Mona Lisa's Emoji: Digital Civilization and its Discontents

Emojis are presently thus customary in digital communication that they have become part of the communicative habits of most users of social networks. Representing an attitude of hilarity towards a certain statement by ending its verbal transcription with an emoji “smiling to tears” is not the same as smiling or laughing to tears when uttering the same content as an oral statement. The major structural difference between an emoji in digital conversation and a facial expression in an oral, face-to-face dialogue comes down to what could be labeled a “semiotics of the interval.” In mainstream face-to-face conversation, the face is a fundamental interface of social interaction. It can be physiologically controlled in order to guide its communicative effect on the interlocutor; yet, the face is never an entirely semiotic surface. Moreover, whereas the face must continuously react impromptu to external solicitations, emojis are a typical expression of mastered, differed communication. They are supposed to bestow on digital dialogue an illusion of immediacy, yet they inevitably turn into devices of mediation, resulting from the structural possibility of chiseling a message before sending it out to the interlocutor. The article reflects on this intrinsic difference so as to develop a more general consideration of the cultural reasons and effects of the disappearing of the body from communication and its replacement through digital simulacra.