Emoji

From DigitalRhetoricCollaborative

An emoji is a pictorial character used to communicate objects, ideas and emotions. The word “emoji” derives from the Japanese word for picture (e) and the word for emotion (moji). Emojis are the offspring of emoticons which seek to express emotion in textual settings. The emoji first appeared in Japan in the late 1990s and have since spread across the world. The icons are separated amongst different categories and occasions specific to Japanese culture and each character “has an official named, defined as part of the Unicode standard”. Unicode is “a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems” ^[1].

Contents 1 History/Origins 2 Developments 3 Multimodality 4 Contextual Analysis 5 Rhetorical Effects 6 Word of the Year 7 Future 8 References 9 External Links

History/Origins

Although Unicode 6.0 encoding with emoji was unavailable on iPhones until November 2011, the emoji first appeared in Japan around 1998 or 1999 when the use of picture messaging first was used as a way to communicate by Shigetaka Kurita. The Japanese wireless, mobile company, NTT DoKoMo, was the first to discover the technology behind the emoji and how to relay the message in a single character. The emoji discovery made character limits more manageable. The initial set of characters included 172 emoji icons created to simplify multimedia messaging and contribute additional features to electronic communication.^[2]

In 2011, Apple’s iOS operating system released the Apple Color Emoji keyboard. Other companies, such as Android, also adopted the emoji phenomenon after the increasingly wide popularity. Microsoft further expanded the use of emoji with the addition of monochrome Unicode emoji coverage to the Segoe UI Symbol system font in Windows 8 with color later added in Windows 8.1. ^[3]

Although different operating systems use the emoji technology, there are variations of the icons:

Emoticons were created before the emoji in 1982 at Carnegie Mellon through the use of simple punctuation combinations. An emoticon is “a representation of a facial expression formed by a short sequence of keyboard characteristics (usually to be viewed sideways) and used in electronic mail, etc., to convey the sender’s feelings or intended tone.”^[4] In other words, where an emoji is a specific, predefined icon or image, emoticons are an assortment or combination of punctuation marks used to represent a facial expression, etc. For example, an emoticon may look like :-), but an emoji looks more like . ^[5]

Developments

Multimodality

Multimodality is a communication practice through visual, spatial, linguistic, textual and aural forms to create a message. Emojis allow communicators to visually create a message through depictions of people, places and objects. Emojis are a modern text in that they have not been a longstanding, traditional form of communication. Writing is moving towards images, as seen with the emoji.

Contextual Analysis

Rhetorical Effects

Word of the Year

In 2015, 😂was named Word of the Year by the Oxford Dictionary. It was chosen because it "best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015." It is the first pictograph to win. The rise in Emoji use increased largely from 2014 to 2015, deeming it an appropriate choice for the year's word.

Future

Apple has revealed a new standard of emoji characteristics, which include a “variety of ethnicities and family types in the latest beta versions of iOS (for iPhones and iPads) and OS X (for Macs)” ^[6]. The standardized emojis are currently limited to a yellow skin tone. However, in recent news, Apple announced that the user will be able to alter the skin tone of their emoji to better represent the diverse cultures and colors of our world. The new feature is attributed to “a change in the Unicode standard’s “skin tone modifier” ^[7].

References

1. ↑ Emoji. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 21, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji
2. ↑ http://www.iemoji.com/articles/where-did-emoji-come-from
3. ↑ http://www.iemoji.com/articles/where-did-emoji-come-from
4. ↑ http://www.oed.com.proxygsu-uga1.galileo.usg.edu/view/Entry/249618?redirectedFrom=emoticon#eid
5. ↑ http://classic.getemoji.com
6. ↑ A. Eler, Apple's Emojis Will Soon Look More Like the World, (Wearable World Inc., 2015)
7. ↑ A. Eler, Apple's Emojis Will Soon Look More Like the World, (Wearable World Inc., 2015)

External Links

• Emojipedia
• Emoji Wikipedia
• Apple's Emoji Characters Will Soon Look More Like the World
• UTR #51: Unicode Emoji
• {http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/emojis-rapid-evolution.html Smile, You're Speaking Emoji] by Adam Sternbergh
• [3]