La scrittura in emoji tra dizionario e traduzione
Authors: Francesca Chiusaroli (Università di Macerata, 2015)
Topic: Lexical and Semantic Resources and Analysis

Abstract
This contribution proposes an analysis of the semantics and uses of emojis in digital writing, in particular by observing some recent applications in translation. The purpose of the analysis is to discuss the hypothesis of the constitution of a multilingual dictionary and translator emoji, through a subsequent procedure of selection and fixing of conventional semantic values. The translation dimension makes it possible to evaluate the capacity of the image, beyond the specificities of languages, to express common and universal meanings, so that they can be formed as models in the perspective of the vehicular language and the interlingua. The analysis will move from the notion of short writings as defined in Chiusaroli and Zanzotto 2012a, 2012b, and now in www.scripturebrevi.it

Introduction
Today's popularity of emojis in digital environments is not adequately reflected in rational uses, due to the high degree of vagueness implicit in the figure. Despite the widespread statements and the continuous announcements about the advent of a new universal idiom for images, it remains the practicability in fact of such an expressive language, evidently lacking in the structural plane of the langue. The absence of a shared system, in fact, establishes a constant condition of semantic ambiguity that precludes the affirmation and uses of the desired general code, 1 recalling and reproducing the destiny of historical graphic traditions, which, as is known, have experienced the limits of the pictographic systems or started their linguistic specialization. While the emoticon - a sequential combination of characters for facial expression such as:-) - is more and more configured as a solid disambiguing element for the communication of emotional components in the context of writing to counter "Digitized," useful the indeterminateness entrusted to the word in written form with the addition of the fundamental trait/prosodic recall, on the contrary appears poorly defined the semantics of the emojis, the increasingly rich series of keyboard symbols that reproduce referents and "objects" of speech through distinct pictographic forms. Precisely the iconic character, in fact, intended to ensure understanding beyond, or against, the specific language barriers, gives rise rather to variable solutions of reading of the same sign, with effects on the correct or unambiguous transmission/understanding of the message.

Conclusion
Precisely the reference to biunivocal correspondence appears as the most significant element for a method that intends to consider emojis not only as elements of the act of words (unique, always different), but as signs of a formalized and shared code, as coherent, unique and rational as possible. Beyond the idiosyncratic or creative dimension, beyond the vagueness and equivocity of individual use, the hypothesis of writing in emoji as a vehicle system must deliver to the practice a code suitable for international and multilingual communication, a system therefore constructed by a preliminary selection according to a correct balance of coherence and effectiveness, and capable of reproducing ideas and reducing the superficial variety to grasp the structure, or sense, deep. The priority assigned to the definition of the interlingua in emoji will take due account of specificity and occasionalisms as indispensable in the communicative act historically and culturally placed and, as such, included in the inventory according to the hierarchical perspective of semantic relations (hyponyms, hyperonymies) and formal, syntagmatic and associative. Different roles will be assigned to non-universally transferable or translatable meanings. Therefore, according to a taxonomic criterion, specific pictograms will be placed, when expressive of specific historical-cultural values, and nevertheless traceable to the basic forms, against which they will place themselves as extensions by addition of modifying elements. This is a method already adopted by keyboard systems in the recent release of emojis related to the representation of ethnic notations such as skin color, hair, and other physical characteristics or ethical-social orientation, which are significantly expanding the prepared repertoire, thus abandoning the symbolic figure and adapting the pictographic dimension to the increasingly faithful reproduction of realia. The goal of the common language-writing, historically sought by universalist programs since the Cartesian language era, can thus find today an appropriate opportunity for affirmation in writing in emoji: a powerful new writing for popularity, and based on the assumption of shared and globalized communication. The expansion of the social network becomes a limiting factor of the inevitable arbitrary drift, but it is above all the anchoring to the linguistic plane, through the glossatory instrument, to guarantee the constitution of the code, translatable into linguistic signs, as such bound to the horizon of thought that the individual language prepares, like every partial and imperfect language, and yet precisely for this rigorous and effective, the only one able to allow communication.