Can You Speak Emoji? 

i get irrationally angry when i see a string of emojis

*is relaxed* He pronounces it gifes *immediately tenses*

2:16 I actually stated out loud, "Did he just say Jifes?"

emojis became part of our daily life, I mean typing: "this episode was funny 😒" and typing: "this episode was funny 😂" ... and writing the wrong emoji sometimes can cause some tangible relationships to end.

As a linguistics student and millennial, I personally believe emojis and "text speak" to be one of the most interesting linguistic developments in the last few hundred years. It proves the incredible knack the human mind has for creating expression. As we started texting, we were dropped into a place where we couldn't be sure we'd be understood, and we struggled to ascertain if the other person was being sarcastic, joking, or angry. Our own languages became somewhat foreign. But just as communities of deaf children have been observed spontaneously generating full sign languages, people texting created their own markers for meaning. For example, ask any young person what the difference is between "yes" and "yes.", or between the number of period used in an ellipses. Emojis are an extension, almost serving as "adjectives" to modify the tone of whole sentences😁 Tone was added to text in a manner that no one decided on, but rather we as a population generated to help us express ourselves

I do think that emojis are a great example of just how complex communication really is and how we take for granted how easy it seems to be for us humans to interpret each others ideas.

I hate emoji. Praise our emoticon overlords. ヽ༼, ͡ຈ ͜ʖ ͡ຈ,༽ﾉ

i'm surprised you went this whole episode without even mentioning wingdings

Not a single mention of Tom Scott?

Just when there's the announcement of an "Emoji" movie.

They are a form of punctuation, especially emoticons. I mean, the modify a sentence in a way that is necessary for written but not spoken communication, just like a ! or .... They, much like ! and ? stand in for tone just like emoji and emoticons. They are an integral part of modern texting and I am 100% convinced that punctuation is the best way to describe them.

I am SO glad this episode was not entirely created in emoji.

I feel like there was an opportunity to reference the Elcor from Mass Effect, like how the Elcor literally clarify their tone before they speak because their paralanguage isn't understandable or translatable to other species.

No mention of Kappa? Having an emote that instantly implies sarcasm or silliness is invaluable.

Emojis are like that thing that happens when two people who speak different languages and can't understand each other try to communicate.

People not understanding the "jife" joke hurts

I like to use emojis as a sort of emotional punctuation. You know, sort of as a way that you can tell what feeling is behind a particular statement. In regards to the limits of emojis, for some reason, there isn't an emoji that captures confusion. I'd use it all the time if there was one while live tweeting Quantico.

Kaomoji is pretty much the best kind of emotion expression I've had yet.

To me, Emoji are just seasoning. Spice to add to speech.

Argument that emoticons are hard to type doesn’t hold water. Any method used to make emojis easy to type could be easily applied to emoticons. On to of that, simple emoticons are often easier to enter than any emoji.

Really interesting video! So one of the things about emoji that often gets brought up against its use as a universal kind of language across cultures is not just the racial issues, but also the fact that different emoji have different meanings in different cultural contexts. And it's not just the eggplant you allude to and people repurposing different emoji, it's that emoji really started out in specifically a Japanese context. So the foods and such are Japanese, but also the buildings (there's a love hotel one that I've seen get used for hospital) and the expressions (the "crossed X arms in front of the face" means "no good" in Japan, but not here). But if we're thinking of emoji as being the textual equivalent of gestures, maybe this isn't really an issue, in the sense that different cultures use different gestures, too. I already mentioned the crossed X arms thing, but that's an example of a gesture that doesn't conventionally exist in American culture. But there's also differences in the ones we do have meanings for: like, nodding to mean yes may seem obvious here, but it means no in a number of other cultures (e.g. Turkey, Bulgaria, a bunch of the Middle East). Beckoning to someone with palm up in North America to signal them to come closer is fine, but it's reserved for calling animals in some East African cultures; to beckon people, you turn your hand over and beckon with your hand down. So in a way, if emoji are treated as paralinguistic, and akin to gestures or body language, it's not surprising that we see variation in emoji usages across cultures. Like all language stuff, we end up treating them differently across different backgrounds. It just means that we should expect people to codify them all the same way across the world, even if we do end up all getting the same intended emoji appearing the same way eventually. Reinterpretation of characters is pretty much inevitable.

Emojis indicate our emotions but not how we say something. They do not convey stuttering, or sultry voice. Nor does it convey the venom in your words or the smoothness of it. For that reason I think calling them gestures is perfect because they convey emotions.

2:10 Haha "animated jyves"...you are such a troll, Mike! xD

Ancient Egyptians had Hieroglyphs. Today we have our Emoji's📱🖊

I'M A COMM SCHOLAR AND I'M ACTUALLY DOING RESEARCH ON EMOTICONS RIGHT NOW!!!!!!! :D I would not say that emojis are a language, but instead (assuming they are similar to emoticons) function as nonverbal communication. According to most modern Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) theories, specifically J. B. Walther's Hyperpersonal model (summed up= we have greater control over what we communicate in CMC as opposed to Face to Face [FtF]), emoticons function as Nonverbal cues for CMC, kinda like how smiles and thumbs-up are nonverbals for FtF. Provine and friends (2007) found that the people they studied commonly put emoticons in place of punctuation (at ends or beginnings of sentences). And Walther and friend (2001, I believe) found that emoticons function as emotional cues for messages, and also that negative emoticons [ :( ] could make positive messages negative, but positive emoticons [ :) :P ] had no positive impact on negative messages. Other scholars (I forget names and dates because it's late here) found that there was a common usage regarding when and where people used emoticons in chat rooms. Much the same as smiling or angrily shaking your fist are not language per se, emoticons and emoji function as a form of nonverbal, emotion-giving add on to CMC. I would need to do a lot of research to have a discussion as to emoticon/emoji as performative communication (BUT WOULD LOVE IF SOMEONE LINKED ME TO ARTICLES PLEASE AND THANK YOU), but I can safely say that emoticons and emoji are the smiles and frowns of texting and chatting. Also, if anyone reading this has any links to scholarly articles they could recommend, I would love you forever. Please and thank you. I want to study emoticons and emojis and CMC so much and I'm so glad that my University has a professor doing research in that field. Thanks for reading :)

I'm old fashioned, even though I'm 23 I'd rather type than use emoji. I rarely find a proper occasion to use them. I prefer reaction pictures, I like how they can make people laugh while actually expressing what's in my mind.

it's gif not jif. you can't change what people say

People complaining about emoji not being part of language forget that from Ancient Egypt there have been equivalents to emoji in written language. I am talking about hieroglyphs which were not their actual written language, which is a totally different set of letters and words called Hieratic . Hieroglyphs were a more artistic way to express the written word, like current emoji.

I find emojis useful when interacting with foreigners online livechats. When combined with Google translate, and context is pretty effective.

I consider texting as its own form of communication, totally different from other writing. As you said, Mike, it's not meant to be strict writing, it is a casual conversation given text-form. We all probably know somebody who texts in a very nice, proper English way. And every time you talk to that person, it feels like they're a little upset with you, or maybe are trying to hint they don't want to talk to you. My mom does this, and it's weird because my texts with all of my peers are almost exclusively in all-lower-case, with select words and letters capitalized and periods and punctuation used or not used to convey the proper intonation and meaning. Sometimes, an emoticon works better. Other times, emoji is required. For me, at least, it's a subtle art that is actually pretty similar to how humans verbally communicate. For people that can't or won't learn that art, texting with them feels stilted and artificial, even though speaking with them in real life is perfectly genuine.

If any of you haven't seen it already, that Oneohtrix Point Never video is 'Boring Angel', and It's surprisingly powerful.

The idea that a black guy can't use a white representation of the default emoji, or that a white guy can't use an asian representation of an emoji because "oh boo hoo, it's not the same skin color as me and therefore cannot accurately represent or depict me or my feelings", is stupid. The only reason we have race tags in emoji is to appease people who are afraid of associating with the other, and who don't understand what Unicode is supposed to be for. Emoji's were always yellow, and they should stay that way; the first cheering emoji, bulging muscle, and pointing finger were all yellow. Race codes are not only unnecessary, but only serve to pit people against each other, and separate themselves from the other. If you're too insecure about who you are to use a yellow smiley face, or point to something with a yellow finger, keep it to yourself and shove off. Don't go and muddy up the character space for the rest of us by forcing the consortium to add race to emoji >.>

I think the most important aspect of emojis are the fact that they represent an international language; people may not understand what a text message means, but they will definitely understand the sentiments of an emoji. Have emojis been used for this sort of communication? Not very much, if at all. It's not like we purely communicate with people with emojis, as you talked about, but I feel like the potential is definitely there to have emojis become a way that we can communicate with each other globally.

I will not REST until emoticon, kaomoji and emoji use is considered acceptable, and eventually commonplace in academic papers!!!

I developed a text emoji habit over the years. Like when typing I'll add in ~dies~ or ~so tired~ or ~glows~ or other "emotes" to the end of the text (I guess something I picked up from playing MMOs and just evolving shorter emotes to the end of text to give more context). I find they can be far more specific in communicating feeling to written text (though I also use emojis a lot too :3, sometimes in combination). One thing I've been thinking a lot about is taking these text additions and using them in professional work (I'm a game designer). I actually saw emojis being used in a game recently (Enter the Gungeon), but the far more cartoony aesthetic seems like it can handle that better than a more serious RPG. They are just so powerful in helping shape how text is interpreted ....but they also have a bit of stigma attached to them (less serious, for kids, things like that).

In all the discussion here about which part of speech or writing emoji most closely resemble, I feel an important aspect of the emoji which radically distinguishes it from other types of spoken or written communication has been overlooked. Many, many people prescribe a lot of meaning and contextual information to an emoji, and not just in terms of how it's used as a part of speech. Emoji, like the crying laughing face, the heart eyes, or the businessman, mean something beyond their direct meaning in communication, and even beyond their contextual meaning in communication. Show me the crying laughing emoji and I won't just tell you what I think it means, I'll tell you what I think of the emoji itself. I'll say "Yeah, the smiling crying guy! I love that guy!". In short, we endow the emoji with a personality. We can see this happening to an even greater extent with the Facebook sticker. The sticker, really a more complex and interactive emoji, often have explicit narratives and personalities. Take Pusheen, or Business Fish- we have opinions on the personality and life of those 'characters'. The Emoji then is something very new to English, and while I'm not a historical linguist I would suspect is pretty uncommon for language overall. We take our relationship to the abstract form of an emoji, to the narrative and personality an emoji, and implement it in speech, where it adds meaning to our communication based on the speaker and listener's relationship with that emoji. In that sense, perhaps we can compare the use of an emoji to a more simplistic version of the historical practice of commonly referencing legendary narratives like Shakespeare or Homer to communicate your meaning- relying on a common understanding of the narratives and personalities being referenced?

I agree that emoji can be used to convey the tones, expressions, and gestures that text may not convey, when they are being used with actual words and sentences. But, when used by themselves, they seem to limit communication, and remind me of Newspeak in 1984. Although I doubt emoji would replace written words, do we really want to go backwards to pictographic writing like Egyptian Heiroglyphs?

🔥 episode.

It's bad that I've been so completely inundated with SJW rubbish that the moment he started talking about "PoC's" not being represented in emoji's I reflexively rolled my eyes and groaned, despite being more than okay with them adding the extra skin tones when I first heard about it.

I'd argue the original set of faces wasn't "Caucasian" but Japanese.

I really don't like emojis, for the sole reason that it only conveys what I want to say or represent in a comical/silly way which I consider distracting and ugly on the rest of the text, but I as phone user have little control over. But despite my views, companies and culture have adopted them so enthusiastically that it's becoming impossible to avoid. These days whenever I type a simple emoticon " :) ", it automatically 'corrects' it to a "😀" against my will. The message these two formats convey is not at all the same though, with emoticons feeling, at least to me, more authentic, real and serious in a good way whenever I send or receive them. They allow me to apply to and clearly convey a much wider spectrum of feelings. For example I can use " :) " in many situations, including a "see you later! :)" or a "I hope you get better soon, :)", it's the same symbol but it can mean a sympathetic smile or a feel-good smile. It's not ambiguity, it's flexibility, depending on the context.

jifes! YES! That's exactly how it should be said! I'm just glad my keyboard doesn't have emoji.

I think emoji kinda work like a new "word group", sort of like an "Adjective +"

Emoji, emoticons, etc are simply the art of typography trying to emulate the art of cartooning.

That word of the year emoji isn't even a laughing face; it's a tear-of-joy face

Okay, so for kaomoji I think like part of it's that non-Japanese aren't usually familiar with those other symbols in that they're not used regularly. To begin with, a Japanese keyboard alone provides more access to various symbols so that's a thing. Also, Jpn people actually aren't typing each character in to make a kaomoji at least not anymore. You copy+paste it or you have an app on your phone that just inserts them. On my Android devices I have a Japanese keyboard called Simeji and it comes with both an emoji input option/dictionary and a kaomoji input option/dictionary. If you just type in a word like happy or sad, it will even pop up with a suggested emoji or kaomoji to replace the word with too, so I think like part of the differentiation between emoji and kaomoji and usage is more related to technological resources or even awareness of resources between people both inside and outside Japan. Emoji though being only one color though wasn't really a consideration of race, or at least it wasn't a thought when it was in Japan. I don't think anyone assumed that anyone was yellow or anything either, but it's like a cross between like kaomoji and a generic happy face which is almost always yellow. It's also like just simple because the yellow face could represent anyone. I mean, if you took a happy face sticker and gave it to someone would you expect that person to be angry because the happy face sticker wasn't depicting a particular race? The concept of it being that specific I don't think occurred to its creators because it was just supposed to be a face. It probably only became a noticeable problem when someone distinctly started making realistic skin toned emoji and then it became a problem. Also, I would like to note for this that in Japan, emoji are not really popular anymore. They're out of fashion and like Jpn people are kind of surprised we still use them. If people use any expression at all, it's kaomoji or they use decomail which is like other kind of decorations that are tied to a specific carrier or something that you use to express how you feel in a message or keitai mail. They also use the messaging app Line which has stickers which comprise of still images or animated stickers which basically do the same kind of thing as gifs and memes only they're branded by actual artists and companies and are official where you can buy them. But like generally speaking the popularization of Line mainly came out of the Touhoku earthquake back in 2011 because it was a product that Naver had internally that the employees of the company ended up being able to use to communicate with each other over wifi even when cell service was down. They released it to the public a short while later it became its own thing, so it's kind of interesting that it's a communications app but also one that came out of a need for communication during a time of crisis. While that's great, I'm rather enamored that the later innovations of the stickers being popularized coupled with its core communication usage in theory would allow me to try to keep positive and stay playful even when things are going wrong. That said though because Line's gone international, it has a set of proprietary emoji that also pop up when you type as a suggestion instead of the word you were going to put in or even stylized text images, but like that's more the direction that the home country of emoji is going in, and honestly for me I actually prefer it. Facebook has added similar features to its Messenger app in the form of free stickers likely to compete with Line because a lot of Line's stickers are paid because they use proprietary copyrighted characters. But like whether I use Messenger or Line, I love stickers and prefer them over emoji or even Kaomoji because I find them to be much more personalized and expressive. Kaomoji are even more expressive just because there isn't as much of the limitation that emoji have and the whole library of them that I have access to is pure gold, but sometimes they also seem too cute or don't have enough personality as I want to express for the context of the conversation I'm having. For me, that's where the stickers come in because the stickers for Line or FB Messenger are branded and you download or buy the ones you want, so which ones you choose are a direct correlation to you and your personal interests. Like I have one friend who loves the Business Fish sticker set on Facebook. That's her thing and that's so her. I like cute things and geeky stuff so I'll do things with like cute animals or are geek references like comic books. DC used to sell Line stickers, and I have a Batman set that I love using and I love Batman so those are sometimes appropriate for some friends. I have some friends who are bigger anime fans so then I use those stickers instead when I talk to them. Others I play games with so I'll use like Pokemon stickers or Animal Crossing or something. They even have Star Wars stickers, which are useful for when I'm like watching or talking about the film or referencing something from them because they even have the "I love you" and "I know" as separate stickers. It's more me and more my personality.

In the book Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C Clarke presents us with an evolved emoji state, where people have the tech necessary to (instead of waving their hands like today) draw holograms in mid air, on the spot. This opportunity has organically incorporated itself into the communication and into the languages themselves. In the future that Arthur envisions, all the languages melted into one, unified, practical language, but emoji carry the personal level of communication because they can be used to transfer emotions, symbols, identities, technical details, explanations... Some time ago i became interested in usage of emoji. I have noticed, especially in instagram comment culture, that we use emoji much in the same way that Arthur has explained. If we think about it, even with the present level of control over emoji, we have managed to incorporate them in our language. And also we can now use them in multiple ways. I remember the time before emoji when we used simple textual smileys. They were used much more rarely, and they were only used in context or to stress the level of some feeling. Never for illustrational or identificational purposes (flags, accessories, metaphoric symbols). What you will often find in the comments is people typing one or two metaphorical emojis which can sometimes tell a joke or recall a feeling in the readers mind. (picture of a cow with the caption emoji unicorn) Often i try to think about how i would explain a joke like that with words.

I am surprised that you didn't bring up British youtuber Tom Scott's work with emoji and his creation of an emoji keyboard. Oh and not really related to emoji, but what IS that album with the boxes with an X in the center? I need to know.

So emoji are a kind of proto hieroglyph? We need a new version of the Rosetta Stone.

Also, in Japanese you can simply write the kanji "笑" ("warau", or sometimes only the first roman letter "w"), which means "laughter". The same for "怒" ("Oko" = angry) or "泣" ("naku" = sad/crying). Thus, you basically convey your mood without using a phonetic imitation of f.ex. laughter and without using emoji. :)

I got so excited when I saw this pop up under my subscriptions tab. Thanks for making such awesome videos!

Makes me think of American Sign Language (ASL) and its use. Very clearly a language with its own vocabulary and grammar, but one both lacking in audible utterances as well as lacking (largely) in a communicable written representation of those utterances. Where emoji might be said to augment English, English characters could be said to augment ASL.

Writing was invented to communicate, but until recently writing couldn't replace conversations, and when it did, we needed to use it to convey all things we can while chatting face to face, like facial expression and tones of voice, thus the need for emojis

Using emojis to talk to people reminds me very much of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. That, and when you mentioned how it was a sort of "embryonic language" made me think of it even more as hieroglyphics, and how they could be described as the early stages of language. Using images to convey meaning, and even story at time, was how hieroglyphs were used, and I feel like the same can be said of using emjois to communicate.

For me emojis are like punctuation marks. I never use them as whole messages and I know nobody who does, but instead of a exclamation/question mark. They're verys helpful to overcome the cold enviorment of "vanilla" texting.

Compared to previous videos, you seem especially calm and soft spoken on this one. I don't know if that is actually real or a figment of my imagination, but it has an ASMR-like effect on me. Please, continue talking.

I think emoji should stay at least the same height as normal characters, if not the same width too. In the sense that emoji provide a gesture supplement to written text transmitted via computers and the internet, I don't think they should "pop out" of the text like some of these HUGE ones I've seen. Emoji should be sprinkled in, around and between textual language. Huge emoji completely defeats that purpose, requiring that it be its own separate message or that it ruins the look of text by having a giant picture forcing the text on the same line down and leaving giant awkward whitespace inside a single line or an entire paragraph.

Emoji as an emotional signal, is exactly why I don't tend to use Emojis all that much. In my normal speech I tend to stay monotone and subdued unless I have a point of Interest. My friends think I don't like Emoji but honestly I only reserve them for times of importance. I've never quite accurately been able to describe this feeling towards emojis until watching this episode

You can kind of tell that I didn't grow up in the phone era. Despite only being born in 1991, I don't understand emoticons and I don't understand text language either. I always write my text far more formal standards form of grammar. I have come to this awkward point in my life, being on the spectrum and having to convey emotions through text now because I find a lot of people want the performance of everyday speech in their text language. As much as emojis are useful to convey that I am not the jerk everyone thinks, I also don't really understand emoji language and for that fact of the matter text language. It's a blessing and a curse text language that is.

While I don't use emoji per say, I do use a lot of smiley faces while texting. It does help convey the emotion and intent behind a message that is lost when simply reading something as to it being said in person. For example: "You're so mean." - Simple statement of fact/opinion. It looses the context tone, inflection, and gesture. "You're so mean. ;-P" - The wink-tongue out face instantly adds a non-seriousness to it. The inclusion of three characters gives vast amount of information, and I bet you can even imagine context of the situation this one line took place in. (A friendly rebuttal to a joke, perhaps?) "You're so mean. >:(" - Three different character, and a completely different meaning. One that conveys genuine anger at the person. One thing that does interest me about this is the tone that one reads them in their head. Without the smiley I read them in a neutral tone, but the inclusion of the smiley makes the tone I read it in different, even if the face comes after the actual sentence. It's like my brain retroactively goes back and readjust the tone without me even noticing it. It reminds me very much of 'garden path' sentences; my favorite being "The old man the boat." It makes no sense until you realize 'man' is synonymous with 'staff' in this instance. Granted, the retroactive correction is more jarring in a garden path sentence, buy I hypothesis it's the same process that corrects the inflections when smileys and emoji are used. (On a semi-related note, the use of the text smiley as compared to emoji is an interesting aspect of pareidolia. Seeing faces in things that aren't faces. Ever notice how an eletrical socket looks like a face? Same thing.)

I love these videos, but does anybody else get really drained by the pace? It's a 12 minute video and once Mike starts making his point, he never really comes up for air. It's kind of exhausting.

I am in the middle of rereading Snow Crash and a line jumps out at me in response to this video. "To distill fact from the vapor of nuance" I am continually amazed by our brains ability to take something abstract like emoji and distill that as far as using it as a complete language. Regardless as to the success of the endeavor, it still is amazing.

One of the things I like about emoji is that the remind me of signifiers in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. For example, if you want to make an English version of how hieroglyphs work, you might see the word CT and it might mean cat, coat, or cot. To reduce the ambiguity, Egyptians included a classifier hieroglyph to indicate what category the word was in--so instead of just CT, you might see CT with a cat face. I think emoji add a lot of clarity to textual speech in part by solidifying and classifying the statements in the utterance in much the same way.

You hit that whip pretty good. My question is, can you dab just as good?

I've oft thought (sometimes after being frustratingly misunderstood by a terse/rushed txt i've sent) that as we invest more and more in the written or typed word (email, txt etc etc) that one of the huge lackings of "pure text" is language intonation and missing non-verbals that we communicate so naturally when we speak verbally to one another. I've credited Emoji's as being able to fill this void... and i don't think they do completely but their ability to concisely communicate a feeling or shared memory associated to that tiny icon image is certainly filling part of that critical communication gap in my mind.

I like the inside jokes or hidden meanings some emoji take on. My wife and I both talk of being "tired pandas", so we use 🐼 to mean "I'm tired".

I'm currently reading the brilliant Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. He has a concept of a spectrum of visual art with realistic representational art at one end and symbolic art that barely resembles the thing it's supposed to be, but carries a very clear and definite meaning, at the other. He then suggests that beyond that "meaning" end of the art spectrum is the crossover into written language: abstract symbols that resemble nothing but mean something very definite. He suggests that although we began by using abstracted pictures as writing (Mesopotamia used little pictograms representing bundles of grain and so on), over time the trend was towards non-pictures, towards totally abstract symbols representing sounds: written language.

I was a little surprised you didn't talk more about the potentially serious miscommunications that can result from the fact that, much like letters, emoji have different "fonts" which depend on which system you are using. Apple emojis look different from Android, which look different from Samsung. All Unicode specifies is the name of the emoji, like "Grinning Face" (😀) or "Smiling Face With Open Mouth and Tightly-Closed Eyes"(😆) or "Disappointed but Relieved Face" (😥). This isn't a problem for text fonts as all the letters are identifiable and interchangeable (although typeface does have some effect on the emotion of the reader...). However, since all the designers have to go by is the Unicode name, the implementation of facial emoji varies heavily with regard to what emotion the actual picture appears to be displaying. Check out this article for several examples: mentalfloss.com/article/70879/9-emojis-look-completely-different-other-phones Many of the examples in that article are shockingly different and it's not difficult to see how they could be misinterpreted during cross-platform communication. Solution? Hard to say. The fault here is shared between the designers of the emoji "font" and the Unicode Consortium for not making the descriptions specific enough. Maybe Apple, as the holder of the "standard" emoji set, should open up their artwork for all systems to use?

The "These are all the same emoji!" graphic is from research pointing out just how easily the emotional tenor of emoji are misinterpreted, a problem not limited to inter-platform communication. Links to both the study itself and the short essay with the graphic are here: www.improbable.com/2016/04/11/the-trouble-with-emoji-misinterpreted-emotions/

I still can't see them on my computer. It's squares all over the place...

I think this question is an extremely important one for us to answer come the next generation. Emoji are becoming more and more an integral part of our language, and they allow people to communicate over text what we havent been able to communicate before. Texting has almost always been emotionless and dry. it was difficult to put inflection on something you were typing to another person, and the textual form of the english language has always lacked a way to infer extra meaning and emotion without going into further detail and writing about the inflection itself. Emoji isnt the perfect answer to this problem, but it is an answer. Emoji are here to stay and advance along with the english language

Japanese keyboards on smartphones have a "Kaomoji" button, where you can select all different kinds of smileys. So no-one really needs to learn them by heart (except if they want to...).

Had to look up "cromulent' Not even my spelling checker knows it so I'm happy to have been educated. ;-)

I think you can't compare texting with face to face interactions. Reading body language is a very primitive form of communication previous to verbal communication. Perhaps emojis are becoming a new form of communication comparable with the oriental system. But it could be just a passing trend.

Emoji remind me of those children's books where “difficult” words are replaced by small pictures - it's funny how more and more fun-focussed our society gets, with games, pictures instead of words and humour everywhere. It's like we're all trying to be children and adults at the same time. Emoji also seem to take the idea of phonocentrism (= primacy of speech over writing) even further, which I don't mind for text messages but would mind if, say, newspaper articles were to be written like that. I wonder if they could be considered as a sort of slang too?

Just wanna say that you are such a great comunicator that people with me that don't speak english that well, understand you perfectly.

Many people hate texting because "it is so impersonal and you cant convey emotion, gestures and intonation" ... and many people are hating emoji because "its ruining language." ... [face-palm emoji]

You used both "Embiggened" and "Cromulent", combining my love of cartoons (The Simpsons) and sci-fi (Stargate SG-1). Keep that up [smileyface] [smileyface] [thumbsup] [smilingpoopemoji]

One of the best idea channel episodes I've seen in a while.

I think it's appropriate to relate emoji to non-verbal communication, which I was surprised was not mentioned in this video. Many of the communicative acts performed during a conversation or speech are not relegated to words from mouths, but intonation, eye contact, gestures, and other types of body language. It may be appropriate to say that emoji are not language or speech, but they are undoubtedly a form of communication. They allow text based communication to have some of the depth of expression previously found only in personal communication.

One thing that I don't feel like you adequately covered was how emojis only adequately convey positive or over dramatic emotions, and how the lack of emojis is often used to convey such emotions

My sister invented a texting game using emoji: one person types a random string of emoji, and the other has to make up a story about it. For example, if one person typed 🎤😥🌋😭🎥🦃, the resulting story might be something like this: _To her fans, the paparazzi, the common onlooker, Anita didn't seem humble. She was always seen decked in designer dresses, acting like a true diva, especially on tour._ _But, in fact, on that lonely November Wednesday in Hawaii, all she could think of was going home to Michigan for tomorrow's thanksgiving feast. It was the one day off her contract allotted her all year._ _That's all she wished for, right up until the blast of magma crashed from beneath her, incinerating the entire crowd and her entire body. Her remains were never found. When the footage aired, the world cried for her, but none harder outside of Michigan._ Woah, that turned out a lot more somber than I thought it would. But that's the beauty of it! You never know what you'll end up writing. Have fun!

I think the distinction between emoji and language really becomes clear when we look at emoji communication in the absence of text. Tom Scott made an emoji-only communication app as a joke and then over 60,000 people downloaded it. He describes the experience here (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GsyhGHUEt-k.html), but basically most people just used it as a novelty. They would play around with the app for a few hours or days, and then never send another message again. If emoji are only ever useful in the context of a written communication, that suggests they really are an augmentation of preexisting language. The performance needs an explanation to be understood.

I feel like a conversation like this happened with the Star Trek TNG episode "Darmok."

I submit that when one is scrolling though pages of emoji to find the one that adequately expresses what one is trying to convey, one is searching for the 'e-moj juste.' I'll see myself out...

As someone who frequently puts on these videos to listen while walking around doing stuff, I just have to say that when you mentioned the book Emoji Dick, it was very necessary to have the image of the book with the subtitle there ... Without seeing that little whale, I never would have guessed what it was actually a reference to.

from my perspective, emoji is somehow similar to Ancient Chinese, every single symbol have its deep and long meaning and can be jointed to form even longer words that have even deeper and longer meaning. Thus when combined with a specific grammar in future it can possibly become a language, but only in typing (not even writing) because you can't give them a unified pronunciation, it can even possibly be the language that erase language barrier

i used emoticons and emoji for ever to indicate sarcasm or seriousness for my texts. so yeah im sure emoji helps give information you cant give just through text.

I think this episode should really have included some discussion of sign languages.

The challenge with emojis is that the concept of paralanguage is complex. One the one hand you could argue that emojis serve to enhance and clarify, but you could also suggest that the symbols serve to compensate for shortcomings in the communication. In other words, we use the emoji to convey tone, mood or subtlety, which can includes certain contextual elements such as sarcasm. Then again, it could be that we are just lazy and don't want to write out our entire thought and the mood behind it.

Words can't express the meaning behind the smiling moon emoji as succinctly the smiling moon emoji itself.

Written text is void of emotions and tonal subtleties that comes with speech. Unless you are an extremely good writer of short texts, you could be easily misunderstood, even when attempting to be as clear as possible. Emoji allows for emotion and subtleties to be conveyed through text. Since less and less people are actually using their phones to talk, aka making a call, being able to convey meaning through written text have become important. In that way emojis is a help in achieving that. There is also a matter of ending a conversation. Sometimes it is less abrupt using an emoji than using words, even if the text using an emoji is in reality shorter.

If emoji could be spoken, it would be like a cross between sign language and fortune telling, given you would be drawing cards to try to convey meaning to the other person.

My girlfriend and I dislike talking on the phone because it limits us to only communicating by tone of voice, and when we both have erratic ways of speaking, it's hard to infer what our meaning actually is most of the time. But we also live an hour apart, so only speaking face to face is not an option. Emoji are how we express our tone and actual meaning to each other fluidly in text. It's nothing for us to trade a hundred texts in an afternoon, and emoji make it possible for us to ensure we're coming off the way we mean rather than by merely the words we're saying. As you said, it's a sort of performance art that underlines and delineates for us to make an otherwise challenging relationship more functional between dates.

What on earth is 🕴 (man in business suit levitating?) Does anyone know where or why this came from?

Something I would like to point out that a lot of miscommunication. You cannot communicate body language through written mediums such as letters, text, or Instant messages through services such as skype or facebook. Emojis are a way to bring context to what you are saying. This way you come off as joking, and not heartless. Loving and not creepy, or my personal favorite miscommunication problem to run in to as long as I am not in the middle of it, expressing anger. Emojis are , to me, a way to communicate emotion. Businesses in social media have become , hip to the kids jive. An example to this is how you can like a facebook comment and the say that it makes you sad, angry, confuses, laugh, etc. This corrects the uneasiness that when someone you know has a relative die and posts about their grief is lessened to a degree, you can like then add the sad emoji to it and sow your sympathy in a more expressive and direct form verses just liking it and worrying that you just came of as an awful person when you just wanted so say "I understand, I have lost someone too".

10:13 "What do y'all think"? Really? "You guys" was perfectly acceptable.

Ever played 'concept' it's a game about communicating exclusively through emoji-like icons. It's a great game. There's an episode of tabletop about it, as you play really makes you think about (and experience) the power of gesture and symbol

Any discussion of Emoji would be incomplete without mentioning +Tom Scott, the accidental emoji expert.

I feel like a look into sign language within this discussion would have been interesting.