The Semiotics of Emoji: The Rise of Visual Language in the Age of the Internet

by Marcel Danesi, Paul Bouissac

Overview

Shortlisted for the BAAL Book Prize 2017

Emoji have gone from being virtually unknown to being a central topic in internet communication. What is behind the rise and rise of these winky faces, clinking glasses and smiling poos? Given the sheer variety of verbal communication on the internet and English's still-controversial role as lingua mundi for the web, these icons have emerged as a compensatory universal language.

The Semiotics of Emojilooks at what is officially the world's fastest-growing form of communication. Emoji, the colourful symbols and glyphs that represent everything from frowning disapproval to red-faced shame, are fast becoming embedded into digital communication. Controlled by a centralized body and regulated across the web, emoji seems to be a language: but is it? The rapid adoption of emoji in such a short span of time makes it a rich study in exploring the functions of language.

Professor Marcel Danesi, an internationally-known expert in semiotics, branding and communication, answers the pertinent questions. Are emoji making us dumber? Can they ultimately replace language? Will people grow up emoji literate as well as digitally native? Can there be such a thing as a Universal Visual Language? Read this book for the answers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474281980
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/17/2016
Series:	Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	529,513
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Marcel Danesi is a Professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is known for his work in semiotics and youth culture. He has published on the meanings of popular culture and how they inform social evolution. He has also written textbooks introducing linguistics and semiotics, and published a series of books on advertising as a sign system.

Table of Contents

1. Emoji and Writing Systems

Defining Emoji
Writing Systems
Writing as Social Practice
Stylization
Research Method

2. Emoji Uses

Phatic Function
Emotive Function
Standardization
Ambiguity
Culture-Coding

3. Emoji Competence

General Features
The Emoji Code
Core Emoji
Peripheral Emoji
Compression


4. Emoji Semantics

The Thesaurus Effect
Framing
Connotation
Facial Emoji
Blending
The Power of Images

5. Emoji Grammar

Calquing
Conceptualization
Syntactics
Rebus Writing
Overview

6. Emoji Pragmatics

Pragmatic Competence
Salutation
Punctuation
Other Pragmatic Functions
Some Relevant Questions and Findings

7. Emoji Variation

Cross-Cultural Variation
Usage According to Nation
Cultural Coding
Visuality
Adjacency Pair Variation
Cartoon Style Literacy

8. Emoji Spread

Emoji-Only Writing
Emoji Translations
Emoji in Advertising
Effort

9. Universal Languages

Artificial Languages
Blissymbolics
The Emoji Code

10. A Communication Revolution?

The Global Village
Emoji as Trend
The Future of Emoji

References

Editorial Reviews

The Semiotics of Emoji is an important reminder of the limitations of language and sound, and how much visual symbols can aid human interaction and add to the richness of communication.
Inspector Insight

Danesi maintains a healthy level of scepticism about the applications and future of the emoji, especially when it comes to "translations" of classics such as Moby-Dick and Alice in Wonderland.
The Sydney Herald

The main contributions of Danesi's work are, first, his report on the survey of a hundred eighteen to twenty-two-year-old university students - fifty males and fifty females - along with examples of their text messages.
Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher