Originating on Japanese mobile phones in the late 1990s, emoji have become increasingly popular worldwide since their international inclusion in Apples iPhone, which was followed by other mobile operating systems. In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries named an emoji the Word of the year.
Research has shown that emoji are often misunderstood. In some cases, this is related to how the actual emoji design is interpreted by the viewer, in other cases the emoji that was sent, was not shown in the same way at the receiving side.
The difference between these two problems is, that the first relates to the cultural or contextual interpretation of the smiley. When the author picks a smiley, the author thinks about the smiley in a certain way, but the same smiley may not trigger the same thoughts with the receiver. See also Models of communication.
The second problem is technological. When an author of a message picks a smiley from a list of smiley faces, this smiley is encoded in some way during the transmission, and if the author and the reader do not use the same software or operating system for their devices, the readers device may visualize the same smiley in a different way. Small changes to a smileys look may completely alter its perceived meaning with the receiver.
The third problem is structural. Emoji has no sentence structure yet, such as grammar. Thus when used in communication, the same emoji sentence can be interpreted differently between different people. Emojigraphy is a form of structural grammar in Emoji as a Language. Although the implementation of grammar is still in infancy stage, its the first step to make Emoji Language a more reliable way of communication.
The exact appearance of emoji is not prescribed but varies between fonts, in the same way that normal typefaces can display letters differently. For example, the Apple Color Emoji typeface is proprietary to Apple, and can only be used on Apple devices. Different computing companies have developed their own fonts to display emoji, some of which have been open-sourced to permit their reuse. Both colour and monochrome emoji typefaces exist, as well as at least one animated design.
In January 2017, in what is believed to be the first large-scale study of emoji usage, researchers at the University of Michigan analysed over 427 million messages input via the Kika Emoji Keyboard and announced that the Face With Tears of Joy was the most popular emoji. The Heart and the Heart eyes emoji stood second and third respectively. The study also found that the French used the emoji associated with love the most. People in countries with high levels of individualism, like Australia, France and the Czech Republic, used more happy emoji, while this was not so for people in Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Argentina, where people used more negative emoji in comparison to cultural hubs known for restraint and self-discipline, like Turkey, France and Russia.
Emoji are now considered by many to form their own "language". There has also been discussion among legal experts on whether or not emoji such as the gun and face could be admissible in court. Furthermore, as emoji continue to develop and grow as a "language" of symbols, there may also be the potential of the formation of emoji "dialects". This is further backed up by the changing use of emoji. Emoji are being used as more than just to show reactions and emotions. Snapchat have even incorporated emoji in their trophy and friends system with each emoji showing a complex meaning.