Facultad de Filología
A Brief Exploration on Acronyms, Emoji and Youth Abel Gordillo Navas
Sociolingüística e Historia de las Variedades del Inglés Actual Profª. Julia Fernández Cuesta Grado en Estudios Ingleses (2015-2016)
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
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2. Acronyms and Initialisms: Classic vs. Modern Approaches
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2.1. Acronym: Definition
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2.2. A Brief History of Acronyms
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2.3. A New Approach To Acronyms
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3. Emoji and A Step Forward in Digital Communications
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3.1. Emoji: Definition
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3.2. A Brief History of Emoji
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3.3. The Sentiment Problem
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4. Variables Regarding The Use Of Acronyms and Emoji
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4.1. Style
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4.2. Identity
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4.3. Gender and Age
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5. A Step Forward: A Brief Study on Acronyms and Emoji
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6. Possible Future Lines of Investigation
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7. References
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7.1. Works Cited
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7.2. Other Sources Consulted
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APPENDIX 1: Google Forms Survey
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of Results Obtained with Google Forms 42 APPENDIX 2: Some Examples of Results
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List of Figures
Figure 1. Chart results for WTF in COCA
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Figure 2. Chart results for LOL in COCA
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Figure 3. WTF results in NOW Corpus (frequency by year)
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WTF resu result ltss in NO NOW W Corpu orpuss (fre (frequ quen ency cy by count ountry ry)) Figure 4. WTF
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Figure 5. Chart results for WTF in the Spanish corpus
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Figure 6. Data obtained from EmojiLife from a user’s Twitter account
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Figure 7. Acronyms and emoji characters that could be similar in meaning 21
The academic journal Atlantis has been used in this essay as the source of refere reference nce with with regard regard to factor factorss of style, style, presen presentat tation ion and biblio bibliogra graphi phical cal entries. The guidelines can be consulted in http://www.atlantisjournal.org/old/AUTHORS/Guidelines.html Since this essay contains many web links that are not easy accessible in the printed version, it can be digitally consulted by scanning the following QR code:
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1. Introduction
The purpose of this work is to establish the basis for a future study that coul could d anal analyz yze e and and expl explor ore e the the use use of emoj emojii and and acro acrony nyms ms,, espe especi cial ally ly on younger speakers. The project is divided into six main parts: an exploration of acronyms (with a definition, a brief history of them and an explanation of the approach taken in this work); a similar section but related to emoji (also containing a defin definiti ition on and and some some hist histor ory, y, and and the the last last part part bear bearin ing g some some inte intere rest stin ing g observations of the “sentiment problem”; and the actual premise for the study. The variables that could be used are set, alongside the basis for that study, and some possible future lines of investigation, related to some extent with that work. In the last part, the works cited and consulted are included, useful for reasons of reference. Two appendices are included at the end of the project.
2. Acronyms and Initialisms: Classic vs. Modern Approaches 2.1. Acronym: Definition
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, acronym is defined thus: 1. A grou group p of init initia iall lett letter erss used used as an abbr abbrev evia iatition on for for a name name or expression, each letter or part being pronounced separately; an initialism (such as ATM, TLS). 2. A word formed from the initial letters of other words or (occas.) from the initial parts of syllables taken from other words, the whole being pronounced as a single word (such as NATO, RADA). For the purpose of this work, both definitions will be taken into account.
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2.2. A Brief History of Acronyms
Before Before dealin dealing g with with the specia speciall use of acrony acronyms ms that that Lundel Lundelll (2012) (2012) defends in her article, it might be useful to explore the extent to which acronyms have played an important role in the history of the English language. As Cannon Garland explains in “Abbreviations and Acronyms in English Word-Formation” (1989): It is well well know known n that that [acr [acron onym yms] s] go back back seve severa rall mill millen enni nia, a, with with abbreviations even occurring in Sumerian. The desire to economize is seen seen in numero numerous us Hebrew Hebrew exampl examples es like like MILH 'Mi Iolh Lnv Hshmilh (Who (Who shal shalll go up for for us to heav heaven en?) ?)'' and and Roma Roman n ones ones like like SPQR 'Senat 'Senatus us populu populusqu sque e Romanu Romanuis' is' and INRI 'Jesu 'Jesuss Nazare Nazarenus nus Rex Judaeorum.' (99) The book continues investigating the history of acronyms under these terms: “The real explosion in systematically created initialisms began with World War Two. The many new items, including informal and obscene ones like F.O. and S.O.S., prompted the U.S.” (101). Taking this into account, the
auth author or affi affirm rmss that that “[o] “[o]ve verr the the cent centur urie ies, s, the the purp purpos ose e of crea creatiting ng init initia ialilism smss also also has has chan change ged d from from the the orig origin inal al medi mediev eval al need need for for economy and efficiency (scarce paper and time)” (102), and also that “[t]he twentieth-century popularity of initialisms is demonstrated by the increasing numbers and size of dictionaries, some of which have gone into profitable later editions, not to mention the expanding number of specialized dictionaries” (104).
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2.3. A New Approach To Acronyms
In her paper “'LOL', 'OMG' and Other Acronyms and Abbreviations: A Study in the Creation of Initialisms” (2012), Ida Lundell examines a new approach to acronyms, useful for this investigation. She explains this concept in the abstract, thus: Marchand (1969) claims that abbreviations and acronyms, which are also known as ‘initialisms’, are used to create “names of new scientific discoveries, trade-names, names of organizations, new foundations or offices, but occasionally, and chiefly in American English, personal and geographical names are also coined in this way” (Marchand, 1969: 452). However, initialisms that originate from netspeak, such as ‘LOL’, are different from the initialisms Marchand (1969) describes. These initialisms are not names of organizations or scientific discoveries; rather, they describe everyday things or phases. This kind of initialism is a new phenomenon that seemingly did not exist before the Internet, and the aim of this essay is thus to examine whether Internet has given us increased opportunities for this type of word formation. (2) For the purpose of her study, Lundell created a corpus of informal English, with some interesting results, once analyzed: Ten initialisms were extracted from the corpus. These initialisms were then examined in the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The data from the COCA showed that people do form and use this kind of initialism, albeit they do it very infrequently. Furthermore, the corpus data showed that these items are used in all different genres that exist in the COCA, except for academic writing. The data found in this study indicates that people seem create a new kind of initialism, and that people therefore have new opportunities to use this kind of word
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formation. However, the data is too sparse to draw any definite conclusions from it. (2) It is this new type of initialism which would be explored in a future study based on this present project, being examples of it items such as ‘LOL’, ‘OMG’ or ‘BRB’, among others.
3. Emoji and A Step Forward in Digital Communications 3.1. Emoji : Definition
Since the word ‘emoji’ is fairly new, there is only one meaning included in the Oxford English Dictionary, and it is “[a] small digital image or icon used to express an idea, emotion, etc., in electronic communications.” A more extensive definition can be found in the paper “Sentiment of emojis”, written by Novak et al. (2015): An emoticon, such as ;-), is shorthand for a facial expression. It allows the author to express her/his feelings, moods and emotions, and augments a written message with non-verbal elements. It helps to draw the reader’s attention, and enhances and improves the understanding of the message. An emoji is a step further, developed with modern communication technologies that facilitate more expressive messages. An emoji is a graphic symbol, ideogram, that represents not only facial expressions, but also concepts and ideas, such as celebration, weather, vehicles and buildings, food and drink, animals and plants, or emotions, feelings, and activities. Emojis on smartphones, in chat, and email applications have become extremely popular worldwide. (1)
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3.2. A Brief History of Emoji
The history of emoji is fairly recent, since the uprising of these icons started in the late 20th century: The use of emoticons can be traced back to the 19th century, when they were used in casual and humorous writing. The first use of emoticons in the digital era is attributed to professor Scott Fahlman, in a message on the computer-science message board of Carnegie Mellon University, on September 19, 1982. In his message, Fahlman proposed to use :-) and :-( to distinguish jokes from more serious posts. Within a few months, the use of emoticons had spread, and the set of emoticons was extended with hugs and kisses, by using characters found on a typical keyboard. A decade later, emoticons had found their way into everyday digital communications and have now become a paralanguage of the web. The word ‘emoji’ literally means ‘picture character’ in Japanese. Emojis emerged in Japan at the end of the 20th century to facilitate digital communication. A number of Japanese carriers (Softbank, KDDI, DoCoMo) provided their own implementations, with incompatible encoding schemes. Emojis were first standardized in Unicode 6.0 —the core emoji set consisted of 722 characters. However, Apple’s support for emojis on the iPhone, in 2010, led to global popularity. An additional set of about 250 emojis was included in Unicode 7.0 in 2014. As of August 2015, Unicode 8.0 defines a list of 1281 single- or double-character emoji symbols. (Miller et al. 2015, 1-2)
