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🐣👅🕵🏼🐲💥🎙👓

• Given at the first ever EmojiCon.• It’s pretty visual, but I’ve tried to give information/context in the

notes fields, so you probably should read with those showing.• Unfortunately, you’re going to miss me performing a small section of

Beowulf, the Old English epic. Happily, you can hear someone else do some other parts:• Lowkey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zorjJzrrvA• Whoa, not lowkey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzmmPRG4smU

(skip the first 28 seconds)• You can check out other things about emoji, politics, data science and

linguistics here:• Twitter: @TSchnoebelen• Website: http://www.letslanguage.org• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerschnoebelen

Welcome to the slide-ument version of this presentation

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What this talk is about

🌍🚀🌌♻ 🔀🔃

🔧🔩🔨🌱📈🌳

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What this talk is about

🌍🚀🌌♻ 🔀🔃

🔧🔩🔨🌱📈🌳

(universals)(change)

(adaptation)(growth)

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Universal #1: Language changes

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Hwæt?

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😱⁉

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Sumerian (started ~3500 BC)

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Most scripts start out for accounting or administration

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Exclamation points don’t get popular on these til the 1970s

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“The iOS 10 emoji are way too lifelike, literal, objectively interpretable, and well, way less weird.”

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Universal #2: People are really good at adapting the resources they have available

Czech

Diphthongs

Prague-like, can also intensify affection

Or pejoration

Tongan

si’i and si’a

Different determiners express sympathy to their nouns (Hendrick, 2005)

Zapotec

Voice quality

• Falsetto: Respect to godparents, God

• Whisper: Important messages

• Breathy: Scolding, demanding

• Creaky: Commiserating

(Sicoli 2009)

gɪrma kowaji-k ati-eGirma ball-ACC kick-PAST "Girma kicked the ball '

gɪrma-k kowaji-k ati ʃe Girma-ACC ball-ACC kick MAL‘Girma kicked the ball (although someone else wanted it) '

Malefactives

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��

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Bunny as a reference, sparkles as a feeling

Conventions differ for even close domains

Positive

Negative

Conflict

Neutral

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

RestaurantsLaptops

• One Japanese woman who wore a microphone for two years

• 13,604 usable utterances • Here we see that breathiness and

pitch are controlled separately

Individuals vary how they use linguistic resources by who they’re talking to

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Bank…or bakkureru

��

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What does Drake mean?

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•

There are   ✖ 1️⃣ 1️⃣ s as

many 💀 when people are talking about 📱

Some quick math

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A quick history of emoji and #blacklivesmatter

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People sometimes literally see different things

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How do innovations spread?

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People change throughout their life, but more in “adolescence” (which could just be joining a beer aficionado site well after actual adolescence)

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Imagination—of geography, of gender, of race—structure expectations, interpretations, and choices

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• Languages change: it’s inevitable and desirable• Emoji alert us to the role of technology• (And playfulness)

• People adapt the linguistic resources they have• Changing meanings along the way

• For their social networks• And possibly beyond

• Variation doesn’t just mark a social category• It helps people REFELCT and CONSTRUCT social meaning….and potentially

social change

• The creation and spread of linguistic innovations involves thinking about power• Who is able to be creative?

• Who works with “symbolic capital”?• Local meanings can spread

• How connected are people—to what kinds of other people?

Quick review

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Thanks! 🖖🏽Tyler Schnoebelen@TSchnoebelen

http://www.letslanguage.org