Cultural Anthropology: Analyzing Text Codes in Digital Communication

This essay examines the role of text message codes and emojis in digital communication from a cultural anthropology perspective. It argues that while emojis aim to enhance communication, they often lead to misunderstandings due to varying interpretations. The author recounts a personal experience where an emoji caused confusion with a friend, highlighting the potential for miscommunication. The essay suggests the need for more precise emojis to represent specific emotions, such as true friendship. Ultimately, it concludes that the use of texting codes like 'LOL' and emojis can negatively impact communication clarity, causing confusion and misinterpretations in digital interactions. Desklib offers a wealth of similar solved assignments for students.

Cultural Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology
Text messages codes and digital communication
It is true that much of the communication is non-verbal and nowadays the majority of the
individuals are using the emojis at the time of mailing or texting. The use of Emoji can be one of
the biggest communication breakthroughs that create confusion among the people (Suresh,
2018). Therefore, it can be stated that text message codes such as LOL (Laugh out loud) cannot
be much effective in digital communication at the time of e-mailing and texting.
It is because the communication done through emails can be professional and to use Emojies at
the time of texting can create complexity for the other person to understand the exact or accurate
information. The one symbol such as LOL indicates many messages which can sometimes create
confusion in the mind of the second person. It can be stated that the second person can get
confused that what exactly the first person wants to say. Such as the message conveyed by the
individual with the use of the Emoji can depict as a smiling face (crying tear of joy) but on the
other hand, it can also be considered as uncontrollable laughter, so it creates confusion at the
time of texting (An et al., 2018).
Yes, there are many cases when the digital messages have been misunderstood. One of the
incidents that can be explained is related to the emotions used at the time of communicating
through texts on the digital platform (Seyednezhad and Menezes, 2017). The best friend
informed me about her marriage with the man he wanted to get married. At that time it was a
surprise for me as he suddenly informed about this news, so at that time I used dizzy emoji with
the crossed eye. This has led to confusion and created misunderstanding between us. She asked
me that you are happy or not of the news given by me, as according to her the use of Dizzy emoji
with the crossed eyes is often used to me “Dead" But according to me it can also represent the
symbol of showing surprise. So, this has created confusion between us and due to the use of
emoji the flow of communication was affected. By considering this incident, I think that the root
cause of miscommunication was the use of dizzy emoji. So, when the confusion enhanced and
we were not able to clarify our thoughts through digital communication, the best solution at that
time was to call her, which was done by me. The phone call was the best solution considered to
clarify the views and opinions with respect to the good news given by my friend.
Yes, to represent the emotion of true friendship, there should be the emoji of it for the users. The
emoji of two girls with holding hand is present but it again conveys the wrong information to the
2

Cultural Anthropology
second person. So, the emoji of true friendship should be made in which there should be two
images of the girls holding the hands with the tag “friends forever". It will be one of the best
emoji that should be generated so that it could be easy for friends to convey the message of their
bond and love with each other. This emoji can help the people in making good friends at the time
of communicating through a digital platform. Therefore, it can be stated that the use of text
message codes such as (LOL) has affected the flow of communication. With the use of the
Emoji, the messages can be depicted in the other sense which generates confusion and
misunderstandings between the people (Marengo, Giannotta and Settanni, 2017).
3

Cultural Anthropology
References
An, J., Li, T., Teng, Y. and Zhang, P., 2018, March. Factors Influencing Emoji Usage in
Smartphone Mediated Communications. In International Conference on Information(pp. 423-
428). Springer, Cham.
Marengo, D., Giannotta, F. and Settanni, M., 2017. Assessing personality using emoji: An
exploratory study. Personality and Individual Differences, 112, pp.74-78.
Seyednezhad, S.M. and Menezes, R., 2017, March. Understanding subject-based emoji usage
using network science. In International Workshop on Complex Networks (pp. 151-159).
Springer, Cham.
Suresh, S., 2018. The influence of Emoji on Communication using Social Media-A Quantitative
Study among College Students of Mysuru. Research Journal of Humanities and Social
Sciences, 9(1), pp.158-162.
4