Background

Language is a vital part of our society. Without it, communication will not be as easy as

we have today. According to McWhorter (2013), language refers to grammar and other rules and

norms that make symbols and sounds in order for the people to understand and comprehend

messages. Also, according to Deutscher (2005), language is man’s greatest invention and it is what

makes human, human. This means that without language, everything will not be stable.

Communication will never occur. Chaos will be inevitable. According to De Valoes (2014),

human’s ability to create various, unique, and diverse language harnesses the ability to form lasting

bonds with one another. In other words, it creates an atmosphere that will help individuals to

express their voices, thoughts, and opinions with the other citizen of this world. Language is the

key for communication. It unlocks the borders within each one of us.

As time passes by, everything continuously evolves. Technology is now at its peak and it

creates an atmosphere wherein everything now is in the hands of the people. The use of language

is now more diverse since communication is not only limited on face-to-face basis. The occurrence

of virtual messaging has helped a lot of people to express themselves. Hence, it also helps language

reach its full potential as communication now is more diverse and can easily be reached by

everyone.

Text message is one of the products of technology. Merriam Dictionary defined it as “a

short message that is sent electronically to a cellphone or to other device”. Meaning to say, text

messages is an evolve way of communicating. According to Luke Arthur (n.d), One of the reasons

that people use text messaging frequently is because it is a convenient way of communicating

which comes to another reason for it saves time. People don't have to worry about the formalities
that come with a phone conversation. They can use shorthand to speed up the amount of time that

it takes to type out a message.

In line with this, emojis play a big role in the occurrence of text messaging in this world.

According Da Costa (2018), Emojis are visual representation of emotion, object, or symbol. It is

an evolution of emoticons that is being used on different smartphones around the globe (A Hakami,

2017). According to Christensson (2016), emojis can be inserted in line with text because each

icon corresponds to a Unicode value for a specific character. Inserting an emoji is just like typing

a letter or symbol on your keyboard. Gullberg (2016) stated that emoji are used as a divider

between clauses. They compensate for the lack of non-verbal cues in written communication, and

that they are efficient emotional enhancers. In addition to this, the results also show that emojis

can help manage the conversation and younger people use more emojis than older people. She

suggested that the emojis are needed to convey additional information in messages and helps

prevent misunderstandings. In short, emojis are made to give way to a clearer and smoother

communication within the people.

In the year 2015, Oxford dictionary declared an emoji – face with tears of joy, the word of

the year. This gave way to the conversation of whether emojis are becoming a language. In fact,

some people stated that emojis are the universal language. According to Lukas (2016), one of the

purposes of emojis is to compensate the inability to convey facial expression, tone, voice and

gesture in digital communication. It also erases the language barrier between people because

emojis are representations of voices, thoughts, and opinions of the people around the globe.

Muhammad (2017) mentioned that the young adults use emojis frequently, and the most reasons

of using emojis were to express their feelings and emotions through the emoji chosen, to make the

conversations more interesting, to strengthen what they meant in texts, and make the conversation
less tense. Language and emojis almost share similar approach in communication. They both help

in conveying what people want to express.

However, some linguistics argue that emojis are in fact, destroying language. According to

McCulloch and Gawne (n.d), emojis, if language must have a grammar to be considered one. It’s

also impossible to translate a book to a “language” of emoji because confusion will arise. A study

by Lebduska (2014) showed that emoji are culturally and contextually bound and are open to

reinterpretation and misinterpretation. Emoji show vagueness in its meaning and only few are

assumed to be universally understood (Wicke, 2017). He also stated that emoji tend to be used

metaphorically (symbolic) and metonymically (conceptual). While some of the Emoji are

interpreted almost entirely metaphorically, others developed their very own interpretation. These

misinterpretations of the emoji's meaning could lead to a communication breakdown, and in some

cases may damage relationships (Tigwell & Flatla, 2016). Hence, emojis are still just visual

representations of language. It can’t stand alone (Barbieri et. al., n.d.)

Emoji conveys its meaning through its graphic resemblance to a physical object (e.g.,

smiling face, food, vehicles), however it is not well understood how people interpret the meaning

of the emoji (Miller et al., 2016). Emoji are visually-detailed graphics that are more open to

interpretation and may be rendered differently by the sender and recipient. The use of emojis

strongly depends on both the context and the community to which the same emoji is addressed

(Barbieri, Ranzano & Saggion, 2016). The use of the emojis is unpredictable and socially

determined. It is argued that how people interpret the meaning of emojis are not well understood

(Miller et al., 2016).

These things about emojis opened the conversation that this topic should be given much

more attention. It is widespread, yet only those few studied it in a qualitative approach. This study
may not be used to generalize the answer of all the emoji-user, but it can guarantee in generating

a lot of data that is essential in studying this topic. Emojis are now part of our life. It must be

studied thoroughly and deeply.