Seminar 2: the lexical meaning and its interpretation in modern linguistics

Who Invented Emoticons and Emoji?

Chances are you use them on a regular basis. In a way, they've become an intrinsic part of electronic communication. But do you know how Emoticons originated and what led to their widespread popularity? An emoticon is a digital icon that conveys a human expression. It is inserted from a menu of visual expressions or created by using a sequence of keyboard symbols. Emoticons represent how a writer or texter is feeling and help provide better context to what a person writes. For example, if something you wrote was meant as a joke and you want to make that clear, you could add a laughing face emoticon to your text. Another example would be using an emoticon of a kissing face to express the fact that you like someone without having to write, "I like you." The classic emoticon that most people have seen is the little smiley happy face, that emoticon can be inserted or created with keyboard strokes with :‐). Professor Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, used the first digital emoticon on the morning of September 19th, 1982. And it was a smiley face :-). Emoticon and an Emoji are almost the same. Emoji is a Japanese word that translates in English as "e" for "picture" and "moji" for "character." Emoji were first used as a set of emoticons that are programmed into a cell phone. They were provided by Japanese mobile companies as a bonus for their customers.