The smiley turns 40 and hasn’t aged a bit. It is omnipresent in digital exchanges: in videoconferences, emails or text messages. In four decades, emojis have transformed the way we communicate.
If the inventor of the smiley was far from suspecting that he would be at the origin of a universal language, the smiley has indeed become essential in 40 years of existence. It leaves no one indifferent, between convinced followers and hostile refractory, it is impossible to escape the smiley mania.
In September 1982, Scott Fahlman, an American computer science professor offered his students a code to mark the second degree in messages. Two dots, a dash and a parenthesis: the smiley was born and in its wake the emojis.
Emojis for positive discussions
Today, there are more than 3600 emojis to express emotions from a distance. A real gold mine for linguists like Aris Xanthos who works at the University of Lausanne.
The specialist is in the process of collecting as many messages exchanged on whatsapp in Switzerland as possible to understand the role of emojis in digital exchanges.
“It seems that positive facial expressions are very frequent and the same for hearts. This indicates that one of the main functions is to give a positive atmosphere to the messages sent and to replace quick replies like thank you or ok”, analyzes t -he.
Fanny Moille/aps