This document provides an overview of emoji semantics and discusses how emoji derive their meanings. It begins with background on formal languages and how emoji differ as they have no set grammar rules. Emoji meanings are assigned through semiotic relationships like iconic, symbolic and indexical relations, as well as similarity to other emoji. Cultural and social interpretations of emoji can vary between groups. The document also examines how special Unicode characters like skin tones, flags and joining sequences can combine emoji to create new meanings and representations.

1. Emoji Semantics, Culture,
and Society
KNO.E.SIS CENTER, WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY, DAYTON, OHIO
SANJAYA@KNOESIS.ORG | HTTP://KNOESIS.ORG/PEOPLE/SANJAYAW/ | @SANJROCKZ
SANJAYA WIJERATNE
Anthropology 189:001
Anthropology of Social Media: The Study of Emoji
GUEST LECTURE AT THE ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY ON 27TH FEBRUARY, 2019.
MC: KELLY GUO

2. Overview
 Background – Formal languages & emoji
 Background – Semantics
 Emoji semantics
How emoji are composed?
 Emoji meaning assignment and derivation
 Social and cultural emoji meanings
 Unicodes that change emoji meaning
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
2

3. Background:
Formal Languages, Social
Media Language, and Emoji

4. What is a Formal Language?
 Consists of words whose letters are taken from an
alphabet and are well-formed according to a specific
set of rules (language grammar).
E.g., – MARY WALKED THE DOG.
Alphabet = {A, B, C, D, E, ……. X, Y, Z, .}
Words = {MARY, WALKED, THE, DOG, .}
Rules = {{SUBJECT, VERB, OBJECT, EOS}, {ARTICLE, NOUN}, ….. }
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
4

5. Language Used in Social Media
 Consists of words whose letters are taken from an
alphabet. Words can be both well-formed and ill-
formed and don’t always follow strict grammar
rules*.
E.g., – YEEEESSS #QUEEN #OSCAR19
Alphabet = {A, B, C, D, E, ……. X, Y, Z, #, 1,…..9}
Words = {YEEEESSS, #QUEEN, #OSCAR19}
Rules = {}
*Not an official definition 2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
5

6. Emoji Vs Formal Languages
 Both consist of Alphabets (Emoji Alphabet would be
all emoji pictographs)
 Both consist of letters (Each individual emoji would
be a letter E.g., – , , )
 Both consist of words (Emoji sequences (1 or more)
would be words. E.g., – , )
 Emoji use has no well-defined rules (grammar)!
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
6

7. Emoji is NOT a Formal
Language!
Then, what is it?

8. Emoji as a Language Element
 Show characteristics of pictographic functions (direct
representations of objects. E.g., – , )
 Show characteristics of logographic functions (word
replacement. E.g., – I )
 Emoji use in language can be viewed as an
amalgamation of pictographic-logographic
writing with alphabetic writing (Marcel Danesi)
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
8

9. Emoji use in Social Media
Image Source – https://goo.gl/rjS1hX
I Look
*Actual social media content
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
9

10. Background:
Semantics: The Study of
Meaning

11. Linguists Vs Philosophers
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
11
CAT
Linguists
Philosophers
Lemma/word/root
Signifier (sound pattern/symbol)
Signified (concept)
Meaning
Concept of the Cat
(four legs, tail, fur/hair, two
years, round face, etc.)
It looks like

12. Lexical Semantics
 Examines the relationship between the meaning of
the lexical units and the meaning of a sentence as a
whole
E.g., – Lexical meaning vs Sentence meaning
Leads to find words that can substitute each other (a.k.a.
Paradigmatic relations)
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
12

13. Paradigmatic Relations
 Synonymy – E.g., – smile and grin
 Antonymy – E.g., – happy Vs sad
 Homonymy – E.g., – eye and I
 Hyponymy – Inclusion of meaning
E.g., – Cat is a hyponym of animal (hypernym)
 Polysemy – E.g., – Shoot (kill) Vs Shoot (video)
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
13

14. Emoji Semantics:
How Emoji get their
Meanings?

15. What is in an Emoji?
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
15
 Unicode code point
 Emoji name
 Emoji short code
 Emoji definition
 Set of meanings
 Set of pictorial representations (images)
 Set of related emoji
 Set of categories

16. Emoji Semantics
 What is the smallest meaningful unit of an emoji
alphabet?
 How emoji meanings are assigned?
Initially, by the emoji creators
Later, by the users
 Emoji are inherently designed with no rigid semantics
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
16

17. How emoji get their meanings?
 Assignment of meanings to emoji symbols can be
explained by
Semiotic relationships (E.g., – Peirce’s three types of sign
relationships)
Meanings assigned via logographic functions
Paradigmatic relationships – holds between emoji of the
same category
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
17

18. How emoji get their meanings?
 Iconic relations (Peirce’s semiotic model)
Emoji resembles an object
E.g., – Guardsman emoji resembles guards at the
Buckingham Place
People see things differently, which could lead to different
meanings to the same emoji
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
18

19. How emoji get their meanings?
 Symbolic relations (Peirce’s semiotic model)
Emoji gets their meanings based on the symbolic
relationships that already agreed upon
E.g., – Red heart symbolizes love, thus, Red Heart emoji
gets that meaning
Symbolic relations should be already agreed upon for the
interpretation to work
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
19

20. How emoji get their meanings?
 Indexical relations (Peirce’s semiotic model)
Emoji gets their meanings because they defines the
existence of a concept (i.e., emoji is a natural sign)
E.g., – Children crossing emoji gets its “children crossing
area/ahead” based on indexical relations
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
20

21. How emoji get their meanings?
 Hyponymy relation (inclusion of meaning)
E.g., – Hatching Chick and Baby Chick
E.g., – Soft Ice Cream and Ice Cream
E.g., – Clock emoji (5.00 PM is an instance of Time, thus 5
O’clock emoji can be used to resent the concept of time)
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
21

22. How emoji get their meanings?
 Similarity in emoji pictorial representations
E.g., – Octopus and Squid emoji
Sometimes, errors in emoji designs could lead to these
types of new meanings
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
22

23. How emoji get their meanings?
 When people replace words using emoji (logographic)
Homonymy relations in languages (E.g., – eye & I)
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
23
Image Source – https://goo.gl/rjS1hX
I
*Actual social media content

24. How emoji get their meanings?
 Differences in platform-specific emoji representations
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
24
Image Source – https://grouplens.org/site-content/uploads/Emoji_Interpretation_Paper.pdf

25. Finding Platform-specific meanings
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
25
 We conducted a crowd-sourced study to find
platform-specific meanings of 40 emoji
Extracted all emoji meanings from EmojiNet
Showed platform-specific emoji pictographs and a
meaning, one at a time to the users
Users rated whether a given meaning is associated with the
platform-specific picture shown to them

26. Finding Platform-specific meanings
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
26
 27/40 emoji had at least one platform-specific emoji
meaning (67.5%)
 For smiling face with heart-eyes emoji, only Windows
platform’s representation was associated with the
meaning “smile”
Image Source – http://www.unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html

27. Social and Cultural Emoji
Meanings

28. Social and Cultural Interpretations
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
28
Gas Vs Marijuana Namaste Vs Pray Vs High-Five
English Language Vs American
Sign Language

29. Emoji Chain Gang Usage Non-Gang
Usage
32.25% 1.14%
53% 1.71%
Emoji Meaning and Social Circles
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
29
Image Source – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.09516.pdf

30. Emoji Meaning and Social Circles
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
30
 We looked at the emoji usage of self-identified
Twitter users suffering from depression
 We analyzed100+ Twitter profiles in a pilot study
Users who were suffering from eating disorders tend to use
pig-face emoji in their Twitter profile descriptions
The use of pig-face emoji could be associated with the
weight gain

31. Emoji Interpretation Across Countries
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
31
Image Source – https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2967278

32. Accessing Emoji Meanings by Emoji
Creators
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
32
 Emoji creators submit possible emoji meanings in
their proposals
 Once accepted, these will be available in Unicode
Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) at
https://www.unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/annotatio
ns/other.html

33. Accessing User Generated Emoji
Meanings
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
33
 Using a crowd-source
emoji meaning dictionary
E.g. – Emoji Dictionary –
Crowdsourced resource of
emoji meanings
Image Source – https://emojidictionary.emojifoundation.com/thinking_face

34. EmojiNet: http://emojinet.knoesis.org
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
34
Image Source – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.04652.pdf

35. EmojiNet: http://emojinet.knoesis.org
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
35
Image Source – http://emojinet.knoesis.org

36. Emoji Semantics: Similarity
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
36
Image Source – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.04652.pdf

37. Distributional Semantics
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
37
 Finds semantic properties of linguistic items (words)
based on their distribution in a large corpus
Based on Distributional Hypothesis (Harris, 1954)
Words that are used and occur in the same contexts tend to purport
similar meanings
 We use large text corpora with emoji to learn
distributional semantics of emoji, which reveals
relationships among emoji

38. Image Source – http://www.henningpohl.net/papers/Pohl2017TOCHI.pdf

39. Unicodes that Change Emoji
Meanings

40. Not All Emoji are Equal
 Some emoji are single Unicode code points
 E.g., – , ,
 Some emoji are combinations of multiple emoji
 E.g., –
 Some Unicode characters are used modify emoji and
create new ones, which leads to new meanings
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
40
Image Source – https://blog.emojipedia.org/rainbow-flag-emoji-details-published/

41. Special Unicodes and Emoji
 Variation Selectors (1 – 16) – U+FE00 to U+FE0F
 Zero Width Joiner character (ZWJ) – U+200D
 Regional Indicators – E.g., – U+1F1FA, U+1F1F8
 Combining Enclosing Circle Backslash – U+20E0
 Combining Enclosing Keycap – U+20E3
 Skin tones (Fitzpatrick modifiers)
 Hair types (Curly, White, Red, Bold)
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
41

42. Variation Selectors
 Consist of 16 Unicode characters
 Used to select a specific glyph variants for a Unicode
character
E.g., –
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
42
Image Sources – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variation_Selectors_(Unicode_block)
https://blog.emojipedia.org/rainbow-flag-emoji-details-published/

43. Zero Width Joiners (ZWD/Zwidge)
 ZWJ is a non-printing character used to combine two
or more Unicode code points
E.g., –
 Backward compatible
 No prior approval is required before a vendor
introduces a new one
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
43
Image Source – https://blog.emojipedia.org/rainbow-flag-emoji-details-published/

44. Regional Indicators
 Unicode regional indicators are rendered as flags
E.g., – USA Flag Emoji (U+1F1FA U+1F1F8) is consist of:
 U+1F1FA – Regional Indicator Symbol Letter U
 U+1F1F8 – Regional Indicator Symbol Letter S
 U+1F1FA U+1F1F8 combination provides US which renders
 England, Scotland, and Wales flags use Waving Black
Flag emoji + regional indicators
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
44

45. Combining Enclosing Circle
Backslash
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
45
 Combining Enclosing Circle Backslash (U+20E0)
appears on top of the proceeding character
Image Source – https://twitter.com/Emojipedia/status/1097961463690326016

46. Combining Enclosing Keycap
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
46
 Used to create boxed-shape keypad emoji – U+20E3
E.g., – Creation of Keycap: 0 emoji –
 U+0030 – Zero text glyph
 U+FE0F – Variation Selector 16
 U+20E3 – Combining Enclosing Keycap
0
VS
16

47. Emoji Skin tones (Fitzpatrick modifiers)
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
47
 Numerical classification for human skin color to
measure the effects of UV rays on human skin
Adopted in 2015 to denote emoji skin tones
5 skin tones are used (1st and 2nd Fitzpatrick types are
represented by a single Unicode character)
Type 1-2 (U+1F3FB) , Type 3 (U+1F3FC)
Type 4 (U+1F3FD) , Type 5 (U+1F3FE)
Type 6 (U+1F3FF)

48. Hair Type Modifiers
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
48
 Four hair type modifiers are currently supported
Red hair – U+1F9B0
Curly hair – U+1F9B1
White hair – U+1F9B3
Bold – U+1F9B2
 E.g., – Person with Red Hair – + + 
U+1F468 U+200D U+1F9B0
ZWJ

49. Recap
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
49
 Emoji is not a Formal Language
 Emoji meanings are assigned by emoji creators and
people who use them
 Emoji meanings change across cultures and
geographies
 Certain Unicode characters can be used to create new
emoji (thus, adds new meanings)

50. Acknowledgements
2/28/2019Anthropology 189:001, UC Berkeley
50
Collaborators
Prof. Amit Sheth
Wright State University
Prof. Derek Doran
Wright State University
Lakshika Balasuriya
(Gracenote Inc.)
Funding

51. Thank You!
Any Questions?
SANJAYA@KNOESIS.ORG | HTTP://KNOESIS.ORG/PEOPLE/SANJAYAW/ | @SANJROCKZ