Post #3955441

🤔 Are #emojis a universal language? - No, for two reasons. 1) They are not a language, as they do not show the properties that human languages have: grammatical structure and free combinatorics, enabling us to express complex thoughts. 2) They are not really universal. While many emojis are interpreted similarly all over the world (I guess it's pretty clear what one could mean by 🍕 ), some emoji meanings are closely tied to cultural assumptions (e.g., some of the gestures 👍 , buildings ⛩️ , food), and others are very context-dependent and might follow different conventions in various groups, including linguistic or regional groups (e.g., 🙃 for which we found strong differences between populations in Norway/US vs. Germany/Bulgaria). #WorldEmojiDay #linguistics