This semester we have been researching emoji characters to see how they function in digital compositions. The inspiration was sparked upon reading, The Writing Lives of Students. In this report, we learned, “contemporary college students are highly literate, but we lack clear and comprehensive portraits of how writing works in their lives.” This led us to using an archival approach in examining public social media pages to determine the rhetorical value of social composition.
One recurring observation was, individuals tended to make their posts more affective by adding emoji. Fascinated, we set out to discern whether or not a set meaning was applied to each character. Our initial survey was taken by forty-eight participants and requested their interpretation of six commonly used emoji. We have found each image to have multiple interpretations.
Drawing from theses conclusions, we have designed and distributed a more conclusive set of surveys, which will prompt participants to elaborate on their definitions. This is so we may gain insight into the scope of symbolic interpretation used when deciphering and using these images as rhetorical devices.
With both literary analysis and academic composition, educators struggle to break down academic language and make it more approachable for their students. However, what are we really doing when we ask them to read and write through a rhetorical lens? We are asking them to create images through writing. We are asking them to attach tone to passages. We are asking them to consider all arguments surrounding a single idea.
This should be easier than ever, as students are already doing this in their social composition. They understand these concepts. Yet, we are not allowing them to use these tools. The final phase of this project is to design some exercises which could potentially implement emoji in the curriculum and serve as a bridge from social composition to academic composition.
One recurring observation was, individuals tended to make their posts more affective by adding emoji. Fascinated, we set out to discern whether or not a set meaning was applied to each character. Our initial survey was taken by forty-eight participants and requested their interpretation of six commonly used emoji. We have found each image to have multiple interpretations.
Drawing from theses conclusions, we have designed and distributed a more conclusive set of surveys, which will prompt participants to elaborate on their definitions. This is so we may gain insight into the scope of symbolic interpretation used when deciphering and using these images as rhetorical devices.
With both literary analysis and academic composition, educators struggle to break down academic language and make it more approachable for their students. However, what are we really doing when we ask them to read and write through a rhetorical lens? We are asking them to create images through writing. We are asking them to attach tone to passages. We are asking them to consider all arguments surrounding a single idea.
This should be easier than ever, as students are already doing this in their social composition. They understand these concepts. Yet, we are not allowing them to use these tools. The final phase of this project is to design some exercises which could potentially implement emoji in the curriculum and serve as a bridge from social composition to academic composition.