Emojis are Stage Directions

 McCulloch makes the point in the fifth chapter of her book that the combination of gestures and words are necessary for communication. Because of this concept, it is not ideal to have full conversations in only emojis or even to have in-person conversations without gestures in addition to spoken words. McCulloch even brings up a related point by asking “How many of us have struggled through reading Shakespeare as a disembodied script in school, only to see him come to life in a well-acted production?” (p. 192). This point suggests that sometimes written texts even require a reenactment of the words to full grasp the intent of the work. Her example for this was Shakespeare, but I propose that reading poetry requires this kind of action/word combo to fully comprehend it as well.

I took a whole class last semester that followed the concept that to fully grasp the meaning behind a play, there needs to be less textual analysis and more emphasis on the performance of that piece of work (the class was one based in Shakespeare’s works). However, poetry operates in a similar way, especially that of the ancient variety. Forms of poetry like the Epic and Lyric poems were originally created to be performed (either spoken aloud or sung). To get the full experience of the poem, they need to be read aloud, where one could say them as well as accompany it with their body movements. Therefore, it can be surmised that emojis in writing are the digital equivalent of a read aloud of a poem or a performance of Shakespeare. Emojis in modern day texts are act in a very similar way to stage directions do in a play for the readers of a text, or asides that happen so often in poetry. They tell their audience how to read the message, in the same way a director tells their actors how to receive or react a line from another character.

Works Cited: McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet: Understanding the new rules of language. Riverhead Books, 2019.