Katzman, 'QUIRKY REBUSES: "Graphic Accents" in Telecommunication', Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture v2n04 (September 27, 1994) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/aejvc/aejvc-v2n04-katzman-quirky The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture __________________________________________________________________ ISSN 1068-5723 September 27, 1994 Volume 2 Issue 4 EJVCV2N4 KATZMAN QUIRKY REBUSES: "Graphic Accents" in Telecommunication Sandra Katzman Stanford University katzman@leland.stanford.edu Abstract Graphic accents in telecommunication could change textual meaning. What is found of innovative use of ASCII characters in textual messages, what does theory suggest, and how could further study proceed? Among hundreds of varieties, depictions of emotion states predominate. Keyboard-generated smiles and frowns ( e.g., ;-) and ;-( ) are listed in books and articles. They are used with textual links. Word-like, these quirky rebuses are nonetheless silent. I draw on theories of mass communication. Cites include the concept of symbols differing from words by DeFleur. Rafaeli provides the useful although slippery term "interactivity": pushing the possibilities of expression in a medium by the arrangement of the sequence of exchanges dependent upon one another. Beniger expands the earlier academic term "sincerity." Hypothetically, apparent casual sincerity available through graphic accents could be exploited in mass-marketing. The psychiatric para-social theory of the mid-century asked how people have the illusion of intimacy. There is an ongoing need for intimacy. An experimental study (Thompsen and Foulger, 1993) indicates that graphic accents inhibit perception of an angry message. Current collaborative research of three researchers including myself is a field experiment--one of three possible methods of investigation. History of mass communication provides an example of the innovative escape of technological limits in American newspapers. "Breaking the agate rule" is described by contemporary historian Daniel Boorstin. (The widespread Macintosh icon corporate logo presents a sort of smiley face to the user, although it is not embedded in text and therefore not within the realm of this paper.) Bolter suggests that the determining characteristic of an age occurs when an idea is metaphorically enshrined in its language and thought. I speculate that the deliberate precision of graphic accents may be a clue to the need and way for transmission of stereotyped emotion. ****************************************************** WHY WORRY? As communication researchers, why bother with the "smiley faces" that occur in telecommunication? They are the one opportunity for visual stimuli. But they are "out of bounds" to the extent that any pictures add something. Seen as a different symbol form, however, we can ask some questions: What could be going on? Why should we notice the novelty? Can we place them within interactivity? Are there unmet needs they satisfy? --paraphrase, Stanford University Communication Professor Byron Reeves, 1993 WHAT DO YOU CALL IT? Bruckman (1992) quotes a computer mediated conversation (CMC) user in a study of identity on and off the computer: To the people who know her in real life she always throws a little smile up on the end, you know--the little :) "Graphic accents" suggested in a conversation with Stanford communication doctoral student Dennis Kinsey (1993) allows a greater breadth of meaning than other names. They often express emotional cues. For instance, the so-called smiley face :-) means "joke" and asterisks *emphasize.* Sproull and Kiesler (1991) do not name the phenomenon beyond description: "A smiling face, typed rotated as :-)." Names include "paralinguistic icons," "graphical play with ASCII [American standard code for information interchange] characters" and "emoticons." The Wall Street Journal (1990) dubbed them "e-mail hieroglyphics" and included instruction: "The sales meeting is going to be Thursday? :-( (Tilt your head to the left to see the frowning face, one of the many e-mail hieroglyphics.)" HOW MANY? Lists of graphic accents are valuable commodities both inside and outside the CMC community. There are hundreds of graphic accents and many lists of them. A collection of about 250 was electronically published in 1989 by Berkeley Macintosh User's Group. A commercial book was published in 1993. In 1992, several Stanford graduate Communication students -- all novice electronic mail users-- received a list from The Netherlands. A typical ensuing interchange about the list: "Did you see the list?" "Yeah, it's neat." "Do you use them?" "Not yet, I'm going to print them first." We clutch the rattlely page. The reason of memory aid belies the simplicity of the two most common characters: smiles and frowns. A sample message resulted. "I hope you're happy :-) and not sad :-(." TEXT, LTD. Technical limitations of computer talk may encourage use. Some formatting features are unavailable (such as italics in a text editor). Alternatives such as adjectives can be inappropriate or too slow for the CMC context. A drawback is that you can't spell or grammar check for graphic accents. They are not words. Granted, composition in a text editor application doesn't offer spell/grammar checking resources anyway, but text can be imported from other programs. WHY SIDEWAYS? Only rarely do graphics accents appear other than horizontally and sideways. The alternate vertical image style, such as "contentment" <-_-> is from BIX, an online extension of BYTE computer magazine. It can be argued that "bixies" are easier to read because they are vertical. They also correspond to what they depict and they are like letters. However, the height of a single line builds in a limit. The bixie cannot be extended, as can sideways graphic accents, to show double chins, eyebrows, or hats. A vertical smile is impossible. A smile relies on the arc of a parenthesis. Fortuitously and dramatically, that punctuation symbol is a pair of facing images. HOW DOES IT WORK? The notation connotes movement. The crude lines of the tiny faces form visual congruence with words: read the words, then see the picture. Also, they are the same size as the words. The pictorial is not arbitrary. Graphic accents are used in textual messages along with words. Are they more than exclamation marks and less than words? The intermediate status would demote them from DeFleur's (1970) definition of a symbol: "We may designate a sign or gesture that is both arbitrary and conventional in the sense outlined above as a symbol." Words are usually both arbitrary and conventional, except in the case of onomonopoeta: words that sound like what they mean, like "whoosh." Graphic accents operate like quirky rebuses, although they are not meant to be pronounced. (What would you say for smile :-)? "Colon, dash, close parens.") The verbal mesh shields people who use graphic accents from the cocktail party condescension of researchers warned of by Rafaeli (1985) in regard to people who interact with media--"eccentrics and gladiators." A THEORETICAL, NON-RHETORICAL QUESTION: WHY USE THEM? There are simple arguments from naive realism. Proponents say target argot is used because of impatience, a need for clarity of expression, and for the joy of folk vernacular. Critics say pictorial telecommunication slang results from lingual laziness or ignorance. Popular writer Howard Rheingold (1993) told me: "I use smileys to make sure people know I am being ironic and not nasty, especially in online groups that are unfamiliar to me." International marks occur as well as idiosyncratic (B-Mug describes one for Fidel Castro). Collections exist, and are constantly modified online. Dirty jokes as well as secret symbols probably exist. However, the theoretical question is difficult to grasp; little research has been done. Diacritically formed facials shape the textual. Sincere (Beniger, 1987) meaning can be precise in simplicity that seems to parody intelligence. The receiver of a message can be fooled due to his need for belief in its sincerity; the need is met by a limited and personable effect. A 1946 war bonds drive study quoted by Beniger found, surprisingly to the researcher, that listeners got this gratification of having received a sincere message from a mass radio campaign. Sproull and Kiesler remark about the graphic accents' limitation: "Although such cues weakly signal mood, they are flat and stereotypes. The boss's smiling face looks no different from the secretary's. Mild amusement looks no different from hilarity." The graphics seem to link sentience (feeling) and precision. The distance of the written word can be reclaimed. As described in para-social theory, fake closeness of personal involvement can be substituted when a person receives mass communication. Rafaeli accounts the psychological effect (PSI) "psychological illusion." (1985). He credits previous researchers (Kiesler, Seigal & McGuire; 1984) with first analyzing the need to overcome computed distance: "They say that because of the qualities that typify a computer-mediated communication setting (most of which can be related to interactivity) there is at least a potential of depersonalization and social anonymity." Telepresence is "the extent to which one feels present in the mediated environment rather than in the physical environment." (Steuer 1992). A person can emit symbols that replace the loss of face-to-face visual and sonic inference. Ninety-three percent of the interpretive cues are tone of voice and facial expression [Mehrabian 1971 quoted in Sproull & Kiesler: p. 40]. Kiesler et al predict reaction to meet the need displaced by computer with "stronger and more uninhibited text." A reported phenomenon known as "flaming" is the hurling of epithets. Flaming is sometimes announced by "FLAMEON" and sometimes controlled by a keyboard command that encodes offensive text. The common encryption command itself can be a curse: rot13. Flames can be moderated by graphic accents (Thompsen and Foulger). Interactivity is "subjective and continuous" according to Rafaeli, who defines it as the degree to which a given series of exchanges relates to the degree to which previous exchanges referred to earlier transmissions (1985). The graphic accent placed within interactivity means: if you were to quote or recall a conversation, would you need to include the graphic accent? To answer the question, one might use the term "psychologically active" (Rafaeli). When not necessary for the intent, the graphic accent is an embroidery or a signature filigree. The pace induced by the graphic accent read with the content message of the CMC is a punctuation and like a rest in music. The pace invokes a nuanced reading -a virtual emotive reality. The graphic accent may be like the Homeric cadence of rhythm and rhyme and placement of motifs to aid story- telling. Ong (1982) makes the following point: "Contrasts between electronic media and print have sensitized us to the earlier contrast between writing and orality." To what may we in the future contrast electronic discussions? McLuhan suggests that different cultures react to media new to them depending on their exposure to previous media. Example: cultures without writing are not threatened by radio and TV. A camel-riding sheik carries and listens to a radio. We with CMC so far seem to be threatened by the phenomenon, isolating physical community from virtual community. However, two points suggest an upcoming change in this threatening aspect. First, the CMC community is inhabited by "young jinn" (Rheingold. H., 1992). To me, this means that the technology is relatively new in human generations; the people using the technology are therefore also new to it; and the ways the technology is used are still rapidly evolving and may suddenly change due to discovery, improvement, or different population of users. Ogburn (1957) discusses the variety of complex interactions seen after the fact that falsify the conclusion that "technology causes social change." Secondly, CMC textual elements' decisive factors seem controlled by the three limited distinct access groups: military, research, students. The gimmicks --such as graphic accents--employed by some of these users are attributed to the groups of users. Rafaeli (1985) says that in order to generalize, the sociability ascribed to hackers must be attributed to computers. So what? The isolation of CMC users will probably not endure. LITERATURE REVIEW French psychologist P. Kossanyi studied the comprehension of words and pictograms among illiterate adult males (1988). An article titled "Pictorial communication of abstract verbs in relation to human computer interaction" (British Journal of Psychology, 1987) by University of Wales Yvonne Rogers was based on research that asked college students to make up icons for the active verbs used at the terminal display. (These descriptions are based solely on abstracts.) Published lists of graphic accents begin with smiles. Sproull and Kiesler do not list further examples. Variety runs rapidly to obscurity. Thompsen and Foulger fashioned a "model flame" to test in the words of their abstract "the nature of flaming (hostile verbal behavior) in electronic mail by exploring the effects of pictographs and quoting on the perception of flaming." Thompsen observed to me in an informal discussion (1993): "emoticons [graphic accents] in mildly flaming messages reduced perceptions of flaming, but emoticons in severely flaming messages increased perceptions of flaming." THE RANGE OF GRAPHIC ACCENTS There is cult use and the frivolous invention. For example, three pages of graphic accents carries a definition for each, telling exactly how drunk is the person depicted with ampersands for eyes. I predict that all may lead finally to only the two basic graphic accents. The select few who have had opportunity to invent graphic accents may have exploited the possibilities. Graphic accents are used by some people some of the time; and only a few regularly appear. At least one Ph.D. dissertation is being written on graphic accents from an ethnographic point of view: who uses what graphic accents. It would be interesting if the smiley/frown faces equated across groups as the most common symbols. I wonder whether anger will have a graphic accent. A collaborator on further research, Penkoff, supplies the example of anger's graphic accent as >:-). Most of the work seems to have focused on "a literary analysis of the difference between orality and literacy" (personal communication, Rafaeli, 1993). The bold inventive use of available typeface has a precedent in communication technology. During the 19th century, advertisers in American newspapers extended the possibilities of expression designated by publishers. They repeated letters and created acrostics. The results exceeded the limiting stricture of the small type size then allowed by newspaper publishers. The contemporary historian Boorstin (1973) terms this "breaking the agate rule." The agate rule had restricted the illustrations in advertising. Agate type was neat, businesslike and maximized the number of lines of copy on a page. Looking to the precision of computer language, Bolter (1984) writes of words and symbols in the domain of the logician: "Now, when the computer puts them in motion for him, there is no possibility of resonance or analogy interfering with the rules of logic. [Computer logic, through each new program,] is a further conquest for the logical view of language." FUTURE WORK What difference do graphic accents make in the perception of text? Graphic accents could be approached passively because they are neither difficult nor rare to observe. Understanding graphic accents would require a controlled observation. Three approaches: 1. exploratory--ask people to create symbols for expressions; 2. catalogue--perform a content analysis on existing graphic accents; 3. experiment--present same words with different accents. The problem would be violation of the interactive nature of the CMC situation. There are many possible units of observation: individuals, groups, offices, CMC subscribers, and large organizations. Future research may consider correlations of graphic accent use to thread length, density, interactivity, and pace [conversation, Rafaeli, 1993]. I plan to relate graphic accents to gender, flaming, humor, and signature. This collaborative work will be based on ProjectH, a quantitative study of computer mediated discussions coordinated by Rafaeli and Fay Sudweeks (doctoral candidate in the Design Computing Unit at the University of Sydney, Australia). University of Southern California doctoral candidate in Communication ProjectH participant Diane Penkoff and I are working together. The data are the product of content analysis. Also, a field experiment is currently undertaken collaboratively by myself, Penkoff, and Robert Colman, professor of social science and psychology at The Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg (USA) holding a doctorate in social psychology. Three conditions of the same several statements will be randomly assigned to CMC discussion group members. Conditions are no graphic accents, and two condtions with contrasting variations of graphic accents. The study will examine the impact of graphic accents on the perceived intensity, likability, and emotional content of statements made via CMC. Bibliography Beniger, James R. (1987) Mass media and the growth of pseudo-community. Communications Research, 14, 3, pp. 352-371. Bolter, David. J. (1984) Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age . The University of Northern Carolina Press: Chapel Hill Boorstin, Daniel J. (1973) The Americans: the democratic experience Random House: New York pp. 137 ff Bruckman, Amy S. (1992) Identity workshop: Emergent social and psychological phenomena in text based virtual reality. Unpublished manuscript. MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA. DeFleur, M.L. (1970) Elementary Characteristics of the Communication Act. (Chapter 5) Theories of Mass Communication. 2nd Edition. New York: David McKay. p. 87 Kossanyi, P. (1988) Revue de Psychologie Appliquee McLuhan, Marshall. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill. Ogburn, William F. (1957) How technology causes social change. In A. Allen et. al., (Eds.), Technology And Social Change. pp. 12-26. Ong, Walter J. (1982) Orality and Literacy, The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Methuen. Rafaeli, S. (1985; unpublished Stanford University Ph.D. Thesis) Interacting with Media: Para-Social Interaction and Real Interaction. Rheingold, H. (1991) Virtual reality. Chapter 1, pp. 13-67. New York: Summit Books. Sproull, L. & Kiesler, S. (1991) Connections: New Ways Of Working In The Networked Organization. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Steuer, J. (1992) Defining virtual reality: Dimensions determining telepresence. Journal of Communication, 42, 4. pp. 73-93. Thompsen, P.A. and Foulger, D.A. 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