Language, Culture, Emoji — Paul D. Hunt
Channel: TypeCon
Date: 2019-06-21

Recorded during TypeCon2018: Xx in Portland, Oregon

Day or night. Good or bad. White or black. Male or female. Fact or fiction. Text or imagery. For better and for worse, our dominant Western philosophical tradition is largely based on dualistic logic. With the recent advent of emoji, our collective, discerning consciousness has struggled to categorize it. Is it language? Are they pictograms? How and when are they suitable for communication? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The intended purpose of both language and emoji usage is to promote better understanding between correspondents. Traditional, binary logic reinforces the perception that language and emoji are antithetical to each other. A more holistic view focuses on how language and emoji are similar and successfully supplement one another to promote the goal of comprehension.

The evolution of writing, from hieroglyphics to our modern text+emoji hybrid system, reveals how linguistic and visual metaphors that have developed to help humans conceive, create, and comprehend the connections between the natural world and the realm of symbolic thought. These connections become more self-evident when we adopt a non-binary view of language and emoji imagery. :^D