emoji

noun

1. A digital graphic icon with a unique code point used to represent a concept, object, person, animal or place, originally used in Japanese text messaging but since adopted internationally in other contexts such as social media. Or, by extension, any non-standard emoji-like image inserted inline in text, i.e. an image emoticon.

   “In order to communicate quickly, many mobile phone users use emoji characters (similar to emoticons) while sending messages. Service providers have also created a set of emoji characters and have added support for it.”

   “One of the most exciting announcements at Twitter's Chirp conference this week was "Annotated Tweets". […] The data attached doesn't have to be simple text. Twitter suggests examples such as MIDI data (for music) or emoji (for fancy emoticons).”

   “So what do a bunch of dudes with iPhones do when they haven't eaten all day, are waiting at your restaurant table, starving, annoyed, and need to pass the time. They innovate. They bring emojis to life. In public. […] Give it a shot – it's probably the one semi-practical thing you can do with an emoji[…].”

   “Like any natural language grammar, the distribution of emoji in texts, as well as the construction of phrases and sentences with emoji symbols in them, implies a systematic structure, otherwise it would be impossible to literally "read" the emoji texts.”

   “At present, Emoji functions not to replace the linguistic mode, but to complement it – the good old-fashioned English word is not going to be in danger any time soon. Emoji enables, arguably for the first time, a multimodal component to text-based digital communication, providing a code that fills out the communicative message in the linguistic mode, conveyed through text.”