Fred Benenson - How to Speak Emoji

contents introduction You are about to embark on a journey to the forefront of human communication in the twenty-first century: emoji. Consider yourself an early adopter. Emoji originated in Japan and, as such, theyre tightly coupled with the countrys traditions, food, and culture. But since being adopted into Unicode (an effort to standardize how software interprets and stores letters and characters) and integrated into smartphones, theyre now everywhere, used around the world by young and old alike. Sometimes they communicate our feelings when text wont do, other times we use them to tell stories, and sometimes we just like to test our friends and family with emoji puzzles. I first discovered emoji in late 2008, when using them required downloading a special Japanese iPhone app to unlock the emoji-only keyboard.

I became obsessed with writing full sentences in emoji and sending them to everyone I knew. I wondered whether I could write a whole story in emoji, but then thought it might be more interesting to translate a book everyone already knew. Pushing the idea to its limit, I chose Herman Melvilles Moby Dick , and hired a small army of Web workers to crowdsource the project. In late 2010, I self-published Emoji Dick , and the book has since taken on a life of its ownin 2013 it was acquired by the US Library of Congress as their first emoji-only book, and it has been called everything from a tragedy to a masterpiece. Im now frequently asked whether I consider emoji a language. Thats a hard question to answer and the best I usually come up with is Not yet.

Which is where this book comes in. That people are even raising this question testifies to the fact that emoji are playing an increasing part of our day-to-day communication and, arguably, functioning something like a language. This book contains some common (and uncommon!) phrases translated into emoji. And just like any other spoken-language phrasebook or dictionary, these pages do not (and cannot!) supply the whole possible range of emoji usage you might encounter, but theyre a tool you can use. The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously argued that natural language is comprised of games, where we learn the meaning of words through their usage and context in life, just like the way we learn the rules of a game by playing it. I think that this is an apt way to think of emoji: Right now, they may feel like a game, but were actually using them to convey complex meaning and nuance.

The rules of this game are just beginning to emerge and I hope youll join me in what is bound to be an exciting development in the future of communication. basic language tips There are a handful of ways to think about emoji translation. Heres a couple of the techniques I used to make this book:

• Literal translation: Sometimes you find the exact emoji you needfor example, for the movie Alien and at other times you need a handful.
• Rebus: When an emoji is used to replace a word or part of a word. For example, + = Friday.
• Visual pun: Using emoji to imply a different meaning than originally intended. For example, for... well, you can guess.
• Telling the story: Sometimes you can take it a bit further and play out your intended meaning.

  So for break the ice, Ive had the emojis act it out: .

To make your own emoji translation, get creative! Dont worry about verbs or abstract concepts, focus on clever pairings, use literalness when you can (e.g. shooting pain uses to convey the word shooting ), and dont be afraid to use the emoji with words in them (e.g. ). Finally, have fun and dont take it too seriously; chances are people will understand the general gist of what youre trying to say and youll get points for being creative regardless.

	One of the originals and still one of the most frequently used emoji, this one works when youre simply feeling happy.
	Theres some confusion about why this face is both smiling and sweating, but this is the perfect emoji to use when expressing relief.
	For when youre smitten, or just very grateful.
	For when things are .
	This emojis name is confounded face, but its best used to illustrate complete emotional disintegration.
	A not-so-subtle way of conveying affection.
	A not-so-subtle way of conveying affection. Useful for arranging second or third dates.
	Techinically named pouting face, this one is surely better at conveying anger.
	Widely known as sob emoji this is perhaps more useful for insincere commiseration.
	The cold sweat emoji can be used to convey absolute desperation and/or fear.
	If you find yourself extremely shocked, this is a perfect emoji to useits loosely based on Edvard Munchs famous painting The Scream .
	Its unclear why we need cat variations of emoji faces, but probably useful if youre a cat lady.