Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 5
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Les « emoji » constituent-ils un langage à part entière?

(Are emojis part of a fully-fledged language?)

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Newspaper | Le Monde
Date | 15.3.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, research/study
Summary | In 2015, an emoji was chosen as the word of the year, and two years before that, the novel Moby Dick was translated in emojis. Emojis are everywhere; are they becoming a new universal language? Two linguists conducted a study and revealed that emojis are like a cultural mirror. They also investigated emoji use in different countries and revealed geographical differences in the type of emoji used. Emojis are not a language; they are a complement to language. Some people might think it’s a language because emojis look like hieroglyphics. Emojis are mostly used to transmit emotions.
Image Description | Photograph of a hand clicking on several emojis on a screen, and screenshot of Andy Murray's tweet composed of emojis.
Image Tags | emojis, hand(s), tablet, Twitter

L’emoji, un caractère envahissant

(The emoji, an invading character)

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Newspaper | Le Monde
Date | 10.5.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat
Summary | The Unicode Consortium (UC) was accused of spending too much time on emojis and not enough time on minority languages. Michael Everson complained because his propositions (e.g. coding medieval punctuation marks) have been ignored by the UC. However, the UC only counts 1500 emojis out of 120000 characters. Accoding to linguist Gretchen McCulloch, emojis are not a fully-fledge language; they are a complement to language.
Image Description | Screenshot of a new text message with with many different emojis.
Image Tags | emojis, text

Apple transforme son emoji pêche

(Apple transforms its peach emoji)

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Newspaper | Le Figaro
Date | 3.11.2016
Language | French
Country | France
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, spelling
Summary | Not everyone agrees with the new iOS update; some emojis have disappeared. For instance, the old peach emoji was replaced by another emoji that looks more like an apricot. Changing emojis is another way of saying "you should write this way and not that way", which is similar to a spelling reform. Emojis are becoming political. Finally, emojis are not a threat to language; they are a way to complement it.
Image Description | Images of the old and new peach emojis, and photograph of a cap with the message "make peach (picture of the new peach emoji) peach (picture of the old peach emoji) again".
Image Tags | emojis

Un retour aux hiéroglyphes?

(A return to hireoglyphics?)

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Newspaper | Le Matin
Date | 24.4.2015
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, grammar, language threat
Summary | The use of emojis is a global phenomenon that is rapidly growing. Should we be worried about it? A linguist from the University of Zurich claims that it is almost like “a return to hieroglyphics”, but that “emoji” is not a language: there is no grammatical structure. The linguist also states that nowadays, “emojis replace words and are not just a complement”. However, linguists do not seem to be worried. Another linguist from the University of Lausanne talks about the advantages of such visual communication: it fosters creativity, and adds nuances and precisions.
Image Description | Digital image of a chart representing which emojis are used the most in the world.
Image Tags | chart, emojis

Les émojis, ces drôles de petites bêtes virtuelles

(Emojis, those funny little virtual creatures)

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Newspaper | La Tribune de Genève
Date | 6.2.2016
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat, research/study, texting
Summary | Emojis are becoming a “global” phenomenon. For example, Facebook recently introduced a set of emojis, companies use them in their advertisement campaigns, and some people would like to create a “language” with emojis. Should we fear an impoverishment of “traditional languages”? Some linguists claim that emojis do not replace words but serve as complements in our communication. They can substitute a gesture or an intonation that we usually have in our oral exchanges. Another study concluded that text messages are not a threat to orthography, and that we have always used images to express ourselves.
Image Description | Digital image representing different emojis: sick emoji, cowboy emoji, tongue-out emoji, winking eye emoji etc.
Image Tags | emojis

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