Bringing together research on gesture and internet linguistics, we argue there are far more similarities between emoji and gesture than there are between emoji and grammar. Also, the scope of possibilities with gesture are limited only to what the hands and body can do, while emoji use is limited to the (currently) 2,823 symbols encoded by Unicode.ĭespite these differences, people still use the resources available to them online to do what they’ve been doing in face-to-face conversations for millennia. Gestures and speech are closely synchronised in a way emoji and text can’t be. There are obviously some differences between online and physical chat. Repetition for emphasis is rare (but possible) with words, but very common for gesture and emoji.Īlong with these categories, we also looked at pointing and illocutionary gestures and emoji, which help show your intentions behind what you’re saying – whether that’s amused ? or ambivalent ?.Įmoji have limitations that gestures don’t When we looked at sequences of emoji the most common patterns are pure repetition, such as two tears of joy emoji ??, or partial repetition such as two heart eyes and blowing a kiss/heart ???. The emphatic nature of beat gestures helps explain something about common strings of emoji. Some object emoji have also developed emblematic meanings, such as the peach ?, which is most typically used non-illustratively to represent a butt. Gestures like these are known as emblems, some of which are found in the emoji palette.
Shutterstock emoji full#
There are some gestures that can have a full meaning even in the absence of speech, including the thumbs up ?, the OK sign ? and good luck ?. ? could be a reference to your own dog, a good dog you saw while out for a walk, or a sign of your fondness for puppers over kitties. Rather, what is most important is context. While there are preferences, there is nothing “grammatical” about using ? instead of ?. Nor do they easily combine into larger words or sentences (unless we’re using a clunky version of the grammar of our language). They have some advantages in complex expressions that spoken languages don’t have, but there are gestures as well as grammatical features when people sign.īy contrast, gestures and emoji don’t break down into smaller parts. Signed languages have the same features of grammar as spoken languages, but with hand shapes instead of sounds.
We can break speech down into its component parts: sentences are made of words, words are made of morphemes, and morphemes are made of sounds.