Re: Is it time to start using the emoji in biomedical literature?
Researchers in the language sciences often point to cave drawings when discussing the development of human communication. As we began to interpret the world through drawing, a whole new way of thinking started to emerge, and, sometimes as single images, sometimes as narratives, we started to record our thoughts and experiences in the external world.
Today, language and communication are so complex, both in the written and verbal forms, that essential terms like ‘meaning,’ ‘truth,’ and so forth remain difficult, if not impossible, to define. Twentieth-century analytic philosophers from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michael Dummett to Hilary Putnam and Paul Grice grappled with these questions for decades: what does it mean to ‘mean?’ Is meaning a kind of internal state or does it come out because of the relationships between communicators?
While many theories have, over the years, been offered, one thing, at least, is clear: the complexities of human language make up our ability to develop and express thoughts and feelings with almost incomprehensible degrees of nuance. While this is obvious in spoken language, it is true of writing as well; our greatest power, as a species, is the ability to express complex thoughts clearly. This is possible only because of the evolution of language over the past few hundred thousand or so years.
Yet increasingly, people in the public realm — and now, with O’Reilly-Shah and colleagues’ article, the world of science — argue that emoji(s) are changing language, bringing it to some kind of higher, simpler state, where feelings, and perhaps even complex thoughts, can be communicated using these symbols. Emoji, the authors write, can and should be used to communicate complex scientific and medical ideas, and may help to reduce the amount of space needed to publish these thoughts.
This position, while defended in a lighthearted and balanced way, nonetheless strikes me as misguided at best, and dangerous at worst. To the extent that we — both scientists and the public — begin to rely more heavily on emoji when communicating, it may follow that our ability to articulate thoughts using words will be diminished. The sentences we construct with words allow us to articulate abstract ideas that just, no matter what anyone who works in technology says, cannot be conveyed with images. Language evolved in part to help us convey complex thoughts; to begin to use images is to push us back towards the cave drawings we started with.
Rather than jumping on technology to help us convey thoughts concisely, why do we not, in science, focus on training people to speak and write well? Words, not pictures, are our best tools of conveying our intended meaning, and, if nothing else, O’Reilly-Shah and colleagues make it clear that our use of words, as scientists, needs to be improved. Don’t let reliance on symbols start to devolve our language.
Competing interests:
No competing interests
19 December 2018
Jonathan R Goodman
Researcher
Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London
Rapid Response:
Re: Is it time to start using the emoji in biomedical literature?
Researchers in the language sciences often point to cave drawings when discussing the development of human communication. As we began to interpret the world through drawing, a whole new way of thinking started to emerge, and, sometimes as single images, sometimes as narratives, we started to record our thoughts and experiences in the external world.
Today, language and communication are so complex, both in the written and verbal forms, that essential terms like ‘meaning,’ ‘truth,’ and so forth remain difficult, if not impossible, to define. Twentieth-century analytic philosophers from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michael Dummett to Hilary Putnam and Paul Grice grappled with these questions for decades: what does it mean to ‘mean?’ Is meaning a kind of internal state or does it come out because of the relationships between communicators?
While many theories have, over the years, been offered, one thing, at least, is clear: the complexities of human language make up our ability to develop and express thoughts and feelings with almost incomprehensible degrees of nuance. While this is obvious in spoken language, it is true of writing as well; our greatest power, as a species, is the ability to express complex thoughts clearly. This is possible only because of the evolution of language over the past few hundred thousand or so years.
Yet increasingly, people in the public realm — and now, with O’Reilly-Shah and colleagues’ article, the world of science — argue that emoji(s) are changing language, bringing it to some kind of higher, simpler state, where feelings, and perhaps even complex thoughts, can be communicated using these symbols. Emoji, the authors write, can and should be used to communicate complex scientific and medical ideas, and may help to reduce the amount of space needed to publish these thoughts.
This position, while defended in a lighthearted and balanced way, nonetheless strikes me as misguided at best, and dangerous at worst. To the extent that we — both scientists and the public — begin to rely more heavily on emoji when communicating, it may follow that our ability to articulate thoughts using words will be diminished. The sentences we construct with words allow us to articulate abstract ideas that just, no matter what anyone who works in technology says, cannot be conveyed with images. Language evolved in part to help us convey complex thoughts; to begin to use images is to push us back towards the cave drawings we started with.
Rather than jumping on technology to help us convey thoughts concisely, why do we not, in science, focus on training people to speak and write well? Words, not pictures, are our best tools of conveying our intended meaning, and, if nothing else, O’Reilly-Shah and colleagues make it clear that our use of words, as scientists, needs to be improved. Don’t let reliance on symbols start to devolve our language.
Competing interests: No competing interests