An Emoji Lexicon

While studying during my summer at Bread Loaf, I have also been working on planning my courses for the upcoming school year. I will have 4 preps (plus yearbook) next year, so there is much to prepare before August 26th. The other day, I was working on slides for an AP Language and Composition lesson focusing on the multiple meanings of words and sentences. I wanted to find an example of text messages that could be interpreted in many ways, but I quickly became frustrated because I couldn't find what I was looking for. I, of course, forgot about emojis.

AI generated emojis

In his article, "Emoji Use," Marcel Danesi explains the multiple functions emojis have in our text-based discourse. He outlines two main functions: phatic and emotive. The phatic function of emojis works to substitute small talk in a visual format through utterance openers, utterance endings, and fillers to keep the conversation friendly. The emotive function of emojis is meant to convey the sender's emotions, whether happy, angry, or flirty. Danesi also discusses that, although emojis have gone through a standardization process, there is still a level of ambiguity partly dependent on the cultural context of the senders and receivers.

The cultural coding of emojis reminded me of a suggested reel I saw when scrolling Instagram the other day. I happen to follow quite a few language-learning-based accounts, including in Korean. In this suggested reel, the creator explained the difference in the use of ㅋ (K sound that indicates laughter) in Korean text messages. He explained how the number of ㅋs after or in reaction to a statement denote different types of laughter. Just one ㅋ? That means not funny laughter. The more ㅋs, the funnier the statement.

Emojis, then, are just one more reminder of the importance of context - cultural, historical, textual, etc.