I live in an agricultural city where majority of families possess vineyards and produce homemade vine. I draw 3 emojis; a red tractor, a typical look of a vineyard worker, and a bowl full of grapes and other fruits.

These 3 emojis most clearly represent the city in the clearest visual form. I first sent them to my sister and a friend, explaining them the purpose of the homework assignment. Their responses were as followed:

I was shocked by my sister’s response; she interpreted only one of the emojis – the stereotypical look of a worker – saying this does not look to her as a worker, but rather the look one makes when they are forced to reply “YES” even though they want to say “NO” in specific situations. I closely looked at the face afterwards and realized it can be interpreted that way too. This is related to our class discussion from last week on how people can have different intentions for sending a particular emoji and how the receivers are capable of interpreting it in a completely different way.

However, I got an interesting response from one of my friends, Iva, who decided to respond using a mix of text and emojis. Iva understood the original idea of what my 3 emojis represent. In fact, she described the meaning of my emojis, as opposed to how my sister reacted to them. These two responses are one small proof for us to understand that emoji language can have multiple meanings and be interpreted differently depending on the situation.

After I had gotten two reactions on the original version, I decided to send the emojis to my parents with a different emoji for the stereotypical look of a worker – I made it funnier this time:

Here are my parents’ responses:

I only asked them if they can associate the emojis with anything, not explaining the purpose of the exercise and the connection of the emojis to home. Both my parents are not a very tech-oriented people and they do not use emojis frequently. My mom immediately got the point of the sequence, saying “I can associate this with home; the tractor, the grapes – as if this is a representation of our city. It is represented in an interesting way.” My dad first asked what the picture was about (the emojis), and then I told him it is a visual representation of something we think or the way in which we express emotions. Then he replied “aaaaa” – as if he got it, saying “this represents our city of Kavadrci – that is a typical worker with a cigarette and a hat, the grapes and the tractor.” I was quite surprised to see how people who have not grown up in the decades of technology expansion and dependence can easier understand emoji language. It reminded me of the time I was a kid in primary school and used creativity to visually represent my ideas (similar to what Iva said in her response); comparing my experience to the one of today’s generations, I can argue that they lack creativity for expressing ideas in a visual form because they are restricted to using emojis available to them – this is mainly due to the fact that kids nowadays depend on using technology both in and out of school.