What happens when standard emojis no longer suffice?
By: Gin Quesada Lara
Course: Language and Digital Media (Ling 3800)
Advisor: Prof. Kira Hall
LURA 2020
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This video essay, which I developed for Prof. Hall鈥檚 course on 鈥淟anguage and Digital Media,鈥� draws from recent work in linguistic anthropology and digital media studies to analyze the role played by customizable emojis on Discord, a text and voice chatting platform used mainly by gamers. Through the affordance of customizable emojis, Discord encourages its users to build a community within their servers. Many of the emojis that are common to find in these groups include remediations of a particular video game, television show, or other media. Such recontextualizations can generally only be understood if participants share the same background information鈥攖hat is, if they share a matching communicative repertoire (Rymes 2012).听
While standard emojis suffice for many digital users, Discord users go beyond the norm by creating unique ways of expressing their participation in a different kind of internet culture (McCulloch 2019). In the video essay, I explore how the customizable emojis afforded by Discord promote feelings of comfort and belonging by allowing for fuller self-expression. The study focuses on contributions made by four friends on a server within the platform devoted to everyday discussion. In one way, the creation and circulation of emojis enable this group of friends to put their inside jokes into visual form, so that they can always have access to them. Most significantly, these original emojis enable this friendship network, many of whom are nonbinary or transgender, to construct a foundation of something close to a family, a safe space for people who might feel like outsiders in other environments
Gin Quesada Lara
Quesada Lara is an undergraduate student majoring in Asian Studies and Linguistics. Their current goal is to teach English abroad after graduating, though outside of class, they enjoy hobbies such as drawing, listening to music, learning new languages, and spending time with their beloved cat, Coco.