Diversity or Uniformity: Existing Demands and Representation Problems in Emoji as a Visual Language

Introduction

Communication, which is at the basis of relationships between people and is necessary to learn, teach, understand, tell, influence, influence, and/or share, stems from the individual's need to address someone or something. Language, the key point of communication, is a compulsory field of compromise and a social product adopted by society. Besides, language, defined by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (2001) as a “system of signs”, is in a reciprocal relationship with culture and includes the types of traditions and customs (social norms), ways of thinking and living, especially institutions such as culture, society, and family. Visual communication, which proceeds through images and symbols, also enables the establishment of visual language as a form of expression and description.

The subject, who is the founder and reader of images in the Modern Age, has gained prominent importance, and language and representation have become integral parts of the identity approach. The interactions, relationships, and communications of identity with the self and the other have advanced at the level of language and representation. In the modern period, the subject defined the “other” from his point of view and used representations by combining and fixing complex data under a single roof. Thus, the concept of image that underlies the visual language has a structure that refers to something but is perceived in a transcendent way.

The penetration of the internet in every area, the widespread use of messaging apps and social networking sites, and the fact that the person is online in all sorts of environments have often caused the language used to be insufficient to express emotions with the digital revolution that has taken place. By allowing distinct discourses, behaviors, and roles in the identity-building process, modern communication technologies are successful in seeing, perceiving, and shaping the identities of users in different ways. More than ever, the need for simpler and quicker communication has introduced signs and symbols to frame social life, and emojis have been integrated as products of symbolic language in this process. Emojis are based on parameters that define the personality of a person, such as a gender, ethnicity, and occupation, as well as facial expressions, cultural markers, and/or categories such as food and drink, behavior, travel, locations, objects.

This research aims to explore how identity is produced through emojis in Modernist and Postmodernist processes, how it is viewed, and how it came into being. Another aspect of the debate is whether the symbolic language created and placed into circulation by new technology provides a space of freedom for individuals while at the same time providing them with a space of freedom around the identities to which they believe they belong. Another topic that contributes to the debate of how much it brings to the fore the inequalities, the fractured structure, the people who can not make their voices heard, and to what degree it can put this into circulation in digital media, is the transformation of the concept of identity, which is on the agenda again in postmodern discourse.