plus, you could monitor the recipient's response and immediately react if you see that the message didn't quite land. To fine-tune the tone of their written messages, many people resort to emoticons or emojis. Emoticons and emojis can be effective ways to minimize the limitations of a lean medium, which is why so many people now use them for personal and business communication. A smiley face can inject a touch of levity into a tense situation and a frowny face can convey sympathy for someone who has suffered a setback, for example. As useful as these visual gadgets can be, however, they do present two problems for business communicators. First, even though an increasing number of professionals seem to be using them, particularly for communication with close colleagues, many other professionals continue to view them as evidence of lazy or immature writing. Unless you know your audience well enough to use emoticons and emojis without worry, the best advice is to avoid using them -- particularly in formal and external communication. Second, emoticons and emojis can cause problems of their own when people don't agree on what they mean. If you get a message that says, "Why don't you and I get away from this stress-fest and brainstorm some solutions over coffee?" and ends with a "winkie" emoticon or emoji, what does that digital wink mean? Is the person flirting with you or just innocently suggesting that the two of you could think more clearly if you got out of the hectic office for a while? The meanings of emoticons and emojis are so problematic that they are causing confusion in legal trials, and serious criminal cases can hinge on their interpretation. Moreover, the Unicode Standard, the global reference of text and graphical symbols used in computers and digital communication, now contains more than 1,200 emojis. Ironically enough, these graphical devices created to improve written communication have become a vast and often confusing language of their own.

The Future of Communication: Emoticons and Emoji You know this dilemma well: You're about to send a message via email or some form of messaging, but you're worried that the right tone won't come across. What if you're trying to be humorously sarcastic, but the recipient thinks you're being serious? Or what if you are trying to be friendly and sympathetic, but the words come across as cold and uncaring? If you were communicating in person, you could modulate the emotional tone of your message by smiling, using your voice to accent certain words or syllables, shrugging your shoulders, rolling your eyes, or otherwise sending nonverbal signals that help say what your words have trouble saying. Plus, you could monitor the recipient's response and immediately react if you see that the message didn't quite land. To fine-tune the tone of their written messages, many people resort to emoticons or emojis. Emoticons and emojis can be effective ways to minimize the limitations of a lean medium, which is why so many people now use them for personal and business communication. A smiley face can inject a touch of levity into a tense situation and a frowny face can convey sympathy for someone who has suffered a setback, for example. As useful as these visual gadgets can be, however, they do present two problems for business communicators. First, even though an increasing number of professionals seem to be using them, particularly for communication with close colleagues, many other professionals continue to view them as evidence of lazy or immature writing. Unless you know your audience well enough to use emoticons and emojis without worry, the best advice is to avoid using them -- particularly in formal and external communication. Second, emoticons and emojis can cause problems of their own when people don't agree on what they mean. If you get a message that says, "Why don't you and I get away from this stress-fest and brainstorm some solutions over coffee?" and ends with a "winkie" emoticon or emoji, what does that digital wink mean? Is the person flirting with you or just innocently suggesting that the two of you could think more clearly if you got out of the hectic office for a while? The meanings of emoticons and emojis are so problematic that they are causing confusion in legal trials, and serious criminal cases can hinge on their interpretation. Moreover, the Unicode Standard, the global reference of text and graphical symbols used in computers and digital communication, now contains more than 1,200 emojis. Ironically enough, these graphical devices created to improve written communication have become a vast and often confusing language of their own.

Social Psychology (10th Edition)

10th Edition

ISBN:9780134641287

Author:Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers

Publisher:Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Samuel R. Sommers

Chapter1: Introducing Social Psychology

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 1RQ1

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Related questions

Question

Can you guys help me on this? Thank you!

Here is the questions:

Does the usefulness of emojis in fine-tuning the tone of business writing outweigh the perception of lazy writing and confusion over meaning?

Following debate technique:

(1) Take a side - "Yes, the usefulness of emojis in fine-tuning the tone of business writing does outweigh the perception of lazy writing and confusing over meaning" or "No, the usefulness of emojis to fine-tune the tone of business writing does not outweigh the perception of lazy writing and confusing over meaning."

(2) Give two reasons (evidence, examples) to support your stance.

(3) Tell us why this evidence matters and why this entire question matters to the workplace.

Please read the following and response to the questions above