In Defence of the Smiley
30 years after it was invented, the smiley still serves a valuable purpose
and the world s with you. This was the discovery made 30 years ago this autumn by Scott Fahlman, a professor in the computer science department of Carnegie Mellon University in the US, when he proposed that humorous posts on his departmental message board be marked with a sideways smiley face to make clear that they were intended as jokes.
He has been credited with inventing the emoticon. Now, the blessed things are everywhere. The computer I’m typing this on, indeed, had to have its autocorrect nobbled to prevent it automatically turning the opening three characters of my article into a yellow smiley face.
I mention this because the other day I was asked onto the radio to talk about emoticons to mark their 30th birthday. In the course of that discussion—a rather brief discussion, I should say, and a confusing one because when nervous on live radio I will tend to yelp odd words like “disambiguate” and make myself sound like a Dalek semiotician—I said that emoticons had spread like knotweed and the best way to use them was “sparingly.”
This caused me, afterwards, to fall into an argument online with a grumpy stranger who complained the discussion was “legitimising the lazily dismissive and prescriptive language mavens of Radio 4. For shame!”
“Why use emoticons sparingly?” he asked. “Why liken them to weeds? What’s the basis for evaluating them negatively?” He added: “;o)”.
Now, I would dispute the notion that to take a view on a question of style is the same as being “prescriptive”—the linguist’s equivalent of calling someone a rotten egg. If the comma splice—“I like linguistics, it is my favourite subject”—became a standard usage I wouldn’t insist it was incorrect, but I reserve the right to find it damn ugly. Likewise, any email or tweet that feels the need to signal a wry or facetious remark with a makes my heart sink. It’s a redundancy, a clumsiness—the equivalent of the office bore booming with laughter at his own jokes.