Emoji's were invented in 1999 in Japan but didn't see wide spread use until the last ~5 years. I was recently had a friend over for the Fourth of July and we were discussing how emoji's have shaped our personal communications in the last couple of years. Long story short, I'm glad for their rise. Though it has led to some entertaining misunderstandings though of trying decode long emoji sequences.

Language has an effect on culture and shapes how humans think about the world. So my main question is how is the rise of emojis shaping and changing the culture? Emoji's aren't unique, symbolic communication has existed for as long as human history has been around from the Egyptians hieroglyphs to the smile face :) era of AIM. So the first question is are they a massive shift in communication?

It seems that the difference between other symbolic systems and emojis is that emojis are global due to them being included in iOS and Android keyboards. The same emojis are used from Japan to the USA. The palette of emojis may be the same, the differences in how they are used seem to very from friend group to friend group.

It came to my attention a couple days after the initial conversation that academics have started a conference called Emoji2018 to look into some of these questions. There is a Wired article covering the conference as well as the conference homepage. I'm particularly interested in the paper discussing "Emoji Grammar as Beat Gestures" as it seems to get at some of the differences in usage.

I'm looking forward to seeing what research comes out in this area.