Visual Language of Communication: Comics, Memes, and Emojis

Abstract

Emojis are rapidly becoming an integral part of our written language (or the ‘typed’ language) if they haven’t done so yet. Memes and GIFs are not far behind since their inclusion into the keypad of our smartphones. The present paper employs a linguistic approach to discuss the widespread use of memes and emojis in everyday text communication. In this paper, I have argued that despite many differences in application, comics, memes, and emojis all have a distinct similarity of being ‘visual’ in nature.I have shown with examples that instead of competing to replace each other, these verbal elements (words) and visual (images) elements complement the text together. The textual and pictorial elements of such textual-visual language make writing an even more efficient process of thought representation and a wholesome means for communication.