Gesture in the Online World

On the Internet, there is such a thing as smileys, which are just big yellow faces (generally). My sister uses the icons all the time. Instead of seeing your face, the people you talk with online through im, chat, e-mail and whatnot can see these smiley expressions.

These expression represent a whole range of emotions, from a smiling face, a surprised face, a bored face, an angry face, an embarassed face...you get the idea. Not exactly body motions, but these expressions do communicate a great deal of emotion, if shared honestly. A type of body language, if you prefer.

In the absence of smiley expressions, people use keyboard symbols like < and /, and letters as well. For example, :D, which is a combination of a colon and the capital d. It communicates the big smile perfectly. There are other forms, or expressions, like <3, or heart, etc. I realize that many people reading this will go duh, but for the uninitiated, there you go.

Also, I searched online for "im speak" and came up with a website titled "The Largest List of Text Message Shorthand (IM, SMS) and Internet Acronyms Found of the Web." Succinct enough. But it certainly is a long list. For example, there is the shorthand, W9, for "wife in room," or YBF, which means "You've Been F***ed." Since I don't im that much, I find this list fascinating and enlightening.

There must be hundreds of abbreviations and shorthands for phrases for online communication. I say this is gesture not only because it is a special form of communication developed among a particular group of people, but because, like the bird and other such body language, they are unintelligible and/or innocuous. However, the body is not used for this communication, it is the keyboard, so perhaps this is a new form of communication apart from gesture, or I'm just late to the game and it has a name but I just don't know it.