The thumbs up emoji is just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe you’ve made a joke on a group and someone reacts with an emoji shedding copious amount of tears, or worse, a skull, and you wonder – was it really that bad? Well, it definitely wasn’t. In fact, if it came from Gen Z, they are either ‘dying’ of laughter (skull emoji) or laughing so hard, they have tears in their eyes (the crying one).
With World Emoji Day having been marked on July 17 and more of us conducting our day to day business through texts, emojis have become an important part of communication – a language of their own with literal and implied meanings changing according to context. It’s no wonder that there is a communication gap between Gen Z and others. Chinmay Pandharipande, a 27-year-old PhD student who used to teach UG students until recently, shares one such instance, saying, “I use the thumbs up emoji regularly as an affirmative, but a lot of my younger colleagues and students see it as sarcastically saying yes, or trying to be passive aggressive. I remember, once, students came to me asking, ‘Sir, are you okay?’ or ‘Did we do something wrong?’”
Samiksha M, 23, an engineering student explains a crucial difference in how millennials and older look at emojis compared to Gen Z. “They see what an emoji stands for – a smiley face emoji is smiling, a dancing emoji is dancing, a skull emoji is literal death – but we see the emotion or vibe of the picture and use it accordingly,” she says, adding, “When I use the standing man emoji, which seems to confuse many older people, I’m using it to respond to someone and say, ‘I’m awkwardly looking at you because of what you said.’”
While millennials and older have stuck to using emojis as embellishment at the end of their sentences, Pandharipande notes that Gen Z uses them to ‘convey feelings that maybe text cannot.’ He explains, “When someone in a group says they have gossip. A lot of Gen Z would put the side eye emoji – that also conveys what needs to be conveyed.”
According to linguist Dr Reshma Jacob, assistant professor, department of English, Christ University, emojis have evolved from just being used to indicate tone to also signalling whether or not one belongs to a particular group, a common feature in languages. She says, “It is also about formation of an identity and a sense of belongingness. As in any language-speaking community – we want to communicate the same thing but choose different words based on social or cultural factors (gender, caste, age, race or ethnicity). Fluent speakers understand the nuances, otherwise, you feel something is odd, but are not able to put your finger on that difference.”
A recent survey by Atlassian, in collaboration with YouGov which surveyed 10,000 knowledge workers from the USA, Australia, France, Germany and India, found that 88 per cent of Gen Z felt emojis enhance workplace communication but only 49 per cent of Gen X and Boomers did. How are millennials and Gen Z navigating this gap? Actor-director Samragni Rajan, 33, uses clearly written texts with emojis to soften the tone, after realising that some interpret a lack of emojis as harsh. “Emojis are more of a personal conversation thing and I use it rarely at work because I already take great pains to make sure I’m textually clear. When I do, I use the smiley with the colon and brackets because sometimes, people are like, “Oh my god, I asked her a question, and she replied [without emojis]. When I realised there are some people who tend to think that way, I started adding the smiley.” For Samiksha, also a corporate intern, emojis are common in casual conversations. “I avoid emojis when I want something to be taken seriously.” Advising zoomers to read the recipient before pulling out the emojis, Pandharipande adds, “Gen Z can change the workplace a bit, but they should tone it down if they’re dealing with a hard nut, conservative boss, who might misconstrue it for immaturity.”