BBC 6分钟英语 表情符号的兴起

Hello and welcome to Six Minute English, the show that brings you an interesting topic, authentic listening practice and six new items of vocabulary.

I'm Dan, and I'm Neil. Will be discussing the rise of those little graphics we call emojis and emoticons.

You know, I think emojis are a vital tool for communication.

And actually they're

not that new either. Oh, really?

Well, there's a perfect opportunity to ask this week's question When was the 1st emoticon used?

Was it A, 1606, B, 1862 or C 1982?

It must be 1982. I'll go with C we'll find out if you're right or wrong later in the program.

You know, I think we should clear one thing up before we go any further.

What's the difference between an emoticon and an emoji?

Good point. Emoticons came 1st there.

The images made using normal keys on a keyboard, usually punctuation, letters and numbers, e.g.

a colon, two dots followed by the curved line of a closed bracket.

Is a smiley face say something you use in way too many of your emails.

Well, thanks. Whereas an emoji is something completely different.

It's an actual image. It could be a simple yellow smiley face, or something like the dancing lady, or even a bowl of noodles.

Ah, yes, all those little images we have in our phones.

But you'll have to convince me why do people use them so much?

Well, let's listen to Professor Viv Evans.

He wrote a book called The Emoji Code.

They enable us to express emotion and empathy in digital communication.

Increasingly, what we're finding is that digital communication is taking over from certain aspects of face to face interaction.

In the UK today, E.G., adults spend 22 h online on average each week.

One of the reasons emerges so interesting is they really do enable us to express our emotional selves much more effectively.

OK, so he used a very useful word empathy.

It means the ability to show you understand someone else feelings.

OK, tell me more. Dan Yes, adding in a motor con can show you understand and express emotion and show empathy more clearly.

In digital communication, we lack the visual signals we have in face to face interaction.

As he says, interaction meaning when people or things communicate with each other.

We can also interact with things like machines, computers and social media.

Yes, professor Evan says 60% of information when we're talking to each other comes from non verbal cues.

Wow, that's a lot. A cue is a signal that you need to do something, e.g.

an act goes on stage after their cue.

And non verbal means without using spoken language.

So here in the studio, there are lots of other non verbal signals about how we're feeling non verbal cues, e.g.

my facial expression, my body language, the look in my eyes.

Dan, there's a glint of rage in there somewhere near.

OK, so let's apply this to digital communication.

Imagine I sent you a text saying, I hit my finger with a hammer.

How would you respond? Well, it depends did you hurt yourself badly?

If I followed it with a sad face emojy, then then I guess I'd know you hurt yourself.

Poor you. But if I followed it with a laughing emoji, the one with the tears coming out, because I'm laughing so much, then I'd probably reply saying, how stupid and clumsy you are, exactly without adding the emoji.

It's hard to know my emotional state.

The emoji is the non verbal queue, like my facial expression.

By the way, is there an emoji meaning clumsy?

Clumsy means physically awkward, someone whose clumsy falls over a lot and drops things.

Anyway, you were saying, emoticons aren't as new as I think?

Yes, I asked, when they were invented, was it A 1606, B, 1862 or C 1982?

And I said 1982. Well, in fact, a witty speech Abraham Lincoln, re printed in a newspaper as far back as 1862, included a semicolon with closed brackets, like a winking face, exactly though people think this was sadly just a typographical error, or what we normally call a typo, A typo a spelling mistake made when typing too fast or carelessly.

The official birth of emotion, the Kons, is usually given as 1982, when a US professor instructed his students to use smiley faces to indicate jokes in a digital communication.

Wow. So they're over 30 years old.

Maybe I should start using them.

Let's round up with another look at today's words.

Sure The 1st word we had was empathy.

Do you have a lot of empathy?

New? Yes. I think I'm quite good at understanding other people's feelings.

My friends tell me that anyway, it's important to empathize with your colleagues too.

That's not what I saw in your eyes.

Yes, empathy is an important part of all human interaction.

Nicely done. If two people interact, it means they communicate with each other and react to each other.

It's a pretty broad term. We could also talk about the way children interact with the Internet.

Way too much. Next up, we had non verbal meaning without spoken language.

When I 1st traveled to Poland, I used a lot of non verbal communication to get my message across hand movements, counting with fingers, things like that.

Next word, dan. Next word, uh ha.

That is my cute say the next word, which is, in fact, Q-A queue is a signal to do something.

A commander could give his officer a queue to attack, or I could give you a queue to sing a song.

No, thanks. I'll stick with the finding words.

Thank you. Like clumsy, meaning physically awkward?

I'd have to say, dan, you're a sporty guy, a talented

footballer. You're not clumsy at all.

Well, that's what I thought, until I broke my leg after a clumsy opponent ran into me.

Ouch. Finally, we had type. Oh no, hang on.

That's not right. It should say typo.

A typo is a mistake in a written document or a digital file or message.

Always check your scripts for typos before reading them.

Neil And that's the end of today's six minute English.

Please join us again soon. And we are on social media to Facebook, twitter, instagram and youtube.

See you there. Bye Bye.

扫码查看听力音频