Emoji is a language of communication. What does emoji mean?

Emoji (emoji, emoji) is not a by-product of the development of society. This is the style of icons (emoticons). Today they have become an important part of the history and culture of the whole world. Emoji found their place in the heart of almost every Internet user.

Many do not know what it is, and those who know and are constantly confronted with them, believe that emoji is just another kind of entertainment. In fact, this is not so.

What is it? What are they needed for? With this we try to understand this article.

Smiley, Emoji and Sticker

Let's find out what it is. It's not exactly the same thing. Smiley expresses emotions using ordinary standard symbols (punctuation marks, for example ": -").

Emoji is a code (a common standard character from Unicode), which is available on all platforms that support it, and is typed and transmitted by only one specific code (for example, "\ xF0 \ x9F \ x98 \ x81").

A sticker is just a picture that is transmitted by a file or link.

Defining emotions

This is the language of emoticons and ideograms used in various web pages and e-mail messages. This is a way of communicating with graphics - instead of the usual words, combinations of pictures are used here. This language first appeared in Japan, and then spread throughout the world.

What does emoji mean? Some of its symbols have quite a specific meaning in the culture of Japan. Here are some of them:

• White flower (means a perfectly done homework);
• Bowing businessman;
• A group of symbols denoting popular food: dango, ramen, sushi, etc.

There are also emoticons that have arisen on the initiative of Internet users, and unlike emoji, they are a means of conveying emotions with the help of existing typographic means. Emodji means faces.

History of occurrence

The very first emotions were created by Sigetaka Kurita in 1998-1999. He was a member of the group that was working at that time to create a platform for the Internet i-mode.

Then the set of emoji was created - it is 172 characters, measuring 12 × 12 pixels. They were part of the functions intended for messaging for i-mode, and were designed to facilitate and speed up electronic communication.

In 1997, Nicolas Laufrani began experimenting with emoticons to create colorful icons that could correspond to existing ASCII-emoticons. The latter consisted only of simple punctuation marks. Thus, Laufrani created the first graphic emoticons that entered the online dictionary. And they were divided into categories: "Emotions", "Classical", "Holidays", "Planets", "Food", "Flags", "Sport", "Babies", "Nationalities", "Entertainment", "Weather" , "Animals", "Professions" and many others. Other

All these images in 1997 were registered with the Copyright Office (US), and then in 1998 they were posted on the Internet in the form of gif-files. Thus, they became the first in the world history of graphic emoticons, which were used in various technologies.

Why do we need emoji?

Today emoji is another way to communicate quickly. Written speech has one significant drawback compared with the oral - the complexity of the transmission of emotions. After all, when exchanging information in writing, the interlocutors do not see each other's expressions and gestures. In addition, the writer on the Internet needs to have the skills of quick typing.

Of course, there are talented people (for example, writers) who can clearly and accurately convey emotions, but these are few, and that's just not enough time for chatting and other instant messaging services. Therefore, we had to come up with something that could facilitate such communication by simply inserting a code or a designation in the text so that an expression of emotion that reflects the state of the speaker is output.

It was this problem that in due time contributed to the emergence of Internet slang, although not very helpful in conveying in emotions the attitude to the written text or its author. But this was not enough - a serious breakthrough was needed.

Initially, the solution to this issue became emoticons. But at first, their use was not considered a serious matter, but now it is permissible even in business correspondence (for example, a colon with a stick and a bracket). Moreover, in this case it does not even matter if these icons are not converted into a smiley picture. Because everyone has long been accustomed to them, everyone understands what emotion these punctuation marks reproduce.

Features

Emoji is a smile that makes people easier to communicate in social media. Networks and retelling of the stories of famous works and films. When asked who needs this network, the creators of emoji.li (social network) replied that Twitter too was not needed for the first time.

It should be noted that emoji actively participate in pop culture. These amazing Japanese emoticons even played almost the main role in the video Katy Perry - Roar (in one version).

As a result, emoji slowly spread around the world, because they are very useful, funny and cute.

Conclusion

Not all emotions can convey printed words. Emoji is a wonderful find. Probably, for the present it is impossible to argue that with their help it is possible to fully correspond, but one thing is clear that it is also impossible to imagine communication without emoji. For example, they can quite easily convey the excessive tragedy of sadness and contain self-irony. Emoji proved that they are capable of much.