There are many people who do not have enough command of their own native language to avoid ambiguity. Sometimes I find this very frustrating, but for the most part they seem happy to misunderstand and be misunderstood, so I try my best to let it go and move on.
After awhile, students appreciate the way programming language interpreters immediately and decisively raise errors on even the simplest typos and syntax errors.
And this isn't even getting into the politics that govern which expressions merit inclusion: https://www.wired.com/2016/08/apples-new-squirt-gun-emoji-hi...
Sometimes I want to write an essay, other times I just want to text a poop emoji+sad face to a friend because he's being a shithead.
They can both exist happily in the same world.
Excerpts: http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/always-pioneer-artist-xu-bi...
I've noticed this in app stores recently. The vast majority of games have these highly detailed, action oriented icons. It's impossible to pick one out from the other. They all look like they've been made by the same company.
Just because we have high-resolution displays, doesn't mean we have to use all of those pixels.
In “General Semantics,” David Lewis wrote
I distinguish two topics: first, the description of possible languages or grammars as abstract semantic systems whereby symbols are associated with aspects of the world; and, second, the description of the psychological and sociological facts whereby a particular one of these abstract semantic systems is the one used by a person or population. Only confusion comes of mixing these two topics.
https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-m...
Many of the really common emojis have very different emotional connotations on different devices. For example "Grinning Face with Smiling Eyes" is viewed much more negatively by Apple users -- probably because the face looks like its grimacing, rather than grinning.
But as Emojipedia points out, the Unicode definition is "person with folded hands". As a Westerner, I'm inclined to associate this with "prayer". But since we have the Japanese to largely thank for emoji in the first place, shouldn't this emoji be seen as "please" or "thank you"?
http://emojipedia.org/person-with-folded-hands/
And if you look at that Emojipedia entry, you start to appreciate the cluaterfuck of things lost in translation. Not only is the gesture of folded hands of varied meanings across cultures, but each software vendor adds their own interpretation.
Compare Samsung's rendering:
http://emojipedia-us.s3.amazonaws.com/cache/f7/f4/f7f45466d6...
With HTCs: http://emojipedia-us.s3.amazonaws.com/cache/97/d6/97d6ea79e4...
Admittedly, emojis are more immediately expressive than, say, learning a whole other written language. But the amount of ambiguity and confusion ultimately remains the same IMO