EMOJI, the new way to communicate

The emoji, a great invention in the nineties from Japan – as its name suggests – radically changed the way we interact. Differing from the older emoticon — typographical representations of a face created with punctuation and used as an integral part of a text — emojis are pictograms or images processed by the computer like the characters of a non-Western language (such as Japanese). Today all the software we use on a daily basis can support these indispensable symbols. In your good morning message on Whatsapp, on your Facebook status posted while you’re waiting for the tram, in your Instagram selfie or in a tweet commenting a popular TV program, there’s always the perfect emoji for sending kisses, hugs, middle fingers, and more.

Next July 17 a new #WorldEmojiDay will be celebrated to pay tribute to computer scientist Shigetaka Kurita’s invention that revolutionized the way we communicate. Since 1999 – the year of their creation – emojis have experienced a rapid evolution, first inserted in Google and then in Gmail and Mac operating systems. With their adoption by Jobs’Apple and the simultaneous development of social networks, communication shifted horizontally from the increasingly outdated text message to the web with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and the instant pictures and tweets of Instagram and Twitter.

Communication therefore became simpler and more immediate, forcing major brands to adapt their marketing strategies to this linguistic revolution. General Electric, IKEA, Coke,Mentos, Domino’s Pizza, Delta Air Lines and many other multinational giants started exploiting these images and even producing new ones at times, customizing emojis and creating entire advertising campaigns around them.

Moreover, according to a study conducted by cyber-psychologist Linda Kaye and published in “Trends in Cognitive Science”, the peer review magazine of Cell, emojis reveal much of their users’ personality and thereby affect our social relations. Emojis, in the “unspoken” language of the network, have replaced non-verbal gestures and expressions (smirks, hand movements and posture), creating fertile terrain for misunderstandings. To escape the non-linguistic pitfalls of pictograms, the EmojiWorldBot was created: a Telegram bot — a special automatic replay system of the messaging app — that aims to become the first universal emoji dictionary allowing users to contribute to the glossary, playing a game with the smilies and asking them to guess the tags that describe their meaning.

Without fear of contradiction, we can therefore say that the universal language is no longer English, but that of the emojis, which are used and understood by more than 90% of Internet users.

If you think you are well-versed in understanding this 3.0 version of language, Google the Pinocchio Emoji, the first Italian work entirely translated into emojis!