Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

etween serious versus non-serious information. A computer scientist named Scott E. Fahlman entered
the debate with the following message:
The Original Emoticons
I propose that [sic] the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that
are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:
:-(
Thus the first emoticon, a sequence of keyboard characters used to represent facial expressions or
emotions, was born. Even the universal symbol for happiness, the yellow circle with the smiling face, had
only existed since 1963 when graphic artist Harvey Ross Ball created it. The happy face was created as
a way to raise employee morale at State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, Massachusetts.
Of course, when you merge the happy face with emoticons, we eventually ended up with emojis (Figure
1.5). Of course, many people
today just take emojis for granted
without ever knowing their origin
at all.
Shared Meaning
Hopefully, in our previous
discussion about symbols,
you noticed that although the
assignment of symbols to real
things and ideas is arbitrary,
our understanding of them
exists because we agree to their
Figure 1.5 Emojis
meaning. If we were talking and I
said, “it’s time for tea,” you may think that I’m going to put on some boiling water and pull out the oolong
tea. However, if I said, “it’s time for tea” in the United Kingdom, you would assume that we were getting
ready for our evening meal. Same word, but two very different meanings depending on the culture within
which one uses the term. In the United Kingdom, high tea (or meat tea) is the evening meal. Dinner, on
the other hand, would represent the large meal of the day, which is usually eaten in the middle of the day.
Of course, in the United States, we refer to the middle of the day meal as lunch and often refer to the
evening meal as dinner (or supper).
Let’s imagine that you were recently at a party. Two of your friends had recently attended the same
9
Interpersonal Communication