Language can come in various forms, as long as it depicts speech, or represents an idea. We understand the language that we inherit, and the language we inherit is being affected by the environment.  For instance, eskimos can have more than ten words to describe snow or ice, because their survival depends on it. However, people who live in urban areas such as New York, don’t necessarily depend on the condition of ice, or snow and wouldn’t need ten ways to describe it.

What interests me the most is the fact the written language started as pictographs, documenting people’s day-to-day lives. As time progressed language became more abstract and we eventually got phonetic signs. With all the “progress” we made through the years learning how to express ourselves, it feels like we are almost going backwards in time. Emojis are definitely how I would describe; modern pictographs. 

Pictograms are based on physical objects, and as language evolved it became more abstract, and ideograms emerged. Emojis are symbols that represent our feelings, ideas, and we can always group multiple of them to make up complete sentences, or describe concepts better. Pictograms were found on stone tablets and cages, where our modern ideograms, aka Emojis are found on phones and other electronic devices.

Overall I thought it was interesting how I was reading through the articles, and realized there are so many pictograms and ideograms throughout the whole article of Lupton Miller, called “Design Writing Research”. It is clever how each icon is being introduced separately to the reader, allowing them to get familiarize with the graphics and the meaning. When the symbols/ icons showed again on different pages, readers already know the meaning. I have never saw a book written this way, and incorporating design elements into the text definitely made it more appealing, interesting and fun to read. It feels like the writer kind of made his own language.