The Linguist

10 The Linguist Vol/61 No/2 2022 thelinguist.uberflip.com NEWS & EDITORIAL World Emoji Day (yes, that's a thing), when Facebook introduced soundmoji to its Messenger function. Into the formal arena Emoji have become a permanent fixture in everyday communications of all types. In 2016, a survey by the marketing platform Emogi found that 92% of the online population use emoji, with other data in the 'Emoji Report' revealing that 2.3 trillion mobile phone messages had incorporated them. There has not been a similar survey since, but we could surmise that the number has risen. Furthermore, these images have crept into arenas previously considered inappropriate because they were too formal. In countries including the USA, Canada and the UK, they have begun to appear much more frequently as evidence in court. A simple google search for 'emoji and British law' proves this point, returning articles on 'Emojis in Law: Making a mess of messaging' and 'In Britain, Lawyers Call for Guidance on Interpreting Emoji'. 2 The rise of telemedicine, helped along by the pandemic, has made these images much more common in medical settings. Think of discharge instructions at a hospital, face. 2. A drawing of a face consisting of a usually yellow circle with an upturned curve for a smile and two dots for eyes. • Stickers: like emoji but added by third-party applications such as Facebook Messenger and iMessage. They are not limited by a standard (like Unicode), allowing them to be more customisable and expand their use more quickly, but as a result they rarely work cross-platform. The first appearance of emoticons was in the early 1980s and for emoji it was the 1990s. Although the two types of images now co-exist, many people view emoji as a more complex version of emoticons. Emoji are clearly the dominant version of this type of image in social media and other digital communication today. They grew to be more than a novelty and by 2015 an emoji (specifically the 'face with tears of joy' emoji ) was the OED Word of the Year. This was a first. In 2019, emoji and emoticons – together as one category – were named 'word' of the year by la Fundación del español urgente. These images had already become cemented in the mainstream of digital communication. Since then, however, their use in digital communication has exploded. The latest twist came on 17 July 2021, on L ike it or not, social media and other forms of digital communication are here to stay. And so, too, are emoji, smileys, stickers and emoticons – not to mention the newest twist: soundmoji. But what does all of this have to do with medical or legal interpreting, or even translating, you ask? Emoji are written and interpreted using the spoken word. N'er the twain shall meet. Oh really? In reality, the issue is a current one and nobody seems to be providing guidance on how to deal with it. First, let's define a few terms: 1 • Emoji: small images, symbols or icons used in text fields in electronic communication (as in text messages, email and social media) to express the emotional attitude of the writer, convey information succinctly, communicate a message playfully without using words, etc. • Emoticon: a group of keyboard characters, such as :-), that typically represents a facial expression, or suggests an attitude or emotion, and that is used especially in computerised communication (e.g. email). • Smiley (also smiley face): 1. A digital icon, sequence of keyboard symbols, or handwritten or printed equivalent, that serves to represent a facial expression, such as :‐) for a smiling face or ;‐) for a winking In this potted version of her Threlford Lecture 2022, Holly Silvestri considers this new challenge for linguists What the emoji? IMAGES © SHUTTERSTOCK

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