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Emoji Rhetorical Analysis

Decent Essays

Bourree Lam, Associate editor of a magazine called The Atlantic, and University of Chicago Grad wrote an article addressing a new form of written communication that is becoming popular at an extreme rate; Emoji. The Article’s purpose is to explain that emoji is slowly making its way to the workplace. With the innovation of electronic communication came new challenges. These challenges include conveying tone through a toneless medium like email or texting. She suggests that emoji can be useful to solve this problem. Often times when emailing or texting another person you can say something and worry that the other person may take it the wrong way or assume a negative tone. Lam argues, with many sources to back her up like a career coach who works with Millennials, a socio-linguist at the University of Pittsburgh, and A Scandinavian study on email in the workplace, that emoji is extremely useful to lighten an otherwise seemingly negative or combative message. Will Schwalbe, co-author of an email etiquette book, explains that “The biggest …show more content…

The language of the article remains impartial but does show some favor toward emoji use in the workplace. This becomes clear when she says “But why are people using emoticons or emoji in the workplace? The answer is that they’re useful.” She presents both sides of the argument, but offers her opinion that emoji should be used based on their emotional appeal. The connotation in her language is positive and seems very welcoming to the new form of written communication. It is easy to tell that her tone is supportive when she calls the use of emoji “useful” and “clarifying”. Because of the generally older demographic of The Atlantic the author seems to assume that they automatically would disagree with using emoji at work. The article was generally very straightforward, readable, and made you think for

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