My Experiment in Texting Using Only Emojis

Caroline Moss

Emoji—a small digital image or icon used to express an idea, emotion,etc. in electronic communications. Emoji are everywhere. The little illustrated characters that are on smartphone keyboards are taking over the world. There are shoes with emoji on them, pants with emoji on them, emoji stickers, emoji yoga1. emoji yoga: emoji 瑜伽，又称emoga，是由伦敦女孩Charlotte Bell创造的与emoji表情相结合的瑜伽动作。, and the list goes on and on with no sign of ending. As emoji spreads into our culture, I’ve actually heard the following question: Is emoji moving to replace communicating with the written word?

To find out, I communicated via iMessage using only emoji for five days.That meant every time someone sent me a text or I wanted to send a text, I could only use the popular tiny picture characters to respond to or start a conversation.

I wasn’t allowed to cheat by moving the conversation to Facebook or Twitter, etc., but I could send a phone emoji to indicate to the recipient of my texts that they could call me instead; I could not instigate2. instigate: 鼓动，教唆。the phone call myself. I wanted to see if it was easier or harder than I expected it to be, yes,but I also wanted to see if I could in fluence those I was conversing with to overthrow3. overthrow: 打倒，推翻。their use of text and start using emoji while talking to me.

Communicating with emoji was way more dif ficult than I expected it to be. There were people who were annoyed with me. There were people who gave up after a few back-and-forths. There were missed messages, mixed messages, and messed up plans.4. 对于我发的信息，他们有时没有注意到或者理解错误，有些计划也会因此搞砸。missed:没有注意的；mixed: 混淆的，弄错的；messed up: 搞砸的。There were people who immediately just called my phone to get the conversation moving faster. And there was my mother who doesn’t have an iPhone and texts me often.

2013年，emoji一词正式入驻牛津在线词典，人们才惊觉这小小的表情符竟能造如此声势。emoji贴纸，emoji衣服，emoji瑜伽……似乎一切和emoji挂钩的事物都变得时尚有趣起来。除此之外，emoji也给一些古灵精怪的人带来了很多新奇的体验——从前，有个人决定只吃emoji里才有的食物，然后她……从前，有对情侣整整一个月只用emoji交流，结果他们……而这次，为了探究emoji能否取代文字的地位，作者也要充当小白鼠去尝试只用emoji聊天的生活了，不知道会有什么状况等着她呢？

The first person to text me was my colleague Alyson Shontell. She knew the experiment was happening so made a large effort to stump5. stump: 把……难倒，使挫败。me with hard questions that, to be fair, no one would ever ask me via text, like“where were you born again?” She was in the room with me when she sent it, so I was able to roll my eyes at6. roll one’s eyes at:对……翻白眼。her.

Earlier in 2014,Atlanticwriter Kelsey Rexroat embarked on a week of only eating foods immortalized by emoji.7. 此前，在2014年，《大西洋月刊》作者Kelsey Rexroat用一周的时间只吃emoji上才有的食物。embark on: 开始，着手做……；immortalize:使不朽。Then there was the case of Alex Goldmark and his girlfriend Liza, who decided that for 30 days they would only use emoji when communicating via their phones. Goldmark and his girlfriend explained there was an instance where plans had to be changed last minute, but Goldmark misunderstood what Liza was trying to convey to him via emoji.

This happened to me when I was trying to explain to my friend Tom that I had booked both of our tickets for a destination wedding in several months. In turn, Tom thought I got a raise8. get a raise: 得到加薪。.

emoji瑜珈

There were very few glimmers of hope throughout this experiment,and I cherished all of them.9. 在这个试验过程中，只有极少数时刻让我看到了希望，我对此倍加珍惜。glimmer:闪光，微光。It wasn’t always terrible, for sometimes people seemed to understand what I was trying to tell them. Take my college friend Rachel, for example, who was taking a bus from Boston to visit me in New York. We communicated via text brie fly—and flawlessly10. flawlessly: 完美无瑕地。.

My experiment wasn’t as controlled as Goldmark’s experiment with his girlfriend Liza. Instead of just altering one relationship by extensively editing my means of communication with just one person, I spread the idea across my entire social circle, the trade off being that transactions of conversation were much more shallow.11. 我并非只和一个人用这种方式交流，而是把这个点子扩展到了我的整个社交圈。相比文字来说，这种交流方式要更加浅显。edit: 修改，改写；trade off: 交换（这里指用emoji表情替换文字）；transaction: 处理，执行；shallow: 浅层的，肤浅的。One thing I agreed with while listening and reading Goldmark’s findings was that he and Liza felt that emotions were easier to communicate using emoji, whereas logistics—plans,questions—were not. And unlike Rexroat’s awesome “only eating food found in emoji” experiment, I really set out to find if replacing the written word was plausible.12. set out to: 开始；plausible: 似乎可信的。

The truth? It’s probably not going to happen. Emoji is better as a form of punctuation13. punctuation: 标点符号。. It adds flair to otherwise normal, and boring statements in a way that a period,exclamation point, or question mark never could.14. 它（emoji）为那些平淡无奇的表达增添了吸引力，这是句点、感叹号或者问号永远不可能做到的。flair:〈口〉时髦，潇洒。

One of the most charming elements of emoji is that,while every emoji has a technical of ficial de finition, people use them to represent different things. Quite simply, it’s a language that’s more subjective than objective. It became very clear early on that it would never replace the written word, unless as a civilization we were able to come together and assign very speci fic meanings to each picture that could,under no circumstance,15. assign: 指定，分配；speci fic:特定的，明确的；under no circumstance: 绝不。be changed.