Emoji terminology

Digital Connection, Digital Era

The modern age has brought with it many inventions in technology. The creation of emojis is one innovation which includes remained a good fixture inside the use of language in the digital arena as its introduction inside the 1990s (Alshenqeeti). Indeed, it could also be declared that the use of emojis has become so widespread that in theory, complete (digital) conversations could be organised using only these digital pictograms. Interestingly, emojis carry a large number of features of modern day language and often seem to maintain universal which means. If this is the situation, perhaps emojis could then be considered being a complete vocabulary on their own. Yet , it is much more likely that they are an effective way of supporting the otherwise somewhat impassive, toneless dialect used on social websites and messaging platforms although lack a few of the key features required to make them an actual vocabulary.

There are many ways in which emojis help to enhance or support language. Primarily, they increase the emotion getting conveyed by the writer in times where the audience otherwise does not have other cues (visual or auditory) to connect with the writer’s meaning. For instance , one could use the “tears of laughter” emoji after composing “this was so funny! ” in reacting to a funny episode to convey that he/she identified it really funny. In this instance, the reader will not mistake that for whining or paradox. However , if the writer was being sarcastic, he could perhaps include the “eye-roll” emoji or “smirking face” emoji to share that he is being sarcastic. In some instances, the writer need not even use virtually any words to convey meaning. Emojis such as the “Christmas tree” emoji and the “gift” emoji could possibly be used together to convey thinking about “Christmas present” or a mix of the “walking man” emoji and the “hospital” emoji could be used to imply “going towards the hospital”. Therefore , it is obvious that emojis could be utilized for the purpose of conveying short communications as well as for supporting the language.

An interesting emoji to analyze in this respect is the “eggplant” emoji which can be simply a magenta vegetable. Yet , given their phallic form and the widespread use of internet dating apps including Tinder, Grindr or Bumble, it seems to have taken on the new meaning. In fact , the American Dialect Society has even known as this emoji the “Most Notable Emoji” of 2015 (Dictionary. com). The emoji is now mainly used for intimate innuendo (Dictionary. com) and a parallel could be driven between the multiple symbolism and polysemous words in linguistics. As it is used to convey sexual purpose and suggest sexual activity it will be possible to identify it is relationship to speech acts and implicature. In this respect, the “smirking face” emoji can also be used in many contexts- to convey the usage of sarcasm, to indicate smugness, to indicate a shared inside-joke and sexual innuendo. This emoji then turns into an indication of develop, mood and implied that means.

However , emojis aren’t necessarily constantly efficient when ever used exclusively. For example , upon analyzing a corpus of over 40 million Twitter posts of English and American English, German and Spanish, it was identified that not most emojis acquired universal meaning and that the meaning of the same emojis differed according to location, habits and behavior associated with the relevant nationalities (Barbieri ou al). Consequently , there is a possible margin to get misunderstanding in terms of the use of emojis as a stand-alone language. Furthermore, although they improve existing kinds of language in a creative fashion, they wasn’t able to possibly compete with in a progressive or sophisticated face-to-face conversation like spoken or sign-languages do (Brown).

Even though emojis enhance written/typed connection, they are not components of a stand-alone terminology as they are not necessarily specific in nature and cannot be used in conversations outside digital means. Therefore , their efficiency in enhancing dialect is left indisputable, but it is clear that they can lack essential characteristics to create them an actual language in their own proper.