The emoji (the digital pictographic symbols that populate our chats) became popular in Japan at the end of the 90s or today they are an integral part of our “digital language”, so much so that in 2015 theOxford Dictionaries named the laughing face emoji with tears of joy as word of the year. This is a graphic evolution of emoticonsthe “smilies” created by the American computer scientist Scott Fahlman in 1982. Just over a decade later the emojis designed by Shigetaka Kurita For NTT Docomo In the 1999 they began to take hold in Japan and some time later global standardization arrived thanks to the Unicode Consortium. Since they were born in the “Land of the Rising Sun,” the word emoji is derived from the Japanese term And (絵which stands for “image”) e moji (文字which means “character”).
How emojis were born
The use of symbols to communicate emotions has roots well before the emojis we know today. In the 1980s, the American computer scientist Scott Fahlman proposed the first emoticons: combinations of characters such as :-) to indicate a humorous joke e :-( to signal its seriousness. These signs, although rudimentary, represented a breakthrough in the expression of emotions in digital contexts and were widely used until the 1990s. The emoticons, although creative, however had limitations, as they were not easy to interpret, especially for users less familiar with using the Internet.
The turning point came in 1999 in Japan, when the graph Shigetaka Kurita created the first set of emojis: 176 12×12 pixel drawings for the i-mode platform NTT Docomo. These symbols, inspired by Japanese visual culture, ranged from hearts and smiling faces to weather icons and abstract symbols. Their success pushed other companies to develop similar sets, but the true globalization of emojis occurred thanks to the intervention of Google and Applewhich in 2010 obtained their standardization by theUnicode Consortium. This consortium, responsible for coding characters used in operating systems around the world, ensured that emojis could be displayed correctly on every device.
Since then, emojis have become more inclusive and sophisticated. Since 2015, thanks to social pressure, the Unicode Consortium has introduced different skin tones, gender representations and options for people with disabilities. Additionally, customizable emojis such as Animoji from Apple, which allow users to create avatars that reflect their physical characteristics and, through function Genmojito create personalized emojis with the help of artificial intelligence.
Emoji: Where you go, interpretation you find
Despite their success, emojis don’t really represent a universal language. Keith Bronithe world’s first translator of emojis, points out that their meaning varies enormously between cultures and defines emojis as «a linguistic tool that is used to supplement our language».
Just think, for example, of the emoji of thumbs up: It is a sign of approval in the West, but can be offensive in the Middle East. The emojiangelused to indicate innocence in many cultures, in China it can represent death. Similar discrepancies are also found in the use of the emoji hands claspedwhich in the West evokes prayer or gratitude, but in Japan is often interpreted as a simple “please” or “thank you”.
Emojis not only reflect cultural differences, but also influence how we communicate. In an age where written messages are short and often lack context, emojis help convey emotion and tone, compensating for the limitations of the written word. However, their use can also lead to misunderstandings. In Israel, a judge considered a series of celebratory emojis to be an implicit commitment in a negotiation, demonstrating how these symbols can take on a binding meaning in legal contexts (at least in certain legislatures). “quill”
