We have asked a few people some questions about the topic we are approaching. Two teenagers under 18 years old, two adults between the age of 40 and 50 years old and two older people that are 60-70 years old answered our questions. This is not a study, our group just decided to ask regular people from our lives about this to understand how this type of language is seen by them and how it affects their everyday life.

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   First question: Do you think that emojis/GIFs/memes can replace normal language?

   Second question: How often do you use emojis and with whom?
   Third question: Do you think that emojis help you communicate and show emotions? How?

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   Under 18 years old:
1st: I don't think that virtual language has the ability to replace normal language because, even though we use emojis, GIFs and memes on our conversations, it can’t express the meaning of words or phrases such as writing.
2nd: Very rarely, I only use emojis when I talk to family.
3rd: Yes, I do, for example when someone sends the crying emoji I can easily understand that that person is sad.

   

1st: Yes, I think that virtual language can replace normal language.
2nd: I use emojis only with friends.
3rd: Yes, the fact that there is a little face expressing what I am feeling helps me a lot communicating.

   

   40-50 years old:

1st: Yes, a little bit because we are able to replace a word like laughter with an emoji laughing.
2nd: I use emojis on a daily basis with friends and family in exchange for more informal messages.
3rd: Yes, because instead of writing what I am feeling an emoji can easily summarize it.

   

1st: I think that virtual language is already replacing normal language. The image we send is easily interpreted by other people and easily replace the idea or emotion we want to express.
2nd: I use emojis daily with friends and coworkers.
3rd: People can easily understand what I am feeling by the emoji I send them.

 

   When asking this questions to older people (60-70 years old) they didn’t knew what we were talking about. They are not very familiar with the virtual language nor with the Internet itself. Of course there are exceptions but the people we asked knew nothing about the topic.

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   Even though this is a very recent matter it affects the everyday lives of many people around us. Virtual language has become a unanimous thing in our modern world and there’s no way younger generations can avoid it. As you can see from the answers we received a lot of different opinions on the topic and that is what it is, we wanted to share opinions from regular people that we are in touch with everyday.

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By: Francisca Gouveia