Language must evolve, not regress to a point where even 140-character tweets seem like essays. What an emoji says to me is this: I’m too lazy to type out thank you or sorry or well done. I’m too unsure about whether I can express myself without a symbol.
They’re everywhere. The text you send about a change in plans and the selfie you receive after a 5K run. Mercifully, neither the downcast face nor the thumbs up are tagged on the email from my bank credit card. But the emojis — a dress and pair of shoes — seem inevitable with the announcement of some sales promotion.
Bankers aren’t budding Shakespeares. But for the Oxford Dictionary to defect from words to declare that the word-of-the-year is not a word at all but an emoji — the laughing face with tears to be precise — is betrayal.
Yet, I’m not a purist. I am thrilled when a new word makes it to the dictionary, particularly when that word is something no Queen who ever spoke English would recognise. As Katherine Connor Martins, an editor with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) — distinct from the Oxford Dictionary — announces the arrival of dhaba (India), mahala (‘nothing’, South Africa) and depanneur (convenience store, Canada), I send up a quiet cheer. Consider it the colonies’ revenge. Continue reading “Don’t pretend that emojis are a language; signs can’t replace words”
Language must evolve, not regress to a point where even 140-character tweets seem like essays. What an emoji says to me is this: I’m too lazy to type out thank you or sorry or well done. I’m too unsure about whether I can express myself without a symbol.
Language must evolve, not regress to a point where even 140-character tweets seem like essays. What an emoji says to me is this: I’m too lazy to type out thank you or sorry or well done. I’m too unsure about whether I can express myself without a symbol.(AFP Photo)
They’re everywhere. The text you send about a change in plans and the selfie you receive after a 5K run. Mercifully, neither the downcast face nor the thumbs up are tagged on the email from my bank credit card. But the emojis — a dress and pair of shoes — seem inevitable with the announcement of some sales promotion.
Bankers aren’t budding Shakespeares. But for the Oxford Dictionary to defect from words to declare that the word-of-the-year is not a word at all but an emoji — the laughing face with tears to be precise — is betrayal.
Yet, I’m not a purist. I am thrilled when a new word makes it to the dictionary, particularly when that word is something no Queen who ever spoke English would recognise. As Katherine Connor Martins, an editor with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) — distinct from the Oxford Dictionary — announces the arrival of dhaba (India), mahala (‘nothing’, South Africa) and depanneur (convenience store, Canada), I send up a quiet cheer. Consider it the colonies’ revenge.
Over the years, I’ve applauded our coinage of batchmates and toppers and pass-outs and multi-starrers. Arre yaar, it shows the flexibility and reach of Indian English, no?
But I draw the line at emojis. It’s not just because my keyboard lacks an emoji convertor. Chinese script, yes, Hindi obviously. But my keyboard does not understand or speak emoji, which is just fine by me.
What does that teary emoji represent anyway? Are those tears of joy, laughter or frustration? I take an online know-your-emoji test and score a measly 21%. Those two palms joined together? Prayer? High five? Plea? Take your pick. And, seriously, we have an emoji for poop?
This 1,000-year-old language we call English is a laborious work in progress. Five years after the Philological Society of London began compiling a dictionary in 1879, it had barely reached ‘ant’. By the time the 10th volume was published in 1928, it was time for revisions.
That’s how it’s been with the OED since. Four times a year, its editors update, revise and add new words that enter the language. Some words tell us about the times we live in: Staycation, outsourcing, work-life balance. Some burst upon us unexpectedly. Who would have thought a word as liltingly beautiful as ‘vuvuzela’, unknown to most until the 2010 FIFA World Cup, could produce such a discordant sound?
There was no SMS before December 2001. We knew Islamophobia and ethnic cleansing long before they made their debut in 2006 and 2002 — the year that also saw the entry of feminazi (were these the folk that gave us the mercifully short-lived womyn and herstory?). Gay has always been around, but when did it become a noun more than a mood?
Rumour has it that the still-taboo four-letter word that begins with F is nearly 500 years old; its presence apparently evident in a 1528 manuscript. Yet, it didn’t make its dictionary debut until 1972, and by 2006, the OED editors conceded that they had fallen short as they diligently added variations from f***ability to f***face.
The stringing together of 26 finite letters to create such infinite variety is one of life’s greatest beauties. How do words evolve? What do they tell us about our lives, priorities, passions and interactions? In a world where we need to reach out, where arguments and situations require nuance and layer and where communication is already a series of LOL abbreviations, do we really want further brevity?
Language must evolve, not regress to a point where even 140-character tweets seem like essays. What an emoji says to me is this: I’m too lazy to type out thank you or sorry or well done. I’m too unsure about whether I can express myself without a symbol.
Sure, emojis can be fun; they do capture a certain universally recognised shorthand. If that pumped up muscle or dancing girl works for you, so be it. Just don’t pretend that emoji is a language, that those signs can replace words. And that a laughing-crying face can ever be a ‘word’ of the year.
(The author tweets from the handle @namitabhandare. The views expressed are personal)
Perhaps I have been watching far too many intolerant nightly debates on our lack of tolerance, which tend to wear me down with their decibel level and leave me no wiser. In the words of a friend, I am suffering from intolerance fatigue.
Filmmaker Anand Patwardhan showing his national award which he is returning in protest against the growing intolerance around the nation.(Hindustan Times)
Walking along the hills near Shimla, schoolgirls in pigtails greet me with a shy ‘good morning’. In the market, the response to my rushed demand for provisions is replied by a smiling ‘namaste’. It takes a second for me to realise that I’m inhaling not just the crisp mountain air, but a quality now rare on the plains: Civility.
Perhaps I have been watching far too many intolerant nightly debates on our lack of tolerance, which tend to wear me down with their decibel level and leave me no wiser. In the words of a friend, I am suffering from intolerance fatigue.
The script is predictable. The latest instance — and there are new ones by the day — is dissected. Should Shah Rukh Khan be dispatched to Pakistan for speaking his mind? Did the crowd in Mumbai behave disgracefully by booing Anupam Kher at a debate, ironically, to discuss intolerance?
The quick answers: No and yes. But over the course of an hour, liberals will unfurl their indignation: Why is Prime Minister Narendra Modi silent? How many more awards must be returned to hammer home the point about how our pluralistic identity is under threat? Who will save the idea of India?
The Right will then pick up its equally predictable response. Why single out every idiotic statement made by some loony? The statement has been retracted. What about the intolerance of Left libs?
The Oxford English Dictionary every year compiles a list of new words that enter public discourse. Perhaps the dictionary’s editors might want to consider our very own: whataboutery.
Whataboutery is the weapon opponents unleash when questioning motives. We’ve seen it when intellectuals question intolerance. Oh, says the other side, what about 1984? What about the Emergency? Where was the protest then?
Outrage does not operate on a principle of equal opportunity. What might outrage me might leave you cold. But if we’re talking about double standards then, yes, we rose in one angry voice in December 2012 to protest a gang-rape and murder, but were silent when a four-year-old child was brutally raped in October this year. Was she not deserving of our indignation?
Take another example: Thirty years after the riots left 3,000 innocent Sikhs dead in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, we are no closer to nailing the culprits. The Congress cannot escape blame, but what steps has this government taken to grant justice to the victims?
The right to be outraged is a matter of individual conscience. Nor can one be in a state of perpetual outrage. But the fact that I did not speak up earlier does not deprive me of my right from speaking up now.
The TV debates also tell you how far both the BJP and the Congress are from reality. The BJP should have reached out to assuage the anguish of a growing list of people who are returning awards to protest an increasingly toxic environment of fear and insecurity. Instead, there was a great deal of scoffing: Who cares for these obscure writers? It’s a manufactured protest at the behest of the Congress, which is pathologically opposed to the BJP.
It was a petty, small-minded response unbecoming of true leaders. By the time the Union home minister tried to open a dialogue by asking award-returnees for suggestions, it was too late.
The Congress is also late in jumping on to the protest bandwagon. Because its own record — banning, suppression of human rights, riots — is so tarnished that it can hardly claim a higher moral ground. Its march to Rashtrapati Bhavan smacks of political opportunism.
It falls upon the party in power to restore some normalcy. Playing the victim, blaming the media and seeing plots against it won’t cut it.
The journey to tolerance begins with an ability to listen to another point of view. And sometimes it takes a trip to the hills, away from raucous, argumentative Delhi, to realise that what is at stake is something very fundamental to society: Civility. If only we’d stop shouting and start listening.
