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Smiley faces revolutionise communication

Lauren Kate Rawlins
By Lauren Kate Rawlins, ITWeb digital and innovation contributor.
Johannesburg, 01 Dec 2015
The 'face with tears of joy' emoji has been named Oxford Dictionary's word of the year.
The 'face with tears of joy' emoji has been named Oxford Dictionary's word of the year.

For the first time, Oxford Dictionary's word of the year is a pictograph: the 'face with tears of joy' emoji.

Oxford University Press partnered with SwiftKey to explore frequency and usage statistics for some of the most popular emoji across the world. The face with tears of joy emoji was chosen because it was the most used emoji globally in 2015.

SwiftKey identified that it made up 20% of all the emoji used in the UK, and 17% of those in the US. Use rose from 4% in the UK last year and 7% in the US.

"Emoji have been a part of teen texting culture for years, but it was really only in the last 12 months that we saw emoji culture explode into the mainstream," says Casper Grathwohl, president of the dictionaries division.

"We have been preoccupied with this form of communication, and it is not surprising, as a 21st century culture, we have become so visually driven, emotionally expressive and excessively immediate. Traditional alphabet language has a hard time keeping up and adapting to our needs here."

"The emoji has solved a fundamental drawback of written communication; namely its inability to add a layer of emotion to emphasise a short phrase or comment without adding more words," says Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx. "One can think of it as mood punctuation. The more people use it, the more they depend on it to give added meaning to their words."

"Coupling a pictogram language with traditional language allows for a deeper subtlety and richness," says Grathwohl.

Emoji have been around since the late 1990s, but 2015 saw their use increase massively.

"It is safe to say that the tears of joy emoji has become part of our [South Africa's] vocabulary, and that probably applies across Africa," says Goldstuck.

Judges said the face with tear of joy emoji was chosen because it best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015. Goldstuck says he thought Oxford was going for a publicity gimmick when choosing that emoji. "The standard smiley faces are far more commonly used, but would not be seen as 'new'.

"The choice does, however, neatly symbolise the extent to which communication is being revolutionised by instant messaging and social media, and the extent to which textual and visual communication are being blurred by what the smartphone makes possible."

The term emoji originates from Japanese: e for 'picture' and moji meaning 'letter' or 'character'. It is not a shortened version of the English word, emoticon - which is a facial expression made up of punctuation and characters like :-P). The similarity is a coincidence.

There were three other tech-related words or phrases that made the short list this year. They were:

Sharing economy, noun: An economic system in which assets or services are shared between private individuals, either free or for a fee, typically by means of the Internet.

Dark Web, noun: The part of the World Wide Web that is only accessible by means of special software, allowing users and Web site operators to remain anonymous or untraceable.

Ad blocker, noun: A piece of software designed to prevent advertisements from appearing on a Web page.

Casper Grathwohl, dictionaries division president at Oxford University Press, commenting on Oxford Dictionary's word of the year.

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