Giannoulis Elena Wilde Lukas Ra Ed Emoticons Kaomoji and Emo

Emoticons, Kaomoji, and Emoji
This collection offers a comprehensive treatment of emoticons, kaomoji,

and emoji, examining these digital pictograms and ideograms from
a range of perspectives to comprehend their increasing role in the
transformation of communication in the digital age. Featuring a detailed
introduction and eleven contributions from an interdisciplinary group of
scholars, the volume begins by outlining the history and development of
the field, situating emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji—expressing a variety
of moods and emotional states, facial expressions, as well as all kinds
of everyday objects—as both a topic of global relevance but also within
multimodal, semiotic, picture theoretical, cultural and linguistic research.
The book shows how the interplay of these systems with text can alter
and shape the meaning and content of messaging and examines how this
manifests itself through different lenses, including the communicative,
sociopolitical, aesthetic, and cross-cultural. Making the case for further
study on emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji and their impact on digital
communication, this book is key reading for students and scholars in
sociolinguistics, media studies, Japanese studies, and language and
communication.
Elena Giannoulis is Junior Professor for Japanese Literature at the

Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies at Freie Universität
Berlin, Germany.
Lukas R.A. Wilde is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of

Media Studies of the University of Tuebingen, Germany.
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Emoticons, Kaomoji, and Emoji

The Transformation of Communication in the Digital Age
Edited by Elena Giannoulis and Lukas R.A. Wilde
Emoticons, Kaomoji,
and Emoji
The Transformation of
Communication in the
Digital Age
Edited by Elena Giannoulis

and Lukas R.A. Wilde
First published 2020
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
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authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
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Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Giannoulis, Elena, editor. | Wilde, Lukas R A, editor.
Title: Emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji : the transformation of communication
in the digital age / edited by Elena Giannoulis, Lukas R. A. Wilde.
Description: 1. | New York : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge Research
in Language and Communication ; 6 | Includes bibliographical references
and index. | Summary: “This collection offers a comprehensive treatment
of emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji, examining these digital pictograms and
ideograms from a range of perspectives to comprehend their increasing
role in the transformation of communication in the digital age.
Featuring a detailed introduction and eleven contributions from an
interdisciplinary group of scholars, the volume begins by outlining the
history and development of the field, situating emoticons, kaomoji, and
emoji – expressing a variety of moods and emotional states, facial
expressions, as well as all kinds of everyday objects– as both a topic
of global relevance but also within multimodal, semiotic, picture
theoretical, cultural and linguistic research. The book shows how the
interplay of these systems with text can alter and shape the meaning and
content of messaging and examines how this manifests itself through
different lenses, including the communicative, socio-political,
aesthetic, and cross-cultural. Making the case for further study on
emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji and their impact on digital communication,
this book is key reading for students and scholars in sociolinguistics,
media studies, Japanese studies, and language and communication”—
Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019021405 | ISBN 9781138589261 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780429491757 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Emojis. | Emoticons. | Symbolism in communication. |
Interpersonal communication. | Communication—Technological innovations.
Classification: LCC P99.63 .E46 2019 | DDC 004.601/48—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021405
ISBN: 978-1-138-58926-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-49175-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Contributors vii
1 Emoticons, Kaomoji, and Emoji: The Transformation

of Communication in the Digital Age 1
E L E N A G I A N N O UL IS, FRE IE UN IVE RSITÄ T B ER LIN,
G E R M A N Y, AN D L UKAS R.A. WIL DE , UN IVE R SIT Y OF
TU E B I N G E N , GE RMA N Y
PART I
Intercultural Mediations 23
2 Not Everyone 💩s: Or, the Question of Emoji as

‘Universal’ Expression 25
J O N ATH A N E . AB E L , P E N N SYLVA N IA STATE U NIV ER SIT Y, U SA
3 Cultural Literacy in the Empire of Emoji Signs: Who Is 😂? 44

A L I S A F R E E DMAN , UN IVE RSITY O F O RE GO N, U SA
4 Emoticons: Digital Lingua Franca or a Culture-Specific

Product Leading to Misunderstandings? 67
M A R Z E N A KA RP IN SKA, UN IVE RSITY O F TO KY O, JAPAN; PAU LA
K U R Z AW S K A, FRE IE UN IVE RSITÄ T B E RL IN , GER MANY; AND
K ATA R Z Y N A RO ZAN SKA, RE P UB L IC O F KO R EA
PART II
Intersectional Mediations 83
5 ‘Impact taisetsu da!’: The Use of Emoji and Kaomoji in

Dansō Escort Blogs Between Gender Expression and
Emotional Labor 85
M A RTA FA N ASCA , UN IVE RSITY O F MA N CH EST ER , U K
vi Contents
6 Emoticons in Social Media: The Case of Japanese
Facebook Users 104
M I C H A E L A O B E RWIN KL E R, UN IVE RSITY O F
TU E B I N G E N , GE RMA N Y
PART III
Linguistic Mediations 125
7 ‘Iconographetic Communication’ in Digital Media:

Emoji in WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook—
From a Linguistic Perspective 127
C H R I S TI N A MARGRIT SIE VE R, UN IVE RSITY OF Z Ü R IC H,
S W I TZ E R L A ND
8 A Cultural Exploration of the Use of Kaomoji, Emoji,

and Kigō in Japanese Blog-Post Narratives 148
B A R RY K AVAN A GH , TO H O KU UN IVE RSITY, JAPAN
PART IV
Pictorial Mediations 169
9 The Elephant in the Room of Emoji Research: Or,

Pictoriality, to what Extent? 171
L U K A S R . A . WIL DE , UN IVE RSITY O F TUE B IN GEN, GER MANY
10 Construction of Iconicity in Scenes of Kaomoji 197

R I S A M ATS U DA , UN IVE RSITY O F TSUKUB A, JAPAN
PART V
Material Mediations 209
11 Who Is Afraid of Mr. Yuk? The Display of the Basic

Emotion of Disgust in an ‘Analogue Precursor’ to
Contemporary Emoji 211
A L E X A N D E R CH RISTIA N , GE RMAN Y
12 From Digital to Analog: Kaomoji on the Votive Tablets of

an Anime Pilgrimage 227
D A L E K . A N DRE WS, TO H O KU GAKUIN UN IVER SIT Y, JAPAN
Index 247
Contributors
Jonathan E. Abel Prof. Dr. Jonathan E. Abel is an Associate Professor of

Comparative Literature and Japanese Studies at the Pennsylvania State
University, USA. His Redacted: The Archives of Censorship in Transfer
Japan (University of California Press, 2012) won the Weatherhead Asia
Institute First Book Prize. His current project considers the mass mar-
keting of new media as world-transforming against the reverse mimesis
at work within those very media.
Dale K. Andrews Prof. Dr. Dale K. Andrews graduated from Southern
Illinois University, Carbondale, USA, with a degree in Anthropology
(1996). He then entered graduate school at Tōhoku University (Sendai,
Japan), receiving a PhD in Religious Studies (2007). Presently, he is
employed as an Associate Professor in the Department of Language
and Culture, Faculty of Liberal Arts at Tōhoku Gakuin University (Sen-
dai, Japan). His main field of research is Japanese folklore, specifically
folk belief. He has researched shamanism, supernatural retribution,
household relations, and rural politics. In 2007 he stumbled across
the emerging phenomenon of anime pilgrimages and became intrigued
by the intersection of ‘digital and analog worlds’, where popular cul-
ture merges with folk traditions. His academic affiliations include the
American Folklore Society, Anthropology of Japan in Japan, the Asso-
ciation for Indology and the Study of Religion (board of directors), the
Folklore Society of Japan, the Folklore Society of Tōhoku (board of
executive directors), and the Japanese Association for Religious Studies
(body of councilors).
Alexander Christian Dr. Alexander Christian was awarded both his MA
and his PhD in Communication Studies by the University of Duisburg-
Essen, Germany. He has also studied Film, Television, and English in
Duisburg-Essen, the Ruhr University Bochum, and the Universidad de
Málaga. His dissertation Piktogramme: Tendenzen in der Gestaltung
und im Einsatz grafischer Symbole (Pictograms: Tendencies in Design
and Use of Graphical Symbols; Herbert von Halem, 2017) investigates
the causes that require changes in the designs and uses of pictograms
viii Contributors
and explores the question of how the understanding and the effective-
ness of pictograms can be improved by adding features of nonver-
bal communication such as gestures, facial expressions, or posture.
In his preceding thesis, Piktogramme: Kritischer Beitrag zu einer
Begriffsbestimmung (Pictograms: Critical Contribution to a Definition;
Shaker, 2009) he already developed a critical conception of pictograms
and traced their semiotic framework. Alexander Christian now heads
the Press and Public Relations Department at Stadtmarketing Herne
GmbH, where he has launched a new ‘city brand’.
Marta Fanasca Marta Fanasca obtained her PhD in Japanese Studies from
the University of Manchester, UK. Her PhD research focuses on female-
to-male crossdresser escorts known as dansō and on how they perform
masculinity and on the emotional labor they perform in meetings with
customers. She applied ethnographic approaches and methodologies
to semistructured interviews and observations and spent nine months
in Japan working as a crossdresser escort herself. An article in which
she presents the findings of her research was published in Orizzonti
giapponesi: Ricerche, idee, prospettive (Japanese Horizons: Research,
Ideas, Perspectives; Aracne Editrice, 2018). In addition, Marta Fanasca
is also interested in contemporary Japanese visual arts and has pub-
lished two articles about the contemporary artists Yamamoto Takato
and Matsui Fuyuko.
Alisa Freedman Prof. Dr. Alisa Freedman is a Professor of Japanese Lit-
erature, Cultural Studies, and Gender at the University of Oregon,
USA. Her current research explores issues concerning globalization,
gender, and urbanization in 20th- and 21st-century Japanese literature
and popular culture. Her major publications include Tokyo in Transit:
Japanese Culture on the Rails and Road (Stanford University Press,
2010), an annotated translation of Kawabata Yasunari’s The Scarlet
Gang of Asakusa (University of California Press, 2005), a coedited vol-
ume on Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan
(Stanford University Press, 2013), and a coedited 40-chapter textbook
on Introducing Japanese Popular Culture (Routledge, 2017). She has
published refereed articles and book chapters on Japanese modernism,
urban studies, youth culture, media discourses about gender roles, tele-
vision history, humor as social critique, and intersections of literature
and digital media, as well as translations of Japanese novels and short
stories.
Elena Giannoulis Prof. Dr. Elena Giannoulis studied Japanese Studies
and Literary Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and Keiō
University, Japan. In September 2009, she received her PhD in Japa-
nese Studies. Currently, she is a Junior Professor of Japanese Litera-
ture at the Institute of Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.
Contributors ix
Furthermore, she is the principal investigator of the research project
“Emotional Machines: The Technological Transformation of Intimacy
in Japan” (2017–2022), funded by the European Research Council.
In addition, she is a translator of Japanese literature. Her fields of
interest include modern and contemporary Japanese literature and
culture, affective sciences, self-narratives and translation theory. In
2011, she received a postdoctoral fellowship in the Humanities in the
US, awarded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Moreover, she obtained
a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Interdisciplinary Graduate
School “Languages of Emotion” where she did research on ‘coolness’
and other forms of affect control. Currently, she is working on her
second book, which focuses on the depiction of emotions in modern
and contemporary Japanese literature. Her first book, published in
2010, deals with the notion of ‘authenticity’ in contemporary Japanese
literary self-narratives.
Marzena Karpinska Marzena Karpinska is currently pursuing her PhD in
Sociolinguistics at the University of Tokyo, Japan, in the Department of
Language and Information Sciences. She received her Master’s degree
in Japanese Studies from the University of Warsaw, Poland, and in Lin-
guistics from the University of Tokyo, Japan. She was awarded a fully
funded research period at the University of Foreign Studies in Tokyo,
as well as three consecutive MEXT Scholarships at the University of
Tokyo. Currently, she is doing research on the role of visual cues in
speech perception.
Barry Kavanagh Dr. Barry Kavanagh is an Associate Professor at the
Institute for Excellence in Higher Education at Tōhoku University in
Japan. He received his PhD in Linguistics from the Graduate School
of International Cultural Studies at Tōhoku University. His principal
research interests lie in the areas of Japanese and Western online com-
puter-mediated communication and sociolinguistics. His recent publi-
cations include “The Use of Unconventional Means of Communication
in Japanese and American Blog Comments,” in Typological Studies
on Languages in Thailand and Japan, edited by Tadao Miyamoto,
Naoyuki Ono, Kingkarn Thepkanjana, and Satoshi Uehara, 173–195
(Hitsuji shobō, 2012) and a paper titled “Emoticons as a Medium for
Channeling Politeness within American and Japanese Online Blogging
Communities”, in Language and Communication 48 (2016): 53–65.
Paula Kurzawska Paula Kurzawska is a Master’s student in Japanese Stud-
ies at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. She received her Bachelor’s
degree in German-Japanese Studies from the University of Leeds, UK.
She carried out a period of research at the University of Tokyo, Japan.
Currently, she is researching the status of the TOEIC exam in Japanese
society.
x Contributors
Risa Matsuda Risa Matsuda is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School
of Humanities’ Social Science Faculty of the University of Tsukuba,
Japan. Her research focuses on French in computer-mediated commu-
nication. She holds a Bachelor of Literature from Meiji University in
Tokyo (2014) and a Master’s degree in Linguistics from the Graduate
School of Humanities’ Social Science Faculty of the University of Tsu-
kuba, Japan. Her latest publications include “About the Phenomenon
of Creativity in the New Forms of Abbreviation in French: Morpho-
logical Analysis of SMS language”, in Bulletin of French Linguistics
and Literature of University of Tsukuba 31 (2016): 15–24, and with
Yang He, Kaori Tsuda, Riko Mizuochi, and Tsuyoshi Kida, “Linguistic
Strategies in Case of Emergency: François Hollande’s Speech During
the Terrorist Attacks on Paris and ‘Charlie Hebdo’”, in Bulletin of
French Linguistics and Literature of the University of Tsukuba 31
(2016): 114–136.
Michaela Oberwinkler Dr. Michaela Oberwinkler is a Postdoctoral
Research Associate at the Institute of Japanese Studies at Tuebingen
University, Germany. From 2006 to 2009, she was the director of
the Tuebingen Center for Japanese Studies at Dōshisha University in
Kyoto, and in 2003, she was a research fellow at the German Institute
of Japanese Studies in Tokyo. She studied Japanese Studies, Chinese
Studies, Linguistics, and German as a Foreign Language in Bonn,
Tokyo (Keiō University), and Taipei (National Chengchi University).
She holds a PhD in Japanese Studies from Tuebingen University (2006).
Her major publications include Neue Sprachtendenzen im japanischen
Internet: Eine Soziolinguistische Untersuchung am Beispiel von Tage-
buch-Mailmagazinen (New Tendencies in the Japanese Language on
the Internet: Analyzing Japanese Internet Diaries; TOBIAS-lib, 2006)
and “The Language of Otaku: Analyzing the Japanese Internet Story
‘Train Man’”, in Japan and Japanese People: Views from a Transcul-
tural Perspective, edited by Osamu Hattori, Viktoria Eschbach-Szabo,
and Martina Ebi, 59–72 (LIT, 2010).
Katarzyna Rozanska Katarzyna Rozanska translates contemporary lit-
erature from Korean. She graduated with Honors from the University
of Warsaw, Poland, in the Faculty of Japanese Studies (2010) and is a
recipient of numerous grants, such as a MEXT Scholarship in Japanese
Studies, a Korean Government Scholarship, and a Korean Literature
Translation Institute grant for the translation of literary works. She
was also awarded with 14th LTI Korea Translation Award for the
translation, into Polish, of Yi Mun-yol’s Our Twisted Hero. Her main
research interest focuses on Japan-Korea literary exchanges, transcul-
tural studies, and literary translation studies.
Christina Margrit Siever Dr. Christina Margrit Siever is currently research-
ing communication with emoji in the project “What’s up, Switzerland?”
Contributors xi
(www.whatsup-switzerland.ch)—more specifically—in the subproject
B (“Language Design in WhatsApp: Icono/Graphy”). Prior to this she
was a research fellow in the module “Public and Private Communica-
tion in the New Media” of the project “Language as a Social and
Cultural Practice” of the Swiss National Science Foundation. She wrote
her PhD thesis about multimodal communication on the social web.
Her research interests lie in the fields of media linguistics, multimodal-
ity, language teaching, and dialectology.
Lukas R.A. Wilde Dr. Lukas R.A. Wilde studied Theater and Media,
Japanese, and Philosophy at the Friedrich-Alexander-University in
Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and the Gakugei University of Tokyo,
Japan. He is a fellow of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.
His media studies dissertation on the functions of ‘characters’ (kyara)
within everyday communication of contemporary Japanese society was
awarded the Roland-Faelske-Award for the best Dissertation in Com-
ics and Animation Studies in 2018. He is working as a Postdoctoral
Research Associate at the Institute of Media Studies of the University of
Tuebingen, Germany. His main areas of interest are visual communica-
tion, picture and media theory, comic book theory and narratology.
He is treasurer of the German Society for Comic Studies (ComFor),
spokesperson of the Committee for Comic Studies (AG Comicforsc-
hung) of the German Society of Media Studies (GfM), and co-organizer
of the digital artists’ initiative Comic Solidarity.
1 Emoticons, Kaomoji,
and Emoji
The Transformation of
Communication in the
Digital Age
Elena Giannoulis and Lukas R.A. Wilde
Emoji, emoticons, and kaomoji play an important role in everyday com-

munication using devices such as smartphones, tablets, or notebooks.1
Although we use them frequently in chats and in social media, or for this
very reason, we might not think deeply about how they change our com-
munication. Often, these small and colorful ideograms and pictograms
are used in a playful and entertaining way. They help us to add a certain
‘tone’ to the written word, to express irony, to emphasize or to neutralize
a message. They can round off communication and give the written word
a soft or gentle touch. Sometimes they merely visualize what was said
directly before. Without realizing it, we have become addicted to using
them and have started to expect a laughing emoji at the end of a chat in
order to feel comfortable. When emoji are not even used once, we might
feel that the sender is somehow cold, distant, and impolite or we might
ask ourselves if the communication went smoothly or not. Is the written
word no longer sufficient? What do digital ideograms and pictograms
add to communication? When did we start to use emoji, emoticons, or
kaomoji, and why? How do we define them, and how can we distinguish
them from one another? In what ways, and in which contexts, do we use
them and when exactly? Moreover, nowadays emoji are, primarily, not
only a part of digital communication but have also found their way into
social debates, economy, art, and even literature. Surprisingly, research
has not paid much attention to them so far.
The present volume is the first interdisciplinary and transcultural
attempt to reflect systematically on the impact of emoji, emoticons, and
kaomoji. It attempts to connect reflections on the communicative, semi-
otic, sociopolitical, and aesthetic transformations of the global cultural
landscape via these ideograms and pictograms. Are they, as it is often
stated, a global language? That is to say, are they a chance to communi-
cate across cultures, or are they early indicators of a decline and degenera-
tion of (written) language? What potential do they have and where are
the limits of their success story?
2 Elena Giannoulis and Lukas R.A. Wilde
A Short Survey on the State of Emoji, Emoticon,
and Kaomoji Research
As has been retold countless times by now, the ‘face with tears of joy’
emoji was chosen as the “Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year
2015”. Paradoxically enough, it is precisely not a word. Emoji are digital
pictograms or ideograms encoded in Unicode, the standard by which com-
puters represent text. The Unicode codepoint for the ‘face of tears with
joy’ is U+1F602, which software on computers and phones can render or
‘translate’ into preconstructed and largely standardized pictorial charac-
ters. Like all its ‘digital colleagues’ within the rapidly evolving repertoire
of emoji characters, the ‘face with tears of joy’ will look slightly different
on various platforms and operating systems (WhatsApp, Facebook, and
Twitter use different sets of emoji, as do Apple, Google, or Microsoft)
while at the same time conforming to a given Unicode description. Beth-
any Berard, in her comprehensive overview on the production of emoji,
finds that “[e]moji are thus ‘codified’ in both a technical and a social sense
as both the technical code point of the characters is standardized, while
the designation of an official name codifies a dominant or traditional
reading and an implied correct usage” (Berard 2018, n.pag.). Popular
online articles on “12 commonly misunderstood emojis” (Beall 2016)
nevertheless attest the enormous potential for emoji-misunderstandings
and diverging “cultural codings” (Danesi 2017, 31). To date, the Unicode
Standard 11.0 (in effect since May 21, 2018) contains a repertoire of
2,528 emoji characters. If Unicode characters that serve as components to
emoji, for example, skin modified variants, are counted, the total number
of emoji is 2,789. For Unicode 12.0 a number of 236 new emoji were
included as candidates, out of which 61 have been accepted. They were
released on March 5, 2019.2 On average, we see the addition of 60 new
ones per year, and so far not a single one has been removed from the rep-
ertoire.3 Although—or maybe precisely because—emoji are not ‘words’ in
any strict sense, it has been argued that they have the potential to make
language barriers increasingly obsolete. In a recent monograph on emoji,
for instance, linguist and communication scholar Vyvyan Evans opens
the discussion with the statement that “[e]moji is, today, incontrovertibly
the world’s first truly universal form of communication” (Evans 2017,
20). Note that Evans deliberately uses the term communication instead
of language, clarifying even before that “[e]moji is not a language in the
way that, say, English, French or Japanese are languages” (19). While
this difference may be small but crucial, it remains a fact that scarcely a
day passes without emoji being discussed as a new ‘universal language’ in
one journalistic article or the other. The organizers of the Emoji Art and
Design Show, arranged by New York City‘s Eyebeam Art + Technology
Center, famously coined the term of a “new visual vernacular” as early
as 2013.4
Emoticons, Kaomoji, and Emoji 3
For some, that is a reason to celebrate; for others, a sign of decay, of
the loss of the importance of ‘actual’ language. Predigital predecessors,
such as ‘stick-figure faces’ made up of punctuation marks and letters, have
been in existence since the second half of the 19th century. When the 16th
president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, gave a speech in 1862,
the audience’s response was recorded by the typesetters as “(applause and
laughter ;)” (Evans 2017, 150). Although this was certainly a marginal
phenomenon back in those days, similar forms of facial representations
have been used ever since in handwriting, as well as in print, to humor-
ously enrich texts by adding emotional nuances through nonverbal com-
munication. In 1963, stick-figure faces were rediscovered and transformed
when the U.S. American commercial artist Harvey Ball designed the first
‘smiley’. The invention of digital emoticons is attributed to Scott E. Fahl-
man who used :-) and :-( in a discussion forum at Carnegie Mellon Uni-
versity in 1982 (see Fahlman 1982). The term emoticon is composed of
emotion and icon and can be understood as a representation of a facial
expression composed entirely of regular ASCII characters, a standard set
of digital codes representing letters and symbols (‘American Standard
Code for Information Interchange’). Emoticons could quickly be found in
Instant Messaging (IM), chats, emails, social networking services (SNS),
Short Message Service (SM) text messages, or blogs. The most commonly
used emoticons, the ‘smileys’, have since become an integral part of digital
communication. A distinct Japanese form of emoticons, particularly open
for creative expression, is called kaomoji, 顔文字 (facial characters). Reg-
ular emoticons are horizontally oriented and usually do not rely on more
than four ASCII characters, while kaomoji are oriented vertically and
sometimes created from 20 characters or more. In contrast to ‘Western’
emoticons where most attention is paid to representing the mouth, the
most important part of kaomoji are the eyes. A typical example would be
(＾▽＾) as an expression for ‘joy’, or (>_<) for ‘embarrassment’. Often,
kaomoji also include body parts, various ‘props’, or more than one rep-
resented personage. For example, (*ô^)／＼(^^*) depicts two characters
giving a ‘high five‘ to each other. As Risa Matsuda points out in her con-
tribution to this volume, there is almost no limit to the range of creative
variations that kaomoji representations allow for.
In contrast, emoji, 絵文字 (picture/image character), which are often
considered to be an evolution of earlier ASCII-based signs, were invented
not earlier than 1998 by Kurita Shigetaka for the Japanese mobile phone
operator NTT DoCoMo on the i-mode Project (mobile internet access
service).5 His emoji code, developed in 1998 and released in 1999, auto-
matically transformed Shift-JIS characters (the Japanese equivalent of
the ASCII standard with additional support for Japanese characters)
into ‘more pictorial’, predesigned representations. :) thus turning into ☺.
The original Japanese keitai emoji, 携帯絵文字 (keitai being the term for
Japanese mobile phones prior to smartphones), contained 176 of these
pictorial characters, which looked much ‘rougher’ than what we now use
internationally (see Blagdon 2013). At first, they also could not escape
the ‘insularity’ of Japanese mobile phone systems, in part because they
had been intentionally designed to display only on DoCoMo’s propri-
etary platforms exclusive to phones owned and operated by its Japanese
subscribers. It was not earlier than on Friday, February 6, 2009, that
the California-based Unicode Consortium—a nonprofit organization
founded in 1991, specifying the international Unicode Standard for digital
communication—decided to sanction the global implementation of 674
emoji pictograms. They became available to software developers in 2010
and were consequently ‘re-introduced’ for Japanese customers on global,
internet-based smartphones (in Japanese: sumāto fōn or short sumaho)
such as Apple’s iPhone one year later. In contrast to many other attempts
to create a ‘visual Esperanto’, emoji gained their widespread circulation
mainly through their cross-platform, cross-device compatibility, that is,
by processes of technological standardization.
Much has since been written on the various linguistic functions of emot-
icons, kaomoji, and emoji. In interaction with a text, emoticons intensify,
neutralize, or weaken the content and interpret it, for example, in terms
of irony; they lend written texts a certain ‘tone’. While emoticons in digi-
tal written communication primarily express moods or emotional states
(such as joy, sadness, anger, satisfaction, or anxiety), emoji can also depict
animals, food, plants, sports, clothes, transport, weather conditions, and
so forth. Furthermore, they serve as important markers of interpersonal
relationships and social contexts. Luke Stark and Kate Crawford, in a
groundbreaking article that considered emoji in their wider cultural con-
text of media ecologies and economies, gave the following assessment:
An emoji, like emoticons or kaomoji, straddles the conceptual line

between ideogram and pictogram. Ideograms are symbolic represen-
tations of a particular concept or idea; pictograms are ideograms that
show a pictorial image of the object being represented. To a greater
degree than the emoticon, the utility of an emoji lies in the indeter-
minacy of its pictographic versus iconographic legibility as a signifier
of affect, emotion, or sociality. [. . .] Emoji use is heavily structured
by linguistic and social contexts, and by both cultural and personal
conventions.
(Stark and Crawford 2015, 5)
Some emoji, even those originally from Japan, are now used and under-
stood in a similar way in ‘Western’ contexts or even transculturally, while
others are difficult to understand without previous cultural knowledge.
The sociocultural and political dimensions of emoji have become a par-
ticularly striking topic of discussion in recent years. This is not only a
question of institutional and corporate power. We have to keep in mind
that in 2018, 8 of the 12 full members of the Unicode Consortium, the
inevitable gatekeepers within the “Byzantine process of emoji selection”
(Evans 2017, 30), consist of American companies. They each pay $18,000
a year for their full membership rights (see Berard 2018). In this con-
text, the heated debates on the implementation of different emoji skin-
tone colors before they were introduced with the launch of Unicode 8 in
2015, should also be mentioned. Shortly afterward, in March 2016, Amy
Butcher’s New York Times opinion piece “Emoji Feminism” pointed out
that a disconcerting majority of professional workers within the reservoir
of emoji characters were represented as male (see Butcher 2016). Later
that year, the consortium followed Google in implementing female ver-
sions for their emoji. This could not entirely escape critical questions as to
whether the ‘femaleness’ was mainly highlighted by stereotypical features
whereas male versions seem more unmarked and ‘neutral’ and are thus
still the implicit standard. Other domains of these “cultural struggles,
simmering behind the seemingly innocent facades of colorful pictures”,
as the linguist Anatol Stefanowitsch called them (2017, n.pag.; translation
E.G./L.W.), are even more obvious: trans activists have been petitioning
to see the trans flag incorporated into Unicode. When this did not hap-
pen, they issued a call to ‘highjack’ the ‘lobster’ emoji as an unofficial
symbol (see Young 2018). In their introduction to a recent special issue
of First Monday on “Emoji Epistemology”, the editors Crystal Abidin
and Joel Gn point out that “emoji culture is becoming a placeholder for
people to distil their identities and politics into distinctive—but at times,
reductive—icons” (2018, n.pag.). It is obvious that representation mat-
ters, in the realm of digital pictograms and ideograms, as much as in any
other domain of contemporary communication. If one keeps in mind that
up to 90% of all people online seem to use emoji nowadays, their political
implications are far from negligible (see Thompson 2016).
To Stark and Crawford, emoji can thus be thought of as ‘signifiers of
affective meaning’ doing ‘emojional labor’ within our economies of atten-
tion and affect (see also Hardt 1999). They argue that
emoji characters both embody and represent the tension between

affect as human potential, and as a productive force that capital con-
tinually seeks to harness through the management of everyday bio-
politics. Emoji are instances of a contest between the creative power
of affective labor and its limits within a digital realm in the thrall of
market logic.
(Stark and Crawford 2015, 5; see also Gregg and
Seigworth 2010; Goldberg 2012; Papacharissi 2014)
However, emoji have not only come to play a central role within digital
communication on our computers, cell phones, and tablets, but they have
also now found their way into literature, manga, and art. Nakano Hitori’s
best-selling novel Densha Otoko (2004) (Engl. Train Man, 2007), origi-
nally published on the online board Nichanneru (‘Channel 2’), contains
kaomoji and other digital art on almost every page (see Thaler, Klanten,
and Bourquin 2003 on ASCII art). A blog called “Narratives in Emoji”
offers stories and movie plots in emoji shorthand.6 In 2014, Chinese art-
ist Xu Bing published Book from the Ground, the first novel composed
entirely in ideograms and pictograms. Emoji’s artistic and narrative poten-
tial is also being explored in the United States (see Lee 2018). In 2016,
the Museum of Modern Art officially adopted the original set of 176
emoji and thus included them in art history (see Galloway 2016). August
2017 finally saw the worldwide release of the animated The Emoji Movie
(USA, Tony Leondis). Altogether, emoji have become a major commercial
interest as well as a communicative tool. The app “Abused Emojis”, for
instance, is thought to help children to communicate cases of domestic
violence, if they are unable to do so verbally (see Logan 2015). And, one
should not forget, even judges and juries have had to interpret emoji in
court transcripts, used as evidence to convict individuals of crimes (see
Kirley and McMahon 2017; Ferguson and Bruno 2018).
Notwithstanding the fact that emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji occupy
such an important ‘site’ for considerations of digital communication and
its influence on the broader social spheres, surprisingly few academic stud-
ies and scholarly perspectives have been developed so far. If one does not
count books aimed at the popular market (such as Matt Alt’s The Secret
Lives of Emoji: How Emoticons Conquered the World, 2016), only two
book-length monographs have been released to date (Danesi 2017; Evans
2017), mostly concerned with linguistic and semiotic considerations. With
the exception of a journal issue on “Emoji Epistemology” (Abidin and Gn
2018), one can mostly find articles in journals of psychology, pedagogy,
and linguistics.
The present volume attempts to connect reflections on the communica-
tive, semiotic, sociopolitical, and aesthetic transformations of the global
cultural landscape via emoji, emoticons, and kaomoji. The following are
four tentative claims that we want to make with this volume: (1) semioti-
cally, different forms of ‘pictorial-symbolic’ (pictographic or ideographic)
digital expressions should not be put into rivalry with verbal modes of
communication but rather taken as a complementary mode of ‘meaning-
making’. They are then seen as a ‘semiotic resource’ of communication
which, as has been argued, has always been multimodal (see Machin 2012;
Jewitt 2014; Bateman, Wildfeuer, and Hiippala 2017). This means that
(2) media-historically, emoji might not signify a radical historical rupture
or a break within communicational practices as is sometimes believed. In
order to see this, however, the so-called digital turn, and the discourses
surrounding the various medial transformations addressed by it, has to be
put into a media-historical context. In this framework (3) socioculturally,
emoji are to be understood neither as a tool for transparent (‘universal’)
understanding nor as a reinforcement of defined politics of identity and
distinction. Rather, emoji could be seen as an extension of the social into
technological, institutional, and linguistic forms of mediation; they are
an important new ‘site’ where cultural and political negotiations between
various actors are located. (4) (Inter)culturally, emoji have so far either
been treated as a mainly ‘Japanese’ phenomenon or as a ‘universal’ form
of expression. Neither, we argue, are particularly helpful to trace transna-
tional flows, border crossings, and international crossovers, which is one
of the main interests of the following contributions.
The paradigm under which emoji have been frequently discussed is the
linguistic framework of ‘computer-mediated interaction’, as Eli Dresner
and Susan C. Herring have applied it to the research on emoticons (see
Dresner and Herring 2010). While this has proven invaluable for a variety
of insights and research goals, the present volume sets out to situate the
discourse on emoji within the somewhat broader perspectives of media
theory and (inter)cultural studies. In the following section, we would like
to point out some directions offered by these fields by elaborating how the
transformation of communication in the digital age might be conceptual-
ized from the point of view of these perspectives.
Mediation(s) Between the Semiotic, the Technological,

and the Social
The term computer-mediated communication (CMC) is defined as “com-
munication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality
of computers” (Herring 1996, 1). This implies that a relation between
at least two fixed or stable entities—whether thought of as ‘subjects’
or as ‘actors’—is related or mediated by a third, mostly instrumental
entity; in this case: a computer (see Thurlow, Lengel, and Tomic 2011).
Within media theory, however, the terms medium or media have devel-
oped into multidimensional constructs, hard to pin down with any preci-
sion. Mediation theory initially developed out of the ‘Canadian School’
of thinkers, such as Harold Innis (2008 [1951]) or Marshall McLuhan
(2013 [1964]) who dedicated considerable efforts to accounting for the
historical shifts in media environments and the respective impacts, not
only on communication in a narrower sense but also on the experience of
knowledge, power, behavior, and society as a whole (see Crowley 2013).
Media theorist Joshua Meyrowitz argued that mediation theories can
therefore, at least heuristically, operate on two levels. On the “micro,
individual-situation level” they ask “how the choice of one medium over
another affects a particular situation or interaction (calling someone on
the phone versus writing them a letter, for example)” (Meyrowitz 1994,
51). On the “macro level”, in contrast, “medium questions address the
ways in which the addition of a new medium to an existing matrix of
media may alter social interactions and social structure in general” (51).
While emoji research on the first level has been expanding rapidly in
recent years, research on the second level is still in its infancy.
In order to illustrate how a media theoretical approach might compli-
cate seemingly transparent matters, let us look at an example of emoji
mediation: when Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop made interna-
tional headlines in July 2015 by conducting an interview with Buzzfeed
entirely via emoji in text messages (see Di Stefano 2015), what exactly
was ‘mediating’ between her [and her political opinions] and the public?
What served as the ‘medium’ here . . .? Was it the ‘the running man’-emoji
by which she ‘described’ Prime Minister Tony Abbott? Was it the tech-
nological interface, in this case the instant messaging service iMessage,
developed by Apple? Or the platform by which iMessage is supported
(applications in iOS 5 and later, and in OS X Mountain Lion and later)?
Or do we have to search on the level of the material-technological device
for the ‘medium’, the gadget from which these services can be accessed—
Julie Bishop’s iPhone? More candidates could be found in, within, or
between the invisible networks of servers, nodes, and satellites, by which
the data transmission was facilitated. Their continuous maintenance is,
in turn, based on the works of countless numbers of operators around
the globe, who are not necessarily relevant as private individuals but as
corporate actors—employed and mandated by multinational entities like
Apple or Google.
This directs our attention toward a broader perspective on the cultural-
institutional context of the interaction, on ‘the media’ (as in ‘journal-
ism’): an assemblage of networked institutions consisting of human and
nonhuman actors alike. This is relevant for the earlier case in that our
knowledge of the respective interview is entirely based on—or mediated
by—networked news services such as Buzzfeed, Business Insider, or ABC
(which distributed and commented upon the event almost immediately).
The individual emoji characters themselves, with which the interview was
conducted, are only made available by institutional actors as well: the
aforementioned Unicode Consortium of Mountain View, California. The
‘running man’ was approved as part of the emoji code already in Unicode
6.0 (the first version of the Unicode Standard to support emoji in 2010).
Up until Unicode’s Emoji 4.0 update in 2016, Julie Bishop could not have
been able to send a ‘running woman’ even if she had wished to. While
the repertoire of prior emoticons and contemporary Japanese kaomoji is,
in theory, only limited by the creativity of its users, the emoji—reservoir
remains carefully ‘guarded’ by the consortium. The inclusion of new ones
is as much a social negotiation as an invention (technological, creative,
or other). Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old Saudi girl from Berlin had
to endure racist reactions from all around the globe when she success-
fully petitioned her ‘Hijab Emoji Project’ to include a woman wearing a
hijab in 2016/17 (see Vonberg, Shubert, and Schmidt 2017). Where within
these entangled networks of distributed agency can we then pinpoint ‘the
medium’ of communication? Apparently, there are no grounds on which
to isolate any of these human and nonhuman actors, institutional and
corporate entities, semiotic and technological structures. We should then
not epistemologically prioritize some over others, distinguishable as the
‘essential medium’ (of communicative interaction) from the mere ‘context’
they operate in.
In our digitalized age of ‘media convergence’ (Jenkins 2006; Jensen
2010) or ‘media mix’ (the respective Japanese term, see Galbraith and Kar-
lin 2016), the notion of ‘isolated mono-media’ has proved to be extremely
problematic, not least because mediation theories now “take fuller account
of the inscriptive context itself, at the assemblages of codes, conventions,
and practices around these inscriptive devices; and at how they emerge in
the first place, why they do or do not persist and with what consequences”
(Crowley 2013, 310). Building on some fundamental insights of actor-
network theory (see Latour 1994), the starting point for any discussion of
‘mediality’ is not necessarily the human subject and his or her contingent
use of ‘mediating tools’ but, rather, the relations among distributed modes
of (human, institutional, technological, or social) agency. Michel Callon,
one of the leading proponents of actor-network theory, reminds us that
[a]gency as a capacity to act and to give meaning to action can nei-

ther be contained in a human being nor localized in the institutions,
norms, values, and discursive or symbolic systems assumed to pro-
duce effects on individuals. Action, including its reflexive dimension
that produces meaning, takes place in hybrid collectives comprising
human beings as well as material and technical devices, texts etc.
(Callon 2005, 4)
Although ‘media’ was not a central term within the initial concepts of
actor-network theory, an adaptation to media studies is comparatively
easy (see Thielmann and Schüttpelz 2013; Spöhrer and Ochsner 2017).
‘Media’ must then be seen as complex configurations or assemblages
(see Wise 2017) of actors, skills, tools, technologies, and practices, or, in
short, of ontologically “heterogeneous elements” (Latour 2005, 5). With
William J.T. Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen we could point out that
this conceptualization of media as an environment for the living dif-

fers from conceptions of the medium/media as a narrowly technical
entity or system. Before it becomes available to designate any techni-
cally specific form of mediation, linked to a concrete medium, media
names an ontological condition of humanization.
(Mitchel and Hansen 2010, xiii; original emphasis)
This has been regarded as an important shift toward a ‘material turn’

within media studies (see Packer and Wiley 2012). David Crowley offers
a concise concept of media theory that we would like to adopt as our
research focus on emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji: “As a theory of media,
the focus is on control mechanisms as structured agency, or, if that is
too hard-edged, then directed interaction” (Crowley 2013, 311; original
emphases). Medium theorists speak of a ‘dispositif’ if we can observe a
sociocultural and technological stabilization—or even a ‘naturalization’—
of these elements, a perceived coherence of material and digital tech-
nologies, spatial settings, recurring communicational contents or genres,
as well as of conventionalized social utility or areas of application (see
Deterding 2013, 54–58). ‘Cinema’ would be the usual suspect for such a
dispositif, whereas emoji seem to permeate into new areas of application
and social context every day. Their mediation within and between these
vectors can thus be seen as highly dynamic—at least for the time being.
In order not to be overly reductive in our conceptualization of mediat-
ing interaction with emoji, we could consider what Klaus B. Jensen called
‘communication’s lower and upper threshold’:
Historically, the thresholds of communication have been shifted by

new technologies and new media institutions—by the available and
accessible media. At the lower threshold, silicon chips enabled com-
puting and communication on a new order of magnitude. At the upper
threshold, the internet as an institution moved from the military, via
the scientific, into the commercial domain of social activity, thus
becoming a generally accessible medium of public communication.
(Jensen 2010, 56)
That certain social groups are clearly underrepresented in emoji—that

certain communicational affordances are simply not provided—is, conse-
quently, not simply ‘external’ to the fact that “decision makers along the
way are generally male, white, and engineers. They specialize in encod-
ing”.7 Just as emoji are discussed as a ‘universal’ mode of expression,
Jonathan Abel points out in his contribution to this volume how their
emergence and evolution was (and arguably still is) firmly rooted within
a specific Japanese cultural context: “[E]moji are, and have been, strongly
embedded in cultural conditions, right from the beginning [. . .]. [T]he
Unicode set of emoji remains highly biased toward the Japanese culture
up to this very day” (Abel, this volume). At the same time, we should
disengage comforting notions of a linear causality from culture to technol-
ogy. In his Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Bruno Latour reminds
us that actions are not simply ‘bypassed’ from actor to actor, but always
“borrowed, distributed, suggested, influenced, dominated, betrayed,
translated” (Latour 2005, 46). Or to go back to Berard once more:
“[T]echnical standardization increases the possibility of use, but social
uses arguably drive the continued production of these technical standards,
as increased and frequent use requires that users have the emoji they want
to use included in the Standard” (Berard 2018, n.pag.). This reciprocality
(or circularity) can be observed in the well-established fact that it was at
least partially due to the absence of emoji in the first iPhones of 2008 that
Apple and its Japanese partner SoftBank suffered an initial failure on the
Japanese market. Japan saw a dramatic growth in smartphone use only
around 2011, following the incorporation of emoji into iOS5 on all its
devices: The Japanese audience had long been accustomed to the earlier
forms of keitei emoji offered by NTT DoCoMo since the introduction of
i-mode in 1999. In 2009, there were already 722 emoji characters avail-
able to Japanese users, suspiciously lacking within the new generation of
‘Western’ smartphones (see Blagdon 2013). While one might be hesitant
to attribute ‘agency’ to digital pictograms and ideograms, Japan’s media
ecology could, at the very least, be understood as saturated with emoji in
2010, up to the point where it had perceivable effects on the acceptance
and the further developments of new technologies.
If the term mediality must accordingly be understood as a complex
multidimensional concept that at least affords the distinction among a
communicative-semiotic, a material-technological, and a conventional-
institutional dimension (see Schmidt 2008; Thon 2014; Wilde 2015); then
we must trace the transformation of communication in the digital age
along these three levels too; especially from the point of view of media
archaeology, claims about radical ‘ruptures’ should be regarded with cau-
tion; see Zielinski 2006; Ernst and Parikka 2013; Cramer 2014). This
should also hold true for processes of digitalization, which have often
been treated in a rather ahistorical fashion (see Herring 2013 or Heyd
2015 for related linguistic perspectives). To Jensen, ‘media’ are at once
“material vehicles, discursive or modal forms of expression, and socially
regulated institutions that facilitate and frame interaction” (Jensen 2010,
57). With a slightly different focus, Mitchell and Hansen (2010, xvii)
distinguish between aesthetic, technological, and social forms of media-
tion. This goes well with Stark and Crawfords’ (2015, 2) proposition to
consider emoji both “as historical and cultural objects, technical con-
structs, and instances of the techniques of computational control within
communication platforms”.
Special attention must be given to the social dimension of their medial-
ity, because it may also include what new media theorist Richard Grusin
(2010, 90) coined “the media everyday”: internalized, often affective
habits of media utility and connectability. Media historian Lisa Gitelman
(2008, 5) conceptualized this dimension as the cultural “supporting pro-
tocols” of media: “Norms about how and where one uses [a certain type
of media]” (5), “normative rules and default conditions, which gather
and adhere like a nebulous array around a [. . .] nucleus” (7). Often,
these internalized habits are not only contingent or contextual. Quite
to the contrary, in many or most cases within media history they might
even constitute what we consider to be a ‘medium’ distinct from others in
the first place (see Deterding 2013, 48). Cultural ‘protocols’ can thus be
seen as constitutive for the cultural recognition of certain communicative-
semiotic, material-technological, or conventional-institutional aspects as
media. To quote Henry Jenkins (2006, 14), “[d]elivery systems are simply
and only technologies; media are also cultural systems”. The consolida-
tion of such a system, with all the accompanying mediations between the
three fields of discourse/aesthetics, technology, and society could also be
understood as a framing mechanism. According to Sebastian Deterding, a
‘media frame’ provides “socially coordinated conventions for experienc-
ing and behaving in relation to a specific medial affordance” (Deterding
2013, 54; translation E.G./L.W.). Actors will thus experience the onto-
logically heterogeneous elements of contemporary networked media as
familiar, their own uses and applications as acquainted or even regular.
This is also where a careful attention to ‘culture’ might prove especially
relevant, beyond simple differences of national languages and geopolitical
territories. As we have seen, the use of emoji by individuals can also be
highly political and often gendered, depending on the cultural context
and its established protocols. It is not hard to see how this perspective
can be relevant even for the understanding of our initial example con-
cerning Julie Bishop. Barry Kavanagh points out, in this volume, that the
general topic of digital communication “may encourage or discourage the
use of kaomoji, such as politics, where the use of emoticons is sparse in
comparison to everyday (less controversial or debatable) topics such as
cooking” (Kavanagh, this volume). Obviously, this is not strictly deter-
mined by material, technological, or semiotic affordances. It is only due
to the conventionalized ‘protocols’ by which a deviation from such norms
can be recognized. One could argue, for instance, that it was precisely a
breach on this level which caused news agencies around the globe to ‘pick
up’ Buzzfeed’s interview, certainly not any particular content or political
implication ‘hidden beneath’ the running man. As a semiotic resource,
emoji usually do not play a part in—or frame—the ‘social genre’ of the
political interview.
Turning to the field of multimodality research, we approach the inter-
section of communicative-linguistic and sociopolitical perspectives from
a slightly different angle. Arguing from Michael Halliday’s (1978) ‘social
semiotics’, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen established a concept of
‘multimodality’ to account for mediated interactions in a new light. Social
semiotics are less interested in proposing abstract ‘systems’ or ‘codes’ but,
rather, focus on the social forces relevant within specific situations: “Rep-
resentational and communicational practices are constantly altered, modi-
fied, as is all of culture, in line with and as an effect of social changes [. . .].
Resources are constantly remade” (Kress 2010, 7f.; original emphasis).
“Modes” are thought of as “signifiers [. . .] that have been drawn into the
domain of social communication” (van Leeuwen 2005, 4). David Herman
understands such “modes” as the “semiotic channels [. . .] that can be
viewed as a resource for the design of a representation formulated within
a particular type of discourse” (Herman 2010, 79). Typical examples for
distinct modes are written or spoken language, pictures, gesture, or music.
“‘The social’—as entities and forms, as processes and practices—is con-
stantly articulated in (material) semiotic form” (Kress 2010, 34). While
Kress’s initial conception seems rather relativistic (“a mode is what a com-
munity takes to be a mode”, 65), other researchers have developed a more
rigid understanding (see Elleström 2010). Emoji could be understood as
one such resource, maybe even as a distinct mode, constantly mediating
between discourses (“what is the world about and how is it organized in
knowledge?”; Kress 2010, 116) and social genres (“who is individuated
as participants and how do we know that?”; 116). We could then see
the ‘cultural work’ of contemporary emoji as a sophisticated form of
mediation between individuals and corporate actors, shaping and facili-
tating specific forms of structured agency that usually remains invisible.
Unicode president Mark Davis once stated that it is mostly discussions
surrounding emoji that keeps drawing public attention to his organiza-
tion, its structures, and processes of standardization and decision-making
(see Berard 2018). In a way, emoji might then themselves function as a
kind of ‘medium’ to reflect upon these, mostly invisible, assemblages by
which our everyday routines are facilitated.
An Overview of the Present Volume

The contributors in this volume try to give an extensive account of the
many mediations, between actors, in which digital pictograms and ideo-
grams play a salient role. In our approach, an ‘actor’ is any entity that
becomes recognizable as the catalyst, or cause, within interrelated chains
of action. It is always a relative entity, which only appears in processes
of translation or transcription, by initiating or delegating actions. The
identity of the respective actor is only created by the many relations or
mediations they find themselves in: as smartphone users, as consumers, as
political activists, or as members of a certain social group. “So, an actor-
network is what is made to act by a large star-shaped web of mediators
flowing in and out of it. It is made to exist by its many ties: attachments
are first, actors are second” (Latour 2005, 217).
In the first part of this volume, our contributors look at “Intercultural
Mediations”. Linguistic differences traditionally form the most salient
‘barriers’ between agents, placing them into positions of opposing cultural
or national groups. Digital pictograms and ideograms carry the promise
to bridge these gaps, facilitating a more transparent, almost ‘immediate’
understanding. Following Latour, we would distinguish between ‘active
mediators’ and ‘passive intermediaries’: The former is something that
transforms meanings and actions: “[t]heir input is never a good predic-
tor of their output; their specificity has to be taken into account every
time” (Latour 2005, 39). An intermediary, in contrast, “is what transports
meaning or force without transformation: defining its inputs is enough to
define its outputs” (39). Even if we concede that this difference might be a
spectrum, rather than a binary opposition, emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji
appear to be located closer to the ‘transparent’, intermediary side than
natural languages which keep dividing people into actors of distinct lin-
guistic origins. A translation from, say, English into Japanese, will always
involve specific choices that are far from predetermined by their ‘input’.
In this way, linguistic boundaries certainly structure agency within inter-
actions and encounters, while the same resistance seems at least reduced
for mediations by means of digital pictograms and ideograms. To what
extent does this hold true?
In “Not Everyone 💩s: Or, The Question of Emoji as ‘Universal’ Expres-
sion”, Jonathan Abel explores the utopian ideal of a ‘universal’ form of
expression—mediating seamlessly between languages and cultures—from
a sociohistorical perspective. Relating contemporary emoji to a cultural
prehistory of pictographic scripts, as well as to their more immediate
technical history, Abel demonstrates how the emoji-code exemplifies the
exact same frictions between particularism and universalism also inherent
in linguistic forms. The idea of bringing an easy, clear, and transhistori-
cal script to the masses is far from new. It has been attempted by Otto
Neurath’s Isotypes, by Charles K. Bliss’s Blissymbolics, or by Ōta Yukio’s
LoCoS. “The real revolution of emoji (if there was one at all)”, Abel
suggests skeptically, “was the quick pervasiveness and penetration of the
script across several platforms in a short span of time”.
Alisa Freedman approaches the (inter)culturality of emoji from a dif-
ferent perspective. Tracing their rise in their original (Japanese) context,
“Cultural Literacy in the Empire of Emoji Signs: Who Is 😂?” cautions
against misunderstandings of their root culture, precisely if they are
treated as transparent. Freedman applies E. D. Hirsch, Jr.’s concept of
‘cultural literacy’, the ability to participate successfully within a given
semiotic environment, to a rereading of Roland Barthes’s Empire of Signs.
“[U]sing emoji can both expand cultural literacy, when used as ‘full signs’
bearing weight of their social and historical context”, she points out, “or
erase it, when used as ‘empty signs’ and free-floating signifiers, leading
to new meanings as well as new misunderstandings”. To put these obser-
vations into practice, Freedman conducted “Emoji Literary Translation
Contests” with her students for many years. Her concluding report shows
how the transcription of (foreign) literature and narratives into emoji,
ranging from Natsume Sōseki’s Wagahai wa neko de aru (Engl. I Am a
Cat, 1971 [1905]) to popular episodes of Meitantei Konan (Engl. Detec-
tive Conan [since 1996]), can be seen as an experiment in applied, or
‘enacted’ cultural literacy.
Marzena Karpinska, Paula Kurzawaska, and Katarzyna Rozanska
then compliment these historical and theoretical considerations with an
empirical study on cultural differences between Japan and Korea: “Emot-
icons: Digital Lingua Franca or a Culture-Specific Product Leading to
Misunderstandings?” As both countries are known for their extensive
use of digital pictograms and ideograms in everyday communication, the
researchers investigate some of the main differences in the reception of
geurim mal in Korea and kaomoji in Japan. Although the shared pur-
pose of replacing actual body language with simplified digital depictions
of eyes and faces should enable an easy interpretation across cultures,
many participants in their study failed to recognize the respective mean-
ings derived from a different cultural source. Sometimes, this is due to
phonetic meanings ‘hidden’ in the original characters the pictograms are
composed of; sometimes, different interpretational emphasis is placed on
the respective connotations of eyes versus mouth or on depicted situations
that are common within (or even specific to) one culture only. “Thus,
even though digital pictograms and ideograms are ‘universal’ to a certain
extent”, they conclude, “they are also, as many other concepts, culture-
specific products”.
While the first part of the present volume stresses that cultural differ-
ences are far from irrelevant for emoji communication, the second part,
“Intersectional Mediations”, investigates how differences in age or gender
are inscribed in, and thus negotiated or mediated by, the use of emoticons,
kaomoji, and emoji. In “‘Impact taisetsu da!’: The Use of Emoji and Kao-
moji in Dansō Escort Blogs Between Gender Expression and Emotional
Labor”, Marta Fanasca applies fundamental concepts of gender theory
to a very specific context: the use of emoji and kaomoji by professional
Japanese dansō (female-to-male crossdresser) escorts in blog posts, Twit-
ter updates, and private conversations on LINE. Drawing on Judith But-
ler’s theory of gender performativity, Fanasca presents her own fieldwork
in a Tokyo-based escort company to investigate how dansō ‘perform’
their respective gender identity using (or avoiding) emoji and kaomoji.
‘Gendered’ digital pictograms and ideograms, Fanasca’s many interviews
reveal, are not only employed as important tools to manage intimacy in
relationships and thereby perform emotional labor. Crossdressers also
make surprisingly different choices in their posting habits, based on their
respective position within the company and the gender performance they
adopted inside and outside their professional conduct.
Michaela Oberwinkler then shifts methodology again, providing an
empirical study on age and gender differences in the usage of kaomoji
within Japanese Facebook conversations. While gender differences have
long been of general interest in emoticon research, only a few studies
consider the influence of age on emoticon usage and perception. Attempt-
ing to fill this gap with “Emoticons in Social Media: The Case of Japa-
nese Facebook Users”, Oberwinkler analyzes a corpus of 200,000 tokens
of naturally occurring Facebook posts and comments. Various gender
and generational differences can be observed from these data, as well as
a range of different functions. Some of these are limited to certain age
groups, such as the ironic combination of kaomoji with 笑 or わら (the
abbreviations of the Japanese word for laughter); surprisingly, this seems
almost entirely limited to users under the age of 30. “Generational differ-
ences”, Oberwinkler summarizes, “are, in some cases, more explanatory
than gender in the case of Japanese kaomoji”.
The third part of the present volume, “Linguistic Mediations”, focuses
even more closely on the structural functions and roles digital pictograms
and ideograms assume within their immediate textual environments.
Christina Siever first proposes a systematic semiotic-semantic model for
the many linguistic functions emoji can assume within digital communi-
cation. In line with existing research, “‘Iconographetic Communication’
in Digital Media: Emoji in WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook—
From a Linguistic Perspective” distinguishes first between a referential
function (in which the emoji is part of the linguistic proposition) and a
modal function (in which the emoji supplements or modifies complete
statements). The author then addresses many subcategories and conflict-
ing cases: Emoji can be used to replace not only nouns, for instance,
but also verbs, adjectives, and even propositions as a whole. They are
employed to separate individual propositions from each other, invoke
contextual ‘frames’ of interpretation, or act as mere decoration. Siever
also supplements her many contemporary emoji-illustrations with older
cases of pictogrammatic scripts to substantiate her model in a broader
communicational context.
Barry Kavanagh adds complementary perspectives on the linguistic
functions of digital pictograms and ideograms. Setting out from the
observation that the majority of literature looks at them in the context of
one-to-one interactions (as in emails or chatroom exchanges), the author
notes that their functions are not at all limited to dialogues. Kavanagh’s
contribution, “A Cultural Exploration of the Use of Kaomoji, Emoji, and
Kigō in Japanese Blog-Post Narratives”, thus investigates the underrep-
resented topic of digital pictograms and ideograms in Japanese autobio-
graphical online storytelling. Apart from their use as lexical replacements
and emphasizers, emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji also feed back into the
writers’ online self-persona, their ‘public image’ or ‘face’. “These devices
not only added semantic and pragmatic meaning”, Kavanagh suggests,
“but also aided the writer’s self-representation, reflecting Japan’s current
ideology of cuteness and the desire to appear charming and interesting
within their blogging community”.
While the previous part focused on emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji from
the perspective of—and their impact on—language, the subsequent fourth
part assumes the complementary perspective: the authors here discuss
to what extent communication with digital pictograms and ideograms
can, in fact, be considered as genuine “Pictorial Mediations” between
actors. Lukas R.A. Wilde concedes that these kinds of signs may not
be ‘universally’ understandable. All the same, at least a certain level of
‘immediate’ pictorial comprehension is never seriously questioned by
existing research yet is seldom explored. His contribution, “The Elephant
in the Room of Emoji-Research: Or, Pictoriality, to what Extent?”, turns
to the interdisciplinary field of picture theory, especially cognitive semi-
otics and phenomenology, to explain the perceptual sensation of seeing
three-dimensional objects ‘in’ two-dimensional shapes and colors. Wilde
approaches this problem with a closer look at the ‘core emoji’ of yellow
faces. “Intuitively, we seem to recognize only ‘some laughing face’ or
even just ‘the facial expression of laughter’ in a smiley: not any particular
creature, probably no yellow one, and certainly not a beheaded one, even
if we can clearly see all of this”. On what grounds would we investigate
whether this ‘taking into account’ versus ‘ignoring aspects of what we
see’ (yellowness, beheadedness) is dependent on conventions and cultural
preferences? Wilde’s proposed model for prelinguistic misunderstandings
intends to open the methodological black box of emoji’s ‘intrinsic seman-
tic structure’ (see Danesi 2017) that has to be taken into account before
distinct languages, cultural codings, or second-level connotations come
into play.
Risa Matsuda shares a similar interest in the intrinsic iconicity of digital
pictograms and ideograms. Her contribution, “Construction of Iconicity
in Scenes of Kaomoji”, focuses specifically on the most recent forms of
Japanese kaomoji. One emerging phenomenon—addressed by the author
as ‘wide kaomoji’—does not only represent faces but also depictions of
entire scenes, composed of multiple characters, body parts, and props.
These kaomoji may also employ supplemental words as ‘voices’ emitted by
the ‘characters’ or indicate dynamic (inter)actions between them. Matsuda
argues that wide kaomoji are thus intended to depict, at least to some
degree, the ‘actual’ situations where the embedding discourse takes place.
After providing a detailed first typology of phenomena and their respective
functions, she suggests that “wide kaomoji pose as the scenic backdrop
of a given utterance, and as such they resemble the functions of onomato-
poeic expressions, which also reference scenes in a deictic fashion”.
While the previous contributions zoomed in on digital communication
with increasingly narrow questions, Part V, “Material Mediations”, broad-
ens the scope once again. There are convincing arguments that emoticons,
kaomoji, and emoji can, by definition, not be identified without any account
of their technological dimension of mediality (the Unicode standardization).
‘Hand-drawn emoji’ would usually just be considered ‘pictures’. However,
the transformation of communication in the digital age might have con-
ceivable repercussions on the most material forms of expression, just as
there have been various predecessors of contemporary emoji in ‘analogue’
public and private spaces. While most emoji histories ‘narrate’ and con-
solidate a recurring trajectory from Harvey Ball’s ‘smiley’ in 1963 to Scott
E. Fahlman’s first use of digital emoticons in 1982, Alexander Christian
investigates a possible candidate for another ‘analogue precursor’ that has
rarely been brought up: “Who Is Afraid of Mr. Yuk? The Display of the
Basic Emotion of Disgust in an ‘Analogue Precursor’ to Contemporary
Emoji”. His case study focuses on Mr. Yuk, an iconic character used since
1971, mainly on material safety stickers, to educate U.S. children in the
prevention of poisoning. From the perspective of design theory and history,
as well as with recourse to Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen’s ‘Facial Action
Coding System’, Christian explores to what extent the addition of facial
expressions can help to simplify the interpretation of pictograms and thus
increase their efficiency. “With regard to the discussion of emoji ‘univer-
sality’”, Christian evaluates carefully, “it is unlikely that even Mr. Yuk is
clearly and exclusively evoking negative connotations”.
Last but not least, Dale Andrews concludes the present volume with a
reflection on a question that seems like a ‘reversal’ of Christian’s approach:
Did ‘genuine’ digital pictograms and ideograms manage to escape their
digital confines to ‘travel back’ into the material world? Judging from
Andrew’s contribution “From Digital to Analog: Kaomoji on the Votive
Tablets of an Anime Pilgrimage”, the answer must be a positive one—at
least for contemporary Japan. In his fieldwork, Andrews documented
and analyzed how fans of popular anime shows set out on ‘pilgrimages’
to Shinto shrines across the country that are somehow associated with
fictional characters and locations. Once they reach their destination, they
often illustrate traditional prayer tablets (ema) with injected kaomoji and
other markers of digital ideolects. In order to evaluate the significance of
this digital-to-analog transference, Andrews offers a typology for catego-
rization, concluding our present volume with the fitting statement that
“fans employ kaomoji on the tablets to further drive home the point that
they, as digital natives, are fully engaged in the mediation of the digital
and analog world” (Andrews, this volume; emphasis E.G./L.W.).
Notes
1. Throughout this volume, ‘emoji’ is used as a collective noun like sushi is.
2. See Unicode Consortium. 2019. “Unicode® 12.0.0.” Unicode.org, March 5.
Accessed 1 June 2019. www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode12.0.0.
3. See Unicode Consortium. 2019. “Unicode® Technical Standard #51.” Uni-
code.org. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/index.html.
4. See anonymous [Eyebeam]. “‘I Have No Words’ Emoji and the New Visual
Vernacular.” Vimeo. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://vimeo.com/channels/
eyebeam/83241814.
5. Throughout this volume, Japanese names are given in the original order, with
the family name preceding the given name.
6. See anonymous. Narratives in Emoji. Accessed 1 June 2019. http://narrativesinemoji.
tumblr.com.
7. See Emojination [Brooks, Jeanne, Jennifer 8. Lee, and Yiying Lu]. 2016. Emo-
jination. Emoji by the People, for the People. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.
emojination.org.
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Part I
Intercultural Mediations
2 Not Everyone 💩s
Or, the Question of Emoji as
‘Universal’ Expression
Jonathan E. Abel
Katy Perry’s second video for her 2013 song “Roar” depicts the star
waking to the sound of her phone, which she then grabs; immediately, the
point-of-view shot frames the phone in full screen, and the music fades
up. A thread of texts among several friends cutely translates the lyrics
into emoji. Rendered as a conversation, the lyrics make little sense. But
the emphasis is on cuteness, on the emoji standing like rebuses as picture-
for-word replacements (mainly images standing for nouns). The cuteness
of the replacements is sometimes enhanced by animating the emoji (four
years before Apple introduced animated animoji on their platform). The
most amusing moment, however, comes not from the emoji themselves but
from the first cut away from the text thread on screen to the real world;
after the chorus kicks in with “And you’re gonna hear me roar!” we are
shown Katy’s screen translation, reading: “Markus: And you’re gonna 👂
me 😾📣💥”. We then have a point-of-view shot, presumably from Katy
Perry’s point of view, looking down at her bare legs with the phone on
her knee. If the site of her texting is not clear enough from this image, the
camera (and presumably Perry’s head) pans left to reveal the toilet paper
mounted to the wall as her hand reaches out to grab a few sheets. If there
is any realism to the overproduced cuteness of the video, it lies in this
scene. This silly scene of a pop star connecting from her porcelain throne
is worth considering as it recalls more serious prehistories of emoji: as a
manifestation of desires for greater communication, as a marketing ploy,
and, most recently, as a mode of playfulness with new media.
A Prehistory of Emoji as a ‘Universal Language’

I think we should consider emoji not simply as a fleeting fad in interna-
tional youth culture but as the most effective, if unintended, fruition of a
long series of attempts to refine the complexities of spoken language into
a universal pictographic script. At one time or another, various languages
and scripts have been called ‘universal’. Since the destruction of the Tower
of Babel, linguists, governments, and philosophers (among others) pur-
sued and ‘discovered’ universal languages everywhere, in mathematics,
26 Jonathan E. Abel
science, music, laughter, tears, Latin, French, Arabic, English, the Sino-
graph, Sanskrit, Esperanto, binary code, Blissymbolics, LoCoS, and now
emoji. Perhaps the only real universal in this story about the desire to find
universal scripts and languages is the continually renewed human struggle
for better communication, for an improved ‘medium for language’, a
medium of meaning or of message transmission that is faster and clearer,
logical, and pervasive across time and space.
As a pictographic international auxiliary script that cannot be pro-
nounced, emoji are perhaps related only to the last two on the above list—
Blissymbolics and LoCoS. But beyond their adoption by some schools
for the hearing impaired, these other visual languages have yet to make
as deep an impact on mainstream international cultures. Although we
may debate whether they constitute a ‘language’ or even a ‘script’ as such
(there are few broadly accepted usages, few widely agreed-on meanings,
and seemingly no inherent grammar), emoji are everywhere. Globally,
6 billion emoji are sent in texts alone daily, according to one count. A
recent study of texting use in Great Britain showed that 80% of messages
contain emoji and that 40% of all texts are composed of emoji alone.1
This suggests that emoji have at least some grammatical, linguistic func-
tion beyond the simple signage of icons for word replacements. What I
explore is whether such grammatical usages might occasionally also be
called ‘literary’.
We could perhaps start with hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt or, in
modernity, with John Amos Comenius, the Czech scholar and author
who, most notably in his Orbis Pictus (1887 [1658]), found connec-
tions between childhood education and visual apprehension, or with
science promotor John Wilkins who, with his An Essay Towards a Real
Character and a Philosophical Language (1668), tried to devise a more
logical means of written communication so that agreement could more
easily be reached (famously spoofed by Borges 1964), or with Japanese
monks in the 17th century who provided pictographic rebus prayers for
the illiterate. But I begin my recounting of the history of emoji with the
1987 publication of a tome by the designer and semiotician Ōta Yukio,
titled Pictogram Design: Pikutoguramu [emoji] dezain, not as an abso-
lute origin but as yet another significant marker of the multiple origins
of emoji today. The book itself is something of a coffee-table book of
signs, from hieroglyphics to the (then cutting-edge) world of computer
icons and international airport signage, but it also deals intensively with
the idea of pictographic scripts.
Ōta’s book is part of the rise in the usage of the Japanese word emoji,
絵文字 (lit. picture character), following the 1964 Tokyo Olympics,
stemming from efforts to create internationally legible signage for that
mega-event. It was in 1964 that Ōta (who would later also design the
‘green running man’ exit sign ubiquitous in Japanese and European public
spaces) developed his LoCoS (Lover’s Communication System) pictorial
Not Everyone 💩s 27
script. Ōta’s book was one obvious, significant source of inspiration for
the designers of NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode phone system (including the now
famous Kurita Shigetaka), who first released their set of 176 pictographic
characters in 1999. One example of this influence is the design team’s
choice to adopt a modified image of Gerd Arntz’s ‘turban wearing man’,
a design created in 1920s’ Vienna that had been reprinted in Ōta’s (1987)
book.
As both a sourcebook for the designers of the original emoji sets and as
a history entwining what we would today call infographics and universal
languages, Pictogram/emoji Design is a revealing point of departure. The
book is also something of a crystallization of the supposed value of the
icon in modern life, far exceeding the realization of abstract visualizations
within computing in the years immediately preceding Ōta’s book. For
instance, in 1984, Apple computers’ Susan Kare implemented the Xerox
company’s ‘folder’ icon (developed in 1981) into the home computer
screen as a skeuomorphic symbol for the visual and hierarchical order-
ing of the storage of information. Looking back across the 20th century
for other forms of information display and its visual organization, Ōta
most prominently and repeatedly cites Otto Neurath, a philosopher and
sociologist with the Vienna Circle, a group known for promoting logical
positivism and verificationism. So, we should not be surprised to find
that the emoji’s roots in the progressive, socialist educational apparatus
continue to be echoed in the Silicon Valley utopianism surrounding them
today. The claim that pictographs might best present complex information
and arguments seems to reflect ancient educational calls for the reading
of prayers through pictograms aimed at illiterate Japanese. Like many
technological developments in the history of new media (such as televi-
sion), emoji began with (and perhaps will end with) a dream of universal
humanism through education.
With the rise of socialism and machine design in the early 20th century,
a number of new, internationally minded projects created what seemed
like real possibilities for mass education. The development of what is
now known in infographic circles as the ‘helvetica man’, the ubiquitous
pictogrammatic rendering of a man now most commonly associated with
restroom signage, represents but one of these educational efforts. Combin-
ing the urge for widespread legibility and clarity, Neurath’s International
System of Typographic Picture Education, or Isotype, provides perhaps
the earliest attempt at a universal pictographic auxiliary language for the
express purpose of educating the modern masses. As Neurath wrote, his
visual language should be “simple to teach and to learn, and at the same
time comprehensive and exact” (Neurath 1973 [1924], 224). The idea
of representing complex ideas pictographically remains with us today
in the art of data visualization (the direct legacy of Isotypes), as well as
in its ‘cute-ification’, such as the depiction of “The Entire US Economy
Depicted in Emoji.”2
28 Jonathan E. Abel
One of the biggest tensions that runs through Ōta’s book, touting the
notion of signage as a language to its primarily Japanese audience, can be
found in the very conflict between signage and language itself: between
‘meaning’ as controlled design, in contrast to meaning by natural evolu-
tion. In a section titled “Why Pictograms?” (Ōta 1987, 79–90), the ten-
sion between static sign versus moving language becomes evident. Ōta
presents a critique of isotype by the graphic designer and artist Awazu
Kiyoshi: “In the beginning Isotype tried to make language into ‘a language
to be seen with the eyes’ from an educational aspect, but the problem of
race rooted in it remained unsolved, and it was practically impossible to
make it a global visual language” (95; translation J.A.). Here, Ōta and
Awazu raise the problem of Eurocentrism as a fundamental barrier to
the global humanist goals behind Neurath’s practice. Going even beyond
the problems identified by an increased awareness of multiculturalism or
diversity, another diagnosis Ōta gives for the failure of Neurath’s method
(rather than his theory itself) is that Isotypes are inflexible. Ultimately,
Pictogram/emoji Design argues that Neurath strived for a mathematically
definable language that would not need to change, once it was composed.
While Neurath and his successors had been deeply committed to the inter-
national utopian ideal of bringing an easy, clear, and transhistorical script
to the masses, they did not succeed in devising a way to do it. After a
backpacking trip through Italy during which he discovered the usefulness
of signage for communication, Ōta became more optimistic about the
possibilities than Awazu. Out of this optimism emerged Ōta’s key inno-
vation: he purposely constructed his LoCoS system and equipped it not
only with a grammar but also with possibilities for future modification
and growth.
Charles K. Bliss’s ‘Blissymbolics’ (see 1949) and Ōta’s ‘LoCoS’ (see
1973) are among the most recent serious attempts to bridge theoretical
and methodological divides, so much so that, in recognition of his own
potential cultural ‘blind spots’, Ōta called on users of his LoCoS lan-
guage to play with it, to manipulate and transform the script according to
their individual needs. In his book introducing and promoting the script
(LoCoS: Visual Language for Global Communication, Ōta, Macaulay,
and Marcus 2012), Ōta discusses the ‘tyranny’ of a rail-crossing sign that
is, according to him, a one-way communication of inherent danger. If the
sign’s warning is not heeded, dire consequences may result. His system,
he claims, is more of a two-way street, like that between ideal lovers.
He writes: “Its collection of words is small, and its structure in need of
refining. But it is a good start, and if people find it useful, they will refine
and add to it as they go. It has the possibility of growing into a truly
international language” (Ōta, Macaulay, and Marcus 2012, 60). This
sort of flexibility and openness to change is more in tune with the nature
of linguistic evolution than is the case with emoji, with their controlling
boards of corporate designers and, more recently, Unicode gatekeepers.
Yet, what emoji gain from standardization is market penetration and
reach, something LoCoS never quite achieved.
In the most utopian claims about pictographs, the glyphs are all at once
evocative of our cave-dwelling past and our globalized future (a better
language, more direct than Japanese, more transparent than phonetic or
even ideographic characters, and, simultaneously, more ‘Japanese’ than
Japanese and older than ancient hieroglyphics). According to the philoso-
pher Tsurumi Shunsuke,
[a]s more and more people use things like Isotypes and LoCoS and
mix them up, we draw closer to pictographs that everyone can use.
The great thing about pictographs is that they are not so narrow as
to benefit only Europeans alone, but are things that everyone can use
equally. Another way in which they differ from language is that two-
and three-year-old children can understand them right away. Even the
elderly in their 70s and 80s can freely master pictographs; so we are
truly entering a new age.
(Tsurumi 1991, 412; translation and emphases J.A.)
Tsurumi’s appeal to the global reach of a pictographic script cites the

recent history of Neurath and Ōta, noting that, if it is to be successful,
such scripts must not reside in a local or even a regional culture but must
remain within the purview of all cultures and age groups.
This sentiment echoes many postwar trends. For instance, the con-
tinuation of Neurath’s Isotype legacy can be found when the 1948
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) was formed as
a way to standardize international roadsides or when Marie Neurath
(Otto’s widow) worked with medical statistician Lancelot T. Hogben to
publish From Cave Painting to Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope of Human
Communication in 1949. In a similar way, Charles K. Bliss composed
his International Semantography: A Non-alphabetical Symbol Writ-
ing Readable in All Languages in 1949, inspired by Chinese characters
during his wartime ghettoization in Shanghai’s Hongkew. Perhaps the
internationalist impulses in all these projects were best summed up by
Hogben’s philosophical call for a world government that, among other
things, must
take within its scope the creation of a statutory body with powers:
a. to enforce on trustee powers the obligation to implement a pro-

gramme of universal literacy with a fixed time-limit in territories
under their control;
b. to make recommendations on the eligibility of backward com-
munities to greater autonomy with due regard to educational
progress; [. . .]
30 Jonathan E. Abel
d. to encourage international co-operation with a view to improv-
ing means of communication including weights and measures,
the standardisation of scripts, and the adoption of a single aux-
iliary language for intercourse between members of different
speech-communities;
e. to facilitate the circulation of new instruments of education,
especially the fullest exploitation of visual aids.
It is in this context that the exploitation of visual aids offers the

greatest promise of immediate returns.
(Hogben 1949, 277f.)
Two films about global issues with which Ōta was involved display the
kind of dedication to world education through ‘visual support’ for which
Hogben had argued. The 1979 film Visualizing Global Interdependencies
followed up on Aaron Marcus’s (1960) report of the same title.3 Devel-
oped from a black-and-white slide show and presented at the University of
Hawaii’s East-West Center, it featured the transnational work of research
fellows from India, Iran, the United States, and Japan. “For four months,
they [the research group] reviewed existing international symbols and
visual languages, studied more than 500 pictograms and 200 composite
images, revised and refined 70 of them, and, in effect, developed a new
visual language” (Marcus 1979, 15).
The film reprises the Malthusian problems of population expansion,
food systems, energy consumption, and environmental pollution through
the use of Isotypes and emoji-like symbols. Despite its primary reliance on
visual interfaces, it also uses verbal English terms such as GNP, Calories,
Consumption, or Metric Tons of Coal Equivalent and relies on numbers
to convey its arguments. Ōta would later draw on the pictographic lessons
learned from this project, to produce a different film with Alan Kitching
(a developer of the Antics 2D Animation software system) for the United
Nations University (UNU) in 1984. The computer animations made Shar-
ing for Survival (1984) a more dynamic and cinematic film, giving a cer-
tain ‘flow’, if not grammar, to the work. Like its predecessor, Sharing for
Survival was intended to be partly educational. But it could also be seen as
something of a flashy mission statement for the UNU. However, the voice-
over narration by the famed British actor Peter Ustinov (lending an air of
weighty authority to the work) undercuts the notion that the animated
images alone could convey the film’s meaning. In his discussions of the
film in his later emoji book, Ōta maintained his focus on the notion that
education and more direct communication could circumvent and super-
sede established and national languages. More recently, with the creation
and dissemination of emoji on contemporary devices, issues surrounding
the efficacy and ‘universality’ of pictographic language have become com-
monplace. Indeed, the internet-bound mobile phone culture that produces
such viral phenomena as the emoji video “Game of Phones”—a visual
summary of the Home Box Office television series “Game of Thrones”—
renders legible the problems of universal legibility.4
A Technical History
The history of the rise of emoji can also be tracked through a consider-
ation of technical innovations in recent media evolutions. In the United
States, for instance, the development of the ASCII-input system emoticons
since 1982 and other forms of ‘bells and whistles’ used in computer-
ized, networked communication seem to be one point of origin. In Japan,
the history of emoticons and kaomoji, 顔文字 (lit. ‘face characters’), had
strong links to young women’s culture during the early 2000s (see Miller
2011, 20). But from a technical perspective, we can see that they emerged
in the 1990s as part of the BBS (bulletin board system) culture on the
Japanese web (especially prominent on 2chan, ni-chan). The first usage
of kaomoji is often pegged to that of Wakabayashi Yasushi in 1986 (see
Suzuki 2007). Scholars have proposed numerous cultural, psychological,
and sociological reasons for the invention of emoticons, such as a gen-
eral lack of creativity and good writing practice in capturing the subtle
nuances of spoken language’s verbal inflections (see Knight and Telesco
2002, 134) or as a way to “telegraph facial expressions” (Dery 1994, 2).
But, as Martin Lister points out, emoticons are a “specialised language
to communicate in conditions of bandwidth scarcity” (Lister 2009, 214)
and thus might equally be seen to have arisen as a result of the increased
speed of communication.
However, to some degree, it is necessary to separate emoticons, which
originated in the United States and were only reshaped in Japan, from
emoji, which were developed in Japan and later adopted by various sys-
tem platforms and, eventually, by Unicode. Emoticons differ from emoji
in significant ways, not simply because of the common mistake of link-
ing them etymologically. Although they seem to share a common root,
in fact, emoticon is an English compound truncation from emotion and
icon, whereas emoji is a Japanese expression composed of e, 絵 (pic-
ture), and moji, 文字 (characters). Emoji, therefore, have no necessary
or inherent connection to emotions.5 Also contrary to emoji, emoticons
were never standardized across platforms or technologically distributed.
Thus, emoticons remained the provenance of the small subcultures within
which they emerged, even as those subcultures themselves grew more siz-
able.6 Mistranslating emoticon as emoji risks losing a key to understand-
ing the new form as a script which is now used globally in most language
environments.
For such reasons, it is better to look beyond ASCII art (pictures com-
posed of characters) to emoji (pictures as characters). In this vein, it is per-
haps better to begin in 1982 with the Sharp MZ-80K personal computer,
32 Jonathan E. Abel
which sold over 100,000 units worldwide and included 68 ‘graphical
symbols’ (gurafikku kigō, グラフィック記号, such as a ‘nose’ or ‘eyes’) as
characters on its keyboards and systems. Consequently, the font designer
Satō Yutaka’s pictographic script (or font) on the emoji-history time-
line included early versions of a ‘heart’, an ‘envelope’, a ‘poop’, or an
‘umbrella’. This font received honorable mention in the symbol division
(yakumono bumon) of the 8th annual Ishii Mokichi Typeface Contest in
1984.7
What is most immediately pertinent to this history of emoji, however,
are pager devices of the mid-1990s that came equipped with pictures as
well as with characters. In 1996, NTT DoCoMo sold a pager (in Japanese:
a pokeberu, a ‘Pocket Bell’) with a screen that was able to display a face
with varying expressions. In a famous commercial unveiling the product,
a woman reading a book alone in a dark room receives a message from a
man sitting in a park with another man. “I’m lonely” (samishii), the text
on the screen of the device, white with a trim of purple and pink geometric
designs, reads. Next to the text of the message, a cartoonish face of a man
with animated, upturned, plaintive eyebrows blinks, letting out a sigh of
exasperation. Cut to the woman, contemplating the text and responding
between this shot and the next cut. Then back to the man looking at his
‘manly’ black-and-gray pager, the screen of which reads “I’m really into
you!” (daisuki), with a cute woman’s cartoon face animated in a pucker
and a rose floating behind her. The ad, in its brief 20 seconds, has all the
salesmanship of the new form of writing it needs; seeing is believing: the
new graphics present affect.
Yet, with respect to the prevalence and penetration of emoji today, we
need to distance ourselves from claims about emoticons and emoji as a
sort of gendered, ‘feminine’ writing (see Miller 2004; Okuyama 2009;
Baron 2012). Until more demographic data of usage frequency becomes
available, we should recognize an incontrovertible truth that all signs are
not used in roughly equal amounts by users in all languages, cultures,
genders, and classes. Even as we recognize that emoji started as bells and
whistles added onto other scripts to ‘spice them up’ to gain market share
with women and as, indeed, this connection deepened through established
visual cultural forms associated with young women’s culture and technical
apparatus such as purikura (photo booth vending machines), as digital
emoji became more and more a stand-alone script, we need to consider
whether alternative claims may be worth pursuing, for instance, the claim
that emoji are a kind of language open to all who have access to the
devices that carry Unicode.
Perhaps driven by similar intentions as the mid-century icon designs
for education, the designers of cell phone emoji borrowed the look for
their contemporary digital pictograms directly from Neurath and Ōta.
To recognize the connection from early 1920s’ Isotype to contemporary
emoji, compare the cell phone emoji ‘turban man’ to Gerd Arntz’s Isotype
designs in Neurath’s work. The DoCoMo designers who borrowed the
forms of some emoji from Ōta’s book took the basic appeal and the
simple design of pictograms for specific marketing purposes (to open up a
new, particularly ‘female’ market for pagers), stripping away the original
educational and internationalist intentions associated with the designs.
This was probably the most important feature of mobile device versions
but perhaps also the reason why emoji are so often the object of jokes
and derision—seemingly a fad of youth culture without much general
relevance. And, yet, if their local (Japanese) origin was so specific and
narrow (appealing mostly to one particular market), why are they so
pervasive even outside of Japan? Identifying a particular historical origin
of the script, then, gets us only so far. We must also judge claims to its
‘universality’ from its function and design.
Emoji Are Not Universal

“In Japan, even though there have been some difficulties concerning
the compatibility between different devices and mobile phone compa-
nies, since some manufacturers developed their own varieties of emoji,
the characters have already obtained the right of citizenship” (Inamasu
2008, 109; translation J.A.). It would be misleading to categorize all
the discourse about emoji as ‘utopian’ in orientation. There are many
who recognize their particularity. As Nick Kendall, co-creator of an app
that facilitates emoji-only communication, has pointed out, “[a]n emoji
can mean a completely different thing to completely different people”
(Wroclawski 2014, n.pag.). If there is a real global revolution of emoji,
however, it is that this particular product became part of a global stan-
dard code for inscription; how could a form emanating from a specific
moment of Japanese postwar internationalization (through echoes of early
20th century attempts toward global mass education in the mid-century
efforts to build an international signage system at the Olympics) and from
a narrow (particularly female) youth subculture circulating on Japanese
mobile devices and cyberspaces become a global form without a coup of
sorts? The movement from a local Japanese encoding system known as
Shift-JIS to a global one (the pan-platform standard of Unicode) in such
a short time is remarkable, if not unprecedented, and it was certainly not
inevitable; Unicode’s initial rejection of emoji in 2005 was reversed only
in 2008 with corporate coaxing by Apple and Google who sought to gain
market share in Japan.
The very process of encoding, whether by individual Japanese users
in Shift-JIS or in Unicode, has led to a number of problems and happy
mistakes at the level of transcriptions and interface renderings—‘slips’ of
signification within the media system that make any claims to the ‘univer-
sal’ mythic at best. The many confusions between signs rendered across
multiple platforms show that, in some important ways, cross-platform
34 Jonathan E. Abel
compatibility (or legibility) might itself constitute an equivalent of the
untranslatable: when, for instance, around 2010, a given code for an
emoji on a DoCoMo phone might have been displayed as a ‘musical’ note
on an AU phone and as a ‘pile of poo’ on a SoftBank iPhone.8 Or to give
another example, noted by Mark Davis in his 2014 Unicode Conference
keynote speech “Emoji: Past, Present, and Future”: a simple ‘heart’ had
turned into a ‘hairy heart’ on the Google platform because of a misin-
terpretation of the Unicode stipulations by the (Google) emoji designers,
who understood the dot-matrix shading on the Unicode description as
‘hair’ rather than as color.9 This lack of stable ‘trans-platform signifiers’
shows precisely not only how mediation matters, but, moreover, how
media history and, specifically, mediation history matter. It also reminds
us of the fact that local cultural histories are often part of broader tech-
nological media histories (see Inamasu 2008).
So, we need to move away from the technicist myths of ‘universality’ to
realize that emoji are, and always have been, strongly embedded in cultural
conditions. Beyond the meek listing of 10 national flags in the original sets
(later remedied by the inclusion of most United Nation flags), the Unicode
set of emoji remains highly biased toward Japanese culture up to this very
day. Despite the famous addition of taco to the emoji syllabary and its
‘diversification’ through six skin tones (by ‘diversification modifiers’ in
2015), there persists a disproportional representation of Japanese cultural
icons, such as sembei, 煎餅 (rice crackers); love hotels; tengu, 天狗 (mytho-
logical creatures); Japanese driving learners’ permit emblems; and curry
rice. There are at least 15 overt references to Japanese culture within the
current Unicode emoji set (at least, if we trust the official Unicode emoji
name tags such as ‘Japanese castle’ or ‘Japanese rice cracker’). Even some
seemingly universal emoji, like the very popular ‘pile of poo’, are based
on highly specific cultural references (as we shall soon see). Therefore,
Marshall McLuhan is wrong; media, as technology divorced from content,
does not matter. Up to a certain degree, meanings remain significantly
embedded and saturated in culture. When code transcription is corpora-
tized, standardized, and made part of a system on a device, it can result
in a loss or, at the very least, in a transformation of meaning (see Yasuoka
2007). Simply put, if you do not have the same phone as me, you might
misunderstand my emoji. All ‘universal’ aspirations and the respective dis-
courses are limited not only by the practical realities of corporate image
branding but also by linguistic realities wherein language is immediately
localized—or even ‘prelocalized’—so that no image can be seen with fresh
eyes. And thus, we have to go deeper and read emoji in context.
Literary Usage and the Question of Universal Grammar

“In a way, emoji are often used like the wrapping paper for a gift, mak-
ing the communication more pleasing” (Maynard 2011, 26). Having
expressed some criticism towards the ‘universality’ of emoji, it is safe to
turn our attention to the actual question of language. If the early usage
of emoji had, generally, been restricted to word replacements such as
rebuses (within the framework of specific natural languages), today more
and more writing is happening first, and only, in emoji. More and more
texters are claiming to even ‘think’ in emoji. Occasionally, there have even
been attempts to construct emoji literature.
To approach some of those works in a nuanced way, it will be helpful
to compare, for instance, Emoji Dick (the emoji ‘translation’ of Moby
Dick, transcribed with Amazon’s Digital Turk crowd-sourcing engine and
entered into the Library of Congress in 2014, see Melville and Benenson
2010) to Xu Bing’s A Book from the Ground: From Point to Point. The
latter is an art project from 2006, from which a pictographic novel was
published in 2014, both of which use international signage.10 It is clear
that both books share some basic assumptions about how pictographic
signs can be employed. They presuppose a left-to-right reading direction
and a subject–verb–object (SVO) grammar structure. Therefore, their
claims to ‘universality’ are constricted. Where From Point to Point draws
on thousands of symbols from manuals, signs, and emoji, Emoji Dick
uses simply the fewer than 1,000 emoji characters available via Unicode.
Whereas the avant-garde Chinese artist claims to have worked on his
piece for 20 years (hence dating back far enough to uphold the assertion
that his idea predated the advent of cell phone emoji, which he ignores
in all discussions of the book), Fred Benson compiled and edited Emoji
Dick from Amazon’s Digital Turk technology, drawing on the labor of
an anonymous crowd for his ‘translation’ of Melville’s classic American
novel.
In a sense, however, both works advertise their own translatability. In
the case of the Book from the Ground exhibition, visitors were encour-
aged to send messages composed in Xu Bing’s ‘graphic language’ across
computers in the room. All the machines placed in the exhibition relied
on specifically developed translation software pre-installed on the com-
puters. The two books differ insofar as Emoji Dick, like most parodies,
is really only readable with prior knowledge of the original. Book from
the Ground, in contrast, at least tries to teach its reader its own grammar
during its reception (despite the fact that the exhibition catalogue, Bory-
sevicz 2014, includes a ‘re-translation’ of the work into English). If Emoji
Dick, like its silly title, is just fun, Book from the Ground takes itself more
seriously. Contrary to my own expectations, Xu Bing’s experiment can be
quite literary at times, as when the main character is requested to think
about a policeman as a pile of poo: “👮=💩” (Xu 2014, 66). Iconographic
communication is often accompanied by the assumption that icons or
symbols directly stand in for another thing. The idea presupposes that
a picture is self-evident, in a one-to-one correspondence, with what it
represents. At least some degree of fidelity is hence taken as given, even as
36 Jonathan E. Abel
certain details are left out or local flair, color, or cuteness is added. Follow-
ing this assumption, rebus-like communication could not rise to the level
of complex literary forms. Emoji, one could assume, would ‘dumb down’
language and its nuances. And yet, at the moment when a policeman is
presented as equivalent to a ‘pile of poo’, we have the most basic and
necessary component of a literary language: a metaphor. The policeman
is obviously not ‘literally’ the same as a ‘piece of shit’. But the pictorial
metaphor conveys quite economically that he is a ‘shitty’ person. The icon
no longer stands for a ‘pile of poo’ itself, but rather a chain of significa-
tions associated with the concept of that which is ‘shitty’.
Xu Bing’s aspirational work of art and Emoji Dick differ primarily
in that the former is an idiosyncratic and largely unreproducible per-
sonal code, whereas the latter code remains (though perhaps even more
arbitrarily composed) at core necessarily ‘transcribe-able’ (if not actually
translatable) into the open Unicode. This difference lies not in the degree
of irony or claims to respective ‘universality’ but in the fact that one is a
collage and the other text. Xu Bing’s attempts to ‘open up’ his script in the
exhibition’s software and on his website simply retrace what had already
been done and disseminated on more familiar devices around the world
through cell phone emoji, thus betraying the gap between the avant-garde
and the everyday. This does not necessarily mean that Borges’s fictional
work on Wilkins’s Real Character is less interesting or entertaining than
the historical Wilkins’s earnest and sincere practical work of translating
the Lord’s Prayer for the masses or that Unicode is more groundbreaking
than Xu Bing’s avant-garde work but, rather, that the literary fiction pro-
duced in either Borges’s work and Xu Bing’s book are less interesting and
potentially groundbreaking than the emoji-based fictional work produced
today by regular users, writers, and authors around the web. The mass
collaboration is enabled by Unicode, even as such platform conformity is
playfully subverted by the collective creativity.
Consider another emoji novel, titled Emoji shōsetsu (Emoji Novel).
It was written by a user of the pseudonym “Chicchikichī!” and posted
on August 10, 2007, on the Eburisuta website for digital novel distribu-
tion.11 Filed under the category of ren’ai, 恋愛 (love), the 15-page novel is
presented completely in emoji (alternating between one and seven emoji
per page), telling the story of a woman who works at a hospital and a
man who gambles for a living. They go on a date together and consum-
mate their love at a love hotel. The woman then gets in some kind of
trouble (we only see the emoji for ‘SOS’), goes to the hospital, and has a
baby; the novel ends with a celebration of the newborn’s birth. Although
the story is simple and short, there are instances when it becomes quite
literary, if, by ‘literary’, we mean not merely the functional command of
language but also the willingness to play with signification itself. In this
regard, the love scene after a short fight and the later reconciliation is
telling:
(Chicchikichī, endnote 11)
In just four pages, we are nearly given a complete narrative of a sexual

encounter. Reunited, the couple goes to a love hotel where they engage in
acts not suitable for those under the age of 18, after which the woman is
left in need of help. The insertion of the ‘blank space’ of —as a way
of navigating a taboo subject—suggests precisely in a humorous way, but
without actually showing us, what transcends the graphic signification we
might expect from a love scene composed not of words, but of pictures.
By navigating around highly sexualized emoji such as the ‘eggplant’ and
the ‘peach’, and by merely giving us a ‘blank space’, the novel adheres
to time-honored novel and film aesthetics that cut away or substitute the
acts themselves with figurative expressions. What is lacking in the short
staccato flashes of meaning in Chicchikichī!’s work is a clear grammar.
Consider page one:
Clearly, there is a woman. But is she at a hospital, receiving a shot to get

strong—to then go on to spend money? Or is there something else going
on? As in many modernist novels that teach their readers how to read
them, the following page seems to instruct us how to interpret the first
through a sort of parallel construction:
Here, the man is gambling for money. This might lead us to reflect back
to reconsider the woman’s situation as well. Perhaps, we see now, the first
page is meant as a comment on her employment and her means of making
money. She administers medicine to cure people at a hospital for a living.
In any case, the potential for confusion, I would argue, stems from the
38 Jonathan E. Abel
use of the arrows. They are obviously stand-ins for actions or verbs. The
reader is forced to try understanding, not necessarily in a uniform method,
the action that is supposed to take place here. We can see a similar com-
municative tension when emoji stories on video (even prior to animoji)
try to animate emoji. Years before Hollywood produced The Emoji Movie
(2017), numerous videos that animated emoji (such as the aforementioned
“Game of Phones”) had already been posted online. In such video experi-
ments, a montage of otherwise static images (flashing between different
emoji) often assume the role of the ‘grammatical’ arrows shown earlier.
For instance, John Michael Boling’s music video for Oneohtrix Point
Never’s song “Boring Angel” (2013) flashes hundreds of emoji to tell a
story about depression and drug abuse.12 In the center of a white back-
ground, emoji after emoji is flashed in a hyper-frenetic pace of nearly
24 emoji per second. Here, one of cinema’s most basic affordances—
dictating a predetermined reception time—enables the illusion of motion
merely by displaying static images over time. The montage of emoji flash-
ing by is connected in the mind of the viewers to tell a story. Our short-
term memory is invited to ‘bounce’ between the image we have in front
of us and the one just before that for the narrative to be created. This use
of cinematic remediation of emoji gestures toward problems of their more
mundane uses (often default rebus-like word substitutions) that have yet
to solve the problem of a universal grammar.
This highlights not simply what functions emoji usually lack (gram-
mar), but also what they tend to afford us (visual-verbal communication).
That is to say, the real revolution of emoji (if there was one at all) was
the quick pervasiveness and penetration of the script across several plat-
forms in a short span of time (not simply the ability to send pictures). The
encoding of images into a script, not unlike linguistic characters, enabled
not only messaging but also meaning-making itself to be remade. Telemes-
saging, GIFs, and later shamēru, 写メール (mobile phone photography as
marketed by i-mode in 2000), were introduced and disseminated globally,
long before the 2010 inclusion of emoji into Unicode. Thus, visual com-
munication through pictorial symbols was at least theoretically possible
on mobile phones long before the advent of emoji as a keyboard script
input choice.13 It follows then that either there is something unique about
the pictogram script that gives cell phone emoji a special place and mean-
ing among ideographic languages or there is nothing new under the sun
since cave paintings.
A Genealogy of the ‘Poop’ Emoji

A genealogy of one specific emoji can demonstrate the ways in which the
script, even today, fails to attain the level of a ‘universal’ or ‘transhistori-
cal’ signified, while continuously hinting at such a domain: The ‘pile of
poo’ (unko or unchi māku, うんちマーク, ‘poop mark’), spotted almost
everywhere in our digital media environment, might indicate some direc-
tions. Perhaps, we should recognize that part of the popularity of the ‘pile
of poo’ emoji might be related to the global interest in the ‘poop’ shape
because of its characteristic swirl (the makiguso, 巻糞, or makifun, 巻き
ふん), even before it came to be labeled thus in Japan. Notably, the Japa-
nese Wikipedia page for ‘unko māku’ lists the engraving “The Perfumer”,
created by French craftsman Bernard Picart (1673–1733), as an origin
for the shape of our pile today, although the equally authoritative 2006
packaging of a toilet calendar (by Yakult yogurt) recalls, as a kind of fun
fact, a Japanese Edo-period version as one of the earliest examples.14 But
the premodern history of the shape of ‘swirly poop’ does not quite explain
its emoji anthropomorphization and the seemingly universal fascination
with it today.
To understand the meaning of the ‘pile of poo’ at a deeper level, our
discussion of universal humanism, media, Japan, and emoji can benefit
from a consideration of Gomi Tarō’s most elegant work of Japanese lit-
erature, first published as Minna unchi in 1977. Following its translation
into English as Everyone Poops (Gomi 2008 [1993]), the book became a
mainstay in children’s world literature, perhaps as the result of its titular
universal humanism. Everybody poops, but how we express ourselves
about it differs. Fundamentally, we humans all may seem to defecate,
but the book goes beyond the human in its enumeration of who counts
as ‘everyone’. The educational (potty-training) book includes animals as
its most basic set of candidates, only then building toward the human. In
this sense, we can speak of a ‘universal animalism’ if we include humans
in the category of ‘animal’ (as does the literal translation of the respective
Japanese term dōbutsu, 動物, ‘animate things’). But maybe the notion that
‘everyone poops’ is nothing but a commonplace fiction if it is expanded
this broadly; maybe everyone only thinks that ‘everyone poops’ or wants
it to be the case that ‘everyone poops’. Beyond the simple medical fact that
many animals today (also some unfortunate ones of the human variety)
have to rely on colostomy bags or had their digestive tracts removed
almost entirely, Gomi’s book does not consider the possibility of a sentient
machine—that is, a body without poop. In short, what about androids?
Do androids poop electric poo?
At one historical root of our globally popular ‘pile of poo’ emoji, we
encounter the robot. In this regard, scatolinguistics (or ‘coprolinguistics’)
are important for the now well-known design of an anthropomorphic
swirly shape. The ‘poop’ emoji—at least in its playful form and usage—
became part of the highly intertextual and self-referential world of Japa-
nese popular culture after one significant appearance in Toriyama Akira’s
manga (and later television anime series) Dr. Slump (1980–1984). The
series revolves around the hapless Norimaki Senbei, otherwise known
as ‘Doctor Slump’, and his invention, the android girl Arare (aka Arale).
Although ‘poop’ is also associated with another character in the series
40 Jonathan E. Abel
(Suppaman, a parody of Superman who, despite the ‘man’ in his nom de
guerre, is, interestingly, also not human), it is primarily associated with
Arare from the 36th chapter titled “Earth S.O.S.!” (first published on
December 10, 1980; Toriyama 1980). Famously, Arare prods a pile of
swirly poop with a stick asking it if it is lost, to which the faceless poop
responds: “Go away; poop can’t talk!” Further anthropomorphization
(occasionally adding feet, eyes, and mouths) and chromatic shifts (from
a dark brown to pink) happen when Arare and the shit she prods appear
as minor characters in Toriyama’s later, and even more popular, series
Dragon Ball (1984–1995). The stick became associated with the icon
when the ‘poop’ was marketed in the form of countless collectible goods
such as poop pillows, pens, and cell phone accessories.
So, the vast international success of the Dragon Ball franchise might
help to explain the adoption of the ‘poop’ icon into Satō Yutaka’s award-
winning font dingbats in 1984, into pagers in 1996, and into Japanese cell
phones in 1999. We can then imagine the Unicode gatekeepers, through
laziness or fun, approving all the famous Japanese characters as a set
already time-tested and proved within the Japanese media ecology. But,
since the ‘pile of poop’ persistently remains in the top 100 characters
used (see Chalabi 2014), and since we can assume that most global emoji
users are not simply Dragon Ball fans, what could explain this emoji’s
popularity beyond its culture of origination? 15 I suggest that it is likely a
kind of ‘reverse mimesis’: The remediation of the ‘poop mark’ into digital
environments betrays a truth some of us might rather not admit but that
Katy Perry is happy to concede: globally, a primary site of cell phone use
is the toilet. What do we make out of this fertile mess? The poop character
in our phones helps us to engage with our actual world, not simply to
represent a universal condition; rather, it helps us to think about the poop
on our phones. Emoji eloquently reaffirms the toilet not just as a site of
texting but also as a site of reading. The pile of poo suggests something we
probably already know about our new media—too many of us are spend-
ing far too long on the toilet with our new media gadgets. According to
one study, as many as one-sixth of all cell phones today are covered with
fecal matter and dangerous bacteria such as E. coli (see Song 2011). This
reversal of mimesis might show us the true reason why the poop emoji is
so popular globally, which is to say that the ‘poop’ emoji is both a sign of
our contemporary media consumption and a manifestation of its waste.
Notes
1. See Prifysgol Bangor University. 2015. “Emoji ‘Fastest Growing New Language’.”
Prifysgol Bangor University: News and Events, May 19. Accessed 1 June 2019.
www.bangor.ac.uk/news/latest/emoji-fastest-growing-new-language-22835.
2. See anonymous [Squarely Rooted]. 2014. “PRESENTING: The Entire US
Economy Depicted in Emoji.” Business Insider, October 17. Accessed 1 June
2019. www.businessinsider.com/the-economy-in-emoji-2014-10.
3. A summary of the work was published in Marcus (1979, 15–22; see also Marcus
1960). The video is available on YouTube, see anonymous [AMandAssociates].
2011. “Visualizing Global Interdependencies.” YouTube, July 21. Accessed 1
June 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc8Skq4HVwc.
4. See anonymous [Cara Rose DeFabio]. 2014. “Game of Phones.” YouTube,
April 1. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0SYKT4FgGU.
5. See, for instance, the mistranslation of emoji as emoticon in Matsuda (2005, 35).
6. What Unicode seemingly presents is a basic coherence between platform that
might overcome some of the problems between different iconic representation
noted by Neurath (see Neurath and Cohen 1973, 244). But, as we will see, the
implementation has not been particularly uniform and significant differences
continue to find their way into the new iconic script.
7. See Satō, Yutaka. 2004. “Monopi: Dai 8-kai Ishī-shō sōsaku taipufēsu
kontesuto [Monopi: 8th Annual Ishī Award; Creative Typeface Contest].”
Yūgengaisha taipu rabo, April. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.type-labo.jp/
Ohbun.html.
8. See anonymous [nakamura001]. 2010. “Dokomo kara jīmēru ni mēru o okuru
to ‘onpu’ no emoji ga ‘unko’ ni naru [The ‘Musical Note’-Emoji Turns into ‘Poo’
If Sent from DoCoMo to Gmail].” Tsuyobi de susume, November 26. Accessed
1 June 2019. http://d.hatena.ne.jp/nakamura001/20101126/1290736227.
9. Slides for Davis’ talk are accessible at Mark Davis. 2014. “Unicode Emoji
2014.” Google Docs. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://docs.google.com/
presentation/d/1ZSEhgKmhsBDsoqJ--BNEwlk3Zcre9u3MU6roMwA2LsM/
edit#slide=id.p. The video was posted at Mark Davis. 2014. “Unicode Emoji
I—Past.” YouTube, November 6. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.youtube.com/
watch?v=-n9ONNeACyw. These discrepancies are also noted in Unicode
Consortium. 2019. “Unicode® Technical Standard #51: UNICODE Emoji.”
Unicode.org, February 4. Accessed 1 June 2019. http://unicode.org/reports/
tr51.
10. Xu Bing locates the seeming ‘universal’ intelligibility of pictographs within a
specific culture, while disregarding the more immediate historical context of
emoji (Japanese signage aspiring to the international; see also Bachner 2014).
11. See anonymous [Chicchikichī チッチキチー]. 2007. “Emoji shōsetsu [Emoji
Novel].” Muka shōsetsu nara Eburisuta [Looking for Free Novels: Eburista],
August 10. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://estar.jp/_novel_view?w=2637775.
12. See anonymous [Oneohtrix Point Never]. 2013. “Boring Angel.” You-
Tube, December 23. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=
qmlJveN9IkI.
13. This raises the question of contingency: it would have been an interesting
thing if the first emoji (in the 1990s) or Unicode (in 2010) had adopted LoCoS
characters. To put it another way, emoji would evolve if it adopted LoCoS-
like combinatorial expressions in the future. The idea of integrating a gram-
mar within the script is one of the mechanisms suggested belatedly by the
semiotician Aaron Marcus in a 2005 discussion about the implementation of
a LoCoS-based input system for mobile phones (see Marcus 2005).
14. See “Unkomāku.” Wikipedia. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://ja.wikipedia.org/
wiki/うんこマーク. The Yakult packaging is further discussed in anonymous
[Keshōshitsu 化粧室]. 2007. “Kogane no rasen wa doko kara kita no ka:
Maki guso no kigen [Where did the Golden Spiral come from? The Origin of
the Swirly Poop].” Iyagerium on FC2, August. Accessed 1 June 2019. http://
iyagerium.blog90.fc2.com/blog-entry-85.html.
15. One could wonder whether all users understand the meaning of the character
in the same way. Evidence pointing in the opposite direction is provided from
Google Trends (see https://trends.google.com/trends; accessed 1 June 2019),
42 Jonathan E. Abel
which reports that one of the top 10 searches associated with the ‘pile of
poo’ emoji is “what is 💩” or “the meaning of 💩”, as well as “poop or ice
cream?.” On one hand, these inquiries might suggest that its ‘iconic meaning’
is not self-evident. On the other hand, similar online discussions take place
for nearly every emoji, suggesting this is not a unique phenomenon surround-
ing the ‘pile of poo’. It rather suggests that recipients of texts with such emoji,
as well as people who are about to employ them often like to confirm their
proper usage.
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3 Cultural Literacy in the
Empire of Emoji Signs
Who Is 😂?
Alisa Freedman
Introducing Emoji Theory

Emoji, 絵文字, is a Japanese product that has been managed and aug-
mented outside Japan. As originally defined by the term, emoji (literally,
picture characters) are pictograms added to text messages to ensure the
appropriate emotional message is received and to share images without
taking up much bandwidth. First available outside of Japan through
third-party apps and Google, cell phones, blogging platforms, and social
media have mainstreamed these now instantly recognizable yellow faces,
holiday symbols, foods, and other icons, many of which require Japanese
cultural knowledge to be understood. Emoji globalized more rapidly after
a complete standard set was incorporated into Unicode in 2010 and pre-
programmed in iPhones in 2011.1 Unicode emoji consist of a base of 719
Japanese carrier emoji. New emoji characters, which are mostly objects,
identities, and practices found worldwide, are continually added by the
Unicode Consortium, a California-based technical group established in
1991 that strongly takes cultural sensitivity into account. Emoji are often
crowdsourced, as users can submit petitions to the Unicode consortium.2
To date, no emoji characters have been removed. Unicode 12.0, released
in March 2019, comprises 3,053 emoji. When Japan’s prime minister
Shinzō Abe visited the United States in April 2015 to discuss increas-
ing Japan’s military role in Asia, among other topics, President Obama
thanked him for karate, karaoke, anime, and emoji. Although this joke
can be read as cultural stereotyping (e.g., Abe probably would not thank
Obama for the Kardashians and Marvel Comics), it demonstrates the
political role of popular culture and the expanse of transnational fandoms
(see Freedman and Slade 2017). Yet many users do not realize emoji are
from Japan.
Emoji are arguably the most common mainstream non-verbal commu-
nication tool able to accompany all world languages, to span generations,
and to cross national boundaries. As of March 2015, half the text posts
on Instagram included emoji.3 In March 2013, the word was officially
pluralized as ‘emojis’ in the American Copyeditors Society’s Associated
The Empire of Emoji Signs 45
Press Stylebook (the standard usage guide for U.S. journalists), defying
Japanese grammatical rules for collective nouns in favor of consistency
with English (see Kassel 2014). The Oxford English Dictionary chose the
‘crying with joy’ emoji as the top English ‘word’ in the media in 2015.
Realizing emoji’s commercial potential, at least 13 American celebrities
have sold their own emoji, starting with Kim Kardashian’s racy Kimoji
(2015), the first to include the obscene middle-finger hand gesture. Since
2014, World Emoji Day has been celebrated on 17 July, the date on the
calendar page emoji. Global tributes in 2017 included illuminating the
Empire State Building in emoji face yellow, but, to date, little has been
done to mark the day in Japan, where holiday marketing is a dominant
trend (witness the rise of Halloween in recent years) and dates (read in
the American format of month-day) form homophones for products (31
August is Vegetable Day [8/31 = yasai] and Hatsune Miku Day [3/9 =
miku]). Emoji have been used to encourage people around the world to
‘do things’, as exemplified by Twitter’s creation of a new emoji to remind
subscribers to register by 7 June 2016 to vote for the European Union ref-
erendum and to unify communities (e.g., see Bruns, Highfield, and Burgess
2013). Various media have been playfully created out of and ‘translated’
into emoji, from famous paintings to world literature. While several emoji
characters visualize aspects of Japanese culture, emoji’s national origins
have largely been forgotten, bypassed, or ignored.
This being the case, do emoji present the possibility of global commu-
nication that transcends nations, or do they instead make national dif-
ferences more apparent? I argue that Unicode emoji, originating in Japan
but having expanded through worldwide usage, is a means to assess how
Japanese popular culture can promote literacy of Japan, as well as one’s
own culture and awareness of multiculturalism. Emoji simultaneously
reveal discrimination and diversity within cultures (not all popular cul-
ture promotes cultural literacy; some trends, instead, exacerbate stereo-
types, as evident by some Japanese manga and ‘idol’ pop music groups).
But emoji alone are ‘unreadable’. They need to be used together with
established modes of expression in order to avoid misunderstandings.
Literature, as one of the most intentional, nuanced, and affective uses
of language, provides insight into this lesson. This chapter explicates the
use of emoji in fictional narratives to assess their storytelling potential in
addition to their mimetic functions.
I propose a semiotic reading of emoji inspired by Roland Barthes and
posit his book Empire of Signs (Les Empire des Signes, 1982 [1970]) as an
analogy for the incorporation of Japanese emoji into world languages and
literature. As I explain, Barthes interpreted the Japanese cultural signs he
encountered in Tokyo through his own personal background, rather than
through any in-depth knowledge of Japan, and thus interpreted them dif-
ferently from their originally intended meanings. Although a gesture that
might seem exocitizing, essentializing, distancing, and even orientalizing
46 Alisa Freedman
(vis-à-vis binaries analyzed by Edward Said 1979 [1978]), Barthes reiter-
ated that he was not accurately depicting Japan itself but was instead
describing a fictive land called ‘Japan’ that he was first experiencing and
unable to fully know. Similarly, using emoji used without attention to
their Japanese context gives rise to secondary local meanings and mis-
understandings of Japanese culture. Erasing Japan from emoji creates a
methodology for measuring cultural literacy, the narrative and affectual
implications of which are apparent through literature. I adopt aspects of
Barthes’s writing style, replete with parenthetical information and asides,
for additional layers of cultural understanding. Reading Barthes in a gene-
alogy of the globalization of Japanese popular culture illuminates histori-
cal turning points and reveals what has changed or not in how Japanese
trends have been appropriated worldwide.
In order to establish the theoretical applications of emoji, I first trace
the rise of emoji in Japan as an affective mode of communication to
understand their appeal. I draw information mainly from blogs in English
and Japanese, in part due to the dearth of academic publications on emoji
but mainly because the blogosphere is the place where emoji have been
most carefully monitored, catalogued, explained, and evaluated (e.g., on
websites from Twitter’s real-time Emojitracker to the crowdsourced Emo-
jipedia available in global languages).4 Most sources I have found are in
English, reflecting the places where emoji are now most popular. I then
discuss how Unicode emoji, as a product that originated from Japan, rep-
resents patterns and contradictions inherent in Japanese popular culture
and its global reception. Last, I analyze the emoji translation of litera-
ture to understand the boundaries of cultural literacy and cross-cultural
communication. Instead of explicating commercial emoji translations
of known works (to date, few of which have been published in Japan),
such as Emoji Dick, the OMG Shakespeare series (e.g., YOLO Juliet and
Midsummer Night #nofilter, see Shakespeare and Wright 2015, 2016),
and Bible Emoji: Scripture 4 Millennials, I discuss the findings of “Emoji
Literature Translation Contests” held in two of my University of Oregon
courses: “Digital Age Stories: Literature and New Media in Japan and
the United States” (mixed college and graduate seminar, fall 2015) and
“Japanese Popular Culture in the World” (lower-division undergraduate
seminar, winter 2017). These pedagogical exercises are a direct means
to engage with literary texts and experience the merits and limitations
of emoji. Much of my research on Japanese popular culture has been
inspired by my teaching experiences (e.g., see Freedman and Slade 2017),
given that students are the people most intimately surrounded by and
involved with popular culture. In my classes, we put Henry Jenkins’s
(e.g. 2006, 2010) notion of “participatory culture”, or active engagement
with culture as producers as well as consumers, into academic practice:
We both analyze and appropriate Japanese trends to see how fan cultures
extend over national boundaries and legal limits to better understand the
role of digital media in the globalization of Japanese culture. My students,
whether they realized or not, also put Barthes’s theories to the test.
My analysis relies on three theoretical approaches: First, I use the term
cultural literacy, coined by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. (1988), to denote the ability to
understand and participate in a culture by being able to ‘read’ its semiotic
signs. Hirsch advocated that being culturally literate requires knowledge
of the shared body of information underpinning a society, something that
he believed children were not learning well enough in school. An under-
standing of history, beliefs, customs, arts, media, values, and idioms is
also important, as spoken and written words are insufficient for social
communication. Cultural literacy can be demonstrated through shared
references and jokes, both of which cement societies and are integral to
using emoji.
Second, to elaborate on my use of Empire of Signs, Barthes believed
that a society could be ‘read’ and hence understood through its mate-
rial culture, and I would add, popular culture, as semiotic signs for
larger practices or ‘mythologies’ that underlie metropolitan life. Read-
ing semiotic signs requires cultural literary; Barthes demonstrates what
happens when this is lacking. As a companion volume to Mythologies
(1972 [1957]), Barthes wrote Empire of Signs (1982 [1970]), in which
he inscribes a set of meanings to the places and things that comprise his
idea of Tokyo. Having visited the capital of Japan three times in 1966 and
1967 (the first trip at the invitation of his friend Maurice Pinguet, direc-
tor of the Franco-Japanese Institute in Tokyo to whom the book Empire
of Signs is dedicated), Barthes was fascinated by the experience of not
understanding Japanese language or culture. Although he saw evidence of
Tokyo’s development, especially in its commercial culture and transporta-
tion networks, Barthes contrasts his view of an unchanging and unread-
able Japan to Western (read: European) bourgeois urban life, which he
believed to be overflowing with meaning. Barthes perceives his fictional
Japan as a ‘system’ of ‘empty signs’, things, gestures, and places detached
from the ideas they signified. Barthes was struck by the silences, pauses,
and seeming emptiness present in highly urbanized Tokyo, from foods
to the city’s so-called empty center, which he believed to symbolize and
suggest rather than directly represent. He read them as foils to European
things and places, the referents for which he was familiar. Barthes was also
influenced by Zen Buddhism, then in vogue worldwide. From Zen satori,
he borrowed the notion that loss of meaning allows for the true nature
of something to be seen (see Barthes 1982 [1970], 4). In freely reading
Tokyo signs, Barthes used Japan as a way to understand France and his
personal life, as well as develop a new writing style. Barthes explained:
I am not lovingly gazing toward an Oriental essence—to me the Ori-

ent is a matter of indifference, merely providing a reserve of fea-
ture whose manipulation—whose invented interplay—allows me to
48 Alisa Freedman
‘entertain the idea of an unheard-of symbolic system, one altogether
detached from our own.
(Barthes 1982, 3)
This moment of interpretation occurs upon the first encounter with seem-
ing incongruities and illegible culture, “etymologically an adventure”
(79). As an analogy, using emoji can both expand cultural literacy, when
used as ‘full signs’ bearing weight of their social and historical context,
or erase it, when used as ‘empty signs’ and free-floating signifiers, leading
to new meanings as well as new misunderstandings.
Third, the act of translation is more than (re)telling of stories in a dif-
ferent linguistic register; instead, translation is the application of cultural
literacy of both a text’s original context and its new sphere of reception.
As argued by Lawrence Venuti (1998), translation always reflects the
dominant cultural values of the society into which it is received. Transla-
tors are responsible for making a literary text and its context accessible in
another language, and they convey the experience of what it is like to read
the original work. The translator is always forced to make choices and
to constantly negotiate between literalness and readability. Accordingly,
in addition to linguistic competency and writing skills, knowledge of
cultures—both that of the source text and that of the target readership—
is required. For example, Ivan Morris, a renowned scholar of Japan
and prolific translator of Japanese literature, published a translation of
Hayashi Fumiko’s short story “Tokyo” (Dauntaun, originally printed in
the Asahi newspaper in 1948) in Donald Keene’s Anthology of Modern
Japanese Literature (1956), one of the first compendiums of 19th- and
20th-century Japanese fiction for American readers. The volume was pub-
lished at a time when Americans were interested in Japan for political and
cultural rather than financial reasons. Japanese objects and concepts, from
sukiyaki restaurants to Zen Buddhism, were fashionable because they
seemed ‘exotic’. It was a time when Japan was reemerging on the global
scene as an ally against communism, opening to international visitors (for-
eigner tourists were first allowed to visit Tokyo in 1948), and becoming
an exporter of new technologies. Culture was used to shed the impression
of Japan as the former military adversary of the United States and to
promote the idea of Japan as a peaceful and domesticated nation-state.
This was the time before Toyota and Sony became common names, and
students studied Japan out of interest in economics (1980s) and popular
culture (1990s and beyond). For example, in the 1960s, American and
European intellectuals and artists wrote guides to Japanese society, and as
a contrast, even antidote, to their own societies (e.g., architect Bernard
Rudofsky’s 1965 The Kimono Mind: An Informal Guide to Japan and
the Japanese), a body of literature of which Barthes’s Empire of Signs
can be read as part and commentary. To help American readers under-
stand the lives of ordinary people in immediate postwar Tokyo, in his
translation, Morris changed cultural referents (turning soba noodles into
‘cold spaghetti’), abridged the protagonist’s internal monologue about
her life choices, and shortened the names of the characters to be easier
to pronounce (i.e., Riyo to Ryo; see Ericson 1997, ix). As a result, some
cultural context and literary style were lost in favor of readability, while
differences with the United States were accentuated.
My class faced similar predicaments in making their emoji translations
accessible yet exotic, distinguished from other modes of writing. The act
of translation became an experiment in cross-cultural communication in
addition to a means to illuminate the qualities that define literature. We
used emoji translations to assess how outsiders’ knowledge of Japanese
culture has grown in the digital age and how popular culture has become
a global flow of information in ways different from other media. Thereby,
our act of translation was a barometer of our knowledge about Japan, my
students knowing Japan differently in the 2010s than Barthes did in 1966
thanks, in part, to emoji.
Culture of Emoji Literacy

The use of emoticons is not new or limited to Japan. Since the days of
typewriters, ASCII artwork (pictures composed of letters, punctuation
marks, and other printable characters) has been used to express emotion,
cement reading communities through shared jokes, and expand the visual
quality of the book page. This is as evident in various written media, from
nineteenth-century newspaper advertisements to 1960s concrete poetry.
Japanese authors in the 1920s creatively used kanji characters to have a
stronger emotional effect on readers. For example, Kawabata Yasunari
repeats the character wife (tsuma), four times to create the image of a
crowd of individual, lonely wives (妻妻妻妻) in “Shigure no eki” (Engl.
“Rainy Station”), one of his Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (Kawabata 1988
[1928]), stories concise enough to nestle in the palm of your hand), and
he uses the character 井 (pronounced i, meaning ‘well for drawing water’),
to depict a cross-hatched pattern of a kimono in his experimental novel
Asakusa kurenaidan (Engl. Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, 2005 [1930]). Emoji
are not the first Japanese pictograms created for domestic use to enjoy
global reception, as evident by the Running Man exit sign designed by
Ōta Yukio in 1979 now found worldwide. As a corollary, highly mimetic
pictograms were designed for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (two years before
Barthes’s visit) to help international visitors navigate Tokyo (see Martijn
2014). Yet emoji have been the most ubiquitous and hotly debated set of
emoticons because of their easy access on mobile media, aesthetic charm,
sheer number, and susceptibility to misreading.
One of the first, and easiest to understand, emoticons among main-
stream users was a heart mark ♥ available on the ‘Pocket Bell’ in 1995. The
Pocket Bell, first introduced by NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
50 Alisa Freedman
Corporation) in 1968, was a stylish personal pager primarily among
women and, in the mid-1990s, the least expensive private communica-
tion tool. Users of Pocket Bells helped popularize SMS (Short Messaging
Service), which were made up of 140- to 160-character text messages
that altered the customs of written communication. With its horizontal,
left–right mode of composition, SMS overturned the traditional Japa-
nese convention of reading/writing (i.e., right–left; up–down). SMS thus
circumvented conventions of formal Japanese letter writing, which has
relied on seasonal greetings and polite words to soothe social relation-
ships. Without these linguistic clues, it became difficult to read the right
emotion into texts (analogous to Barthes’s [1982 {1970}, 102] misreading
of Japanese stoic facial expressions as empty of “moral hierarchies”?).
Abbreviations developed to save space and communicate feelings but
placed the expectation of communal knowledge. For example, SKY, for
supā kūki yomanai, meaning ‘super clueless’, was a popular Short Mes-
sage Service (SMS) slang in 2007. Other slang extended common prac-
tices, such as reading numbers as sounds (e.g. ‘39’ pronounced san-kyū
as ‘thank you’ or ‘Miku’ to refer to the animated singer Hatsune Miku).
Text languages, to which new words constantly have been added, can
be viewed as an extension of the shared vocabularies that solidify social
groups (e.g., see Miller 2017). In addition, Japanese cell phone users
popularized kaomoji, 顔文字, or ‘face characters’, often called ‘smileys’
in American English, that had been written on textboards like ASCII Net
since the 1980s (see Danet 2001, 194–240). While American smilies :) are
oriented horizontally, Japanese kaomoji are oriented vertically (^_^), per-
haps due to conventions established on earlier textboards. Kaomoji glo-
balized on Japanese language keyboards on iPhones and other platforms.
Possible global antecedents to kaomoji include a newspaper transcript by
Abraham Lincoln in 1862 with a drawing of a laugh with a semicolon and
parentheses that might have been printer’s typo (see Lee 2009).
A comprehensive set of colorful emoji, including faces and foods, was
developed around 1999 by NTT designer Shigetaka Kurita. It was prepro-
grammed into cellphones, starting with the DoCoMo i-mode units (NTT
established DoCoMo—from ‘do communications over the mobile net-
work’ and a pun for ‘anywhere’ (dokomo)—in 1992 and opened i-mode
mobile internet in 1999). Other service providers encoded the same set
of characters in slightly changed styles, complicating transmission among
sets of subscribers. Although incompatibility issues in sending emoji from
different providers have been resolved, aesthetic variations continue, as
exemplified in Apple and Google’s designs, with applications like What-
sApp, Signal, and Telegram using those supported by Apple’s operating
systems. One difference playfully debated over social media in October
2017 is the placement of the cheese in the burger emoji—Apple placed
the cheese above the patty whereas Android 10.0 placed its cheese below
(e.g., see Cooper 2017). Differences in the size and shape of mouths of
the face emoji can cause the emotions behind texts to be misread, leading
to more serious misunderstandings. Researchers at University of Min-
nesota’s GroupLens research lab found that about 40% of the 334 par-
ticipants surveyed confused the sentiment of emoji due to differences in
platforms, as the toothy grin on Google looks friendlier than that on
Apple (see Larson 2016; Miller 2016). The smiling eyes of Japanese emoji
(carets in (^_^) kaomoji), might seem less happy to people from other
countries. The embarrassing results of sending an emoji with facial fea-
tures that do not match the intended emotion is parodied in The Emoji
Movie (Tony Leondis, 2017), an attempt by Sony Pictures’ capitalize on
the success of The Lego Movie and other animated films based on well-
known commercial products.
A lack of preprogrammed emoji was one factor that hurt sales of iPhones
in Japan when they were first released in 2008; their presence added to the
cache of Japanese 3G phones (third-generation mobility technology start-
ing in 2001). On one hand, the term Galapagos Syndrome (garapagosu-
ka), denoting a strain of a global product with features only found locally,
was coined in reference to Japanese 3G phones that were too advanced
to be used elsewhere; this syndrome reflects both Japan’s reputation for
fashionable technology and anxiety about being an isolated ‘island nation’
(see Tabuchi 2009). On the other hand, Japanese cell phones have been on
the vanguard of global trends, with features such as photo transmission,
(first provided by J-Phone, now part of Softbank, in 2000) ringtones, and
emoji. The word sumaho, short for ‘smartphone’ touch-screen phones,
did not become a common media buzzword in Japan until 2011, three
years after the iPhone Japan release. In Japan, brands, names, and terms
are often abbreviated to their first syllabus after they become widely used,
as evident in sutaba for Starbucks, burapi for Brad Pitt, and seku hara for
‘sexual harassment’.
Even as they globalize, emoji require Japanese cultural knowledge to be
understood. Icons like the bowing man, receptionist woman, masked sick
face, and foods like dango and oden are included in Unicode Standard.
Because these objects are culturally specific, not everyone worldwide can
read all the emoji preprogrammed in their phones. The Japanese gov-
ernment has taken action to make pictograms more understandable to
foreigners, especially to encourage tourism for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The Japanese Ministry of Economics, Trade, and Industry (METI) has
considered revising the appearance of around 90 emoji, including those
that are also common Japanese symbols (see Murphy 2016).5 One of the
most contentious choices is the emoji for hot springs (onsen), premised on
the mark used on building signs, tourism posters, and goods throughout
Japan, even on the official seal for Atami City. In July 2016, METI pro-
posed adding seated people to the current depiction of three lines of steam
rising from a circle. In a similar gesture of erasing requirements of cultural
literacy, standardized symbols for the functions of Japanese toilets were
52 Alisa Freedman
announced in January 2017 (see Byford 2017). These efforts strive to
reduce the kinds of illegible signs that made Barthes feel lost in Tokyo.
The inability to read universal meanings in emoji has given rise to sec-
ondary meanings in local contexts. For example, the clasped hands emoji,
meaning ‘thanks’ or ‘please’ in Japan, has come to symbolize prayer in
the United States. The Japanese New Year’s decoration of three pieces
of bamboo, the middle one higher than the other two, has been adopted
as the obscene middle-finger gesture (for those users who do not have
Kimoji). Other emoji that have been used in unintended ways include
the smiling poop, eggplant, clam, and peach. The frowning poop was
one of the new characters being considered for Unicode 11.0, perhaps
more an international nod to emoji’s quirkiness than a reference to the
prevalence of anthropomorphized poop in Japanese culture (see the 2017
best-selling series of Unko-sensei [Professor Poop] kanji character learn-
ing guides for Japanese children). These local interpretations have not
been imported into Japan, unlike American variants on Japanese foods
like California roll sushi, unless part of a larger international joke or art-
work. Apple has used emoji for inside jokes and sly corporate messages,
largely unnoticed by users. The text on the Apple version of the open
book emoji is from Apple’s “Think Different” advertising campaign of
the late 1990s and early 2000s; the same text is written on the clipboard
emoji but is addressed to “Kate” (most likely not an allusion to Kate
Pinkerton, the American wife, in Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madama But-
terfly and its various adaptations set in Japan). Unicode emoji have been
added with attention to multiculturalism and diversities within cultures.
For example, among the emoji added to Unicode in October 2015 were
icons of world religions; June 2018 saw the addition of icons representing
Chinese culture. Among the emoji added to Unicode 12.0 (2019) are 13
icons representing physical disabilities.
Twitter has used emoji to measure the national zeitgeist in Japan and
other countries in order to propose ideas for new emoji and to assess pub-
lic responses to historical events and trends, without perhaps accounting
for use of emoji for mimesis or sarcasm. According to Twitter, by mid-
2015, the most tweeted emoji worldwide was the ‘crying with joy’ face;
in 2016 the beating heart was most tweeted in Japan, while the tired face
was prevalent in the United States and Canada (see Gil 2016). This can
be read as part of a larger movement by media outlets and publishers, like
Japan’s Jiyū kokumin-sha that compiles the compendium of Gendai yōgo
no kiso chishiki (Basic Knowledge on Contemporary Terminology) and
the Oxford English Dictionary, to track prevalent buzzwords to map the
flows of public opinion, another impulse aligned with Barthes’s semiotic
readings of signs to understand dominant values.
These polls are further evidence of how emoji has become a global set
of signifiers, despite the necessity of understanding emoji’s local cultural
contexts and corporate origins. Technology has accelerated the ability to
experience global products, with the internet, smartphones, and instant
translations continuously mixing Japanese popular culture with the cul-
ture of the world. Even emoji characters that are hardly used outside
Japan have also been incorporated into the Unicode standard. As such,
emoji reveals contradictions inherent in the globalization of Japanese
popular culture, while demonstrating the educational value of trends in
teaching cultural literacy.
Empire of Emoji Signs

Emoji provide insight into one form of Japanese culture that can be easily
globalized and incorporated into local contexts: culture that is grounded
aspects of Japanese society, history, politics, aesthetics, storytelling con-
ventions, and belief systems yet that can be understood, although not in
its entirely, abroad. Another prime example is the Pokémon franchise,
which includes characters seeped in Japanese aesthetics and introduces
global consumers to Japanese marketing strategies like ‘media mix’, the
release of the same product in different media formats (see Allison 2006;
Steinberg 2012). Many products have globalized because they emit the
right ‘cultural odor’, a term coined by Iwabuchi Kōichi (2002) to explain
the amount of cultural context a product carries. Some products, like the
Sony Walkman in the 1980s, were made to blend seamlessly into global
contexts (see Allison 2006), while others have become popular because
they seem somehow ‘Japanese’, like some forms of J-pop music, televi-
sion dramas, and anime. It can be said that Barthes was overwhelmed by
Tokyo’s strong cultural odor while still able to navigate the city thanks
to his knowledge of infrastructural elements generally found in large
metropolises, such as stations and stationery stores. Another model is the
removal and recalibration of cultural context. As analyzed by William
Tsutsui (2017), Godzilla is a franchise that takes on new meanings when
it is localized by erasing or inventing political subtexts, adding layers
of interpretation through dubbing, and becoming available in different
formats. Emoji proliferated during a time of large-scale globalization of
Japanese trends, often through efforts by fans, whose commercial patterns
encouraged corporations and the Japanese government to play larger roles
in promoting Japanese culture abroad (see McLelland 2016). Emoji were
initially part of this movement, as users created third-party platforms for
utilizing emoji. After emoji’s incorporation by Unicode, more smartphone
users, regardless of their feelings for Japan, have relied on them.
The global adaptation of emoji disrupts the ways in which popular
culture has been marketed in Japan. As a medium of communication that
first spread internationally through fan use, rather than commercial pro-
motion, emoji circumvent Japanese marketing programs that are premised
on binaries of domestic/foreign and male/female (e.g., kinds of creative
industries supported by METI’s 2012 ‘Cool Japan Strategy’) and girls/
54 Alisa Freedman
boys (shōjo/shōnen manga).6 Emoji challenge dominant Japanese business
strategies inf(l)ected with the Galapagos Syndrome, such as not exporting
projects for which the domestic market is strong enough, as is the case for
commercial television dramas. Emoji demonstrate how Japanese popular
culture both ‘belongs’ to Japan and has become ‘international’, linking
consumers around the world. Emoji question the use of the nation-state
as an organizing principle for the categorization of popular culture and
show that the designation ‘Japanese’ in Japanese popular culture is more
an associative starting point rather than a marker of exclusivity or locus
of origin for what are a globalized set of phenomena (see Freedman and
Slade 2017). Japan in the emojiverse is analogous to Tokyo in Barthes’s
fictive Japan.
In addition, emoji exemplify the dynamism of cultural translation, as
users are immediately faced with the need to interpret the meanings of
Japanese icons; therein also lies their pedagogical potential. The pleasure
of popular culture lies in its easy consumption, without needing to think
too deeply, yet trends like emoji can potentially instruct (correctly or not)
about society, economics, and politics when users learn their backsto-
ries, appearances, and circulation. For example, emoji disclose Japanese
gender stereotypes and historical limits on women’s progress into the
Japanese workforce. Until 2016, the only women workers depicted in
emoji were either in the entertainment or service industry (e.g., dancers,
receptionists, and Playboy bunnies). Google was among the first providers
to include emoji characters of female professionals (i.e., in jobs demand-
ing university degrees), but these icons were not added until Unicode
11.0, after the addition of multiracial skin tones (Unicode 8.0, 2015) and
same-sex couples (Unicode 6.0, 2010). This shows that gender advance-
ment often comes later than advances in multiculturalism. In addition to
teaching cultural content, emoji can familiarize consumers with Japanese
aesthetics. For example, the original 719 characters in Unicode emoji also
express the Japanese aesthetics of kawaii, or ‘cuteness’, which is premised
on the object’s vulnerability, often, characterized by a big head, the lack
of a nose or mouth, and large eyes to show emotion.
Yet emoji demonstrate that popular culture is neither politics nor eco-
nomics; although they are a measure of global values and symbol of global
movements, emoji and other forms of popular culture have not improved
international relations. While popular culture has economic and political
ramifications, the attempt of using it as a reliable tool of political influence
is flawed, as evident in the top-down promotion of ‘Cool Japan’ around
2012 that failed, in part, because of the inability to control the images of
Japan promoted in manga and other cultural texts exported by fans (see
McLelland 2016). In addition to the difficulties of turning culture into
political currency, emoji show how the brand of ‘Japan’ continues to face
the law of unintended consequences, as popular culture circulates and is
put to originally unintended uses by global fans.
My class mobilized the preceding traits of emoji in their literary trans-
lations to determine if the globalization of popular culture extends cul-
tural literacy. On one level, we tested if students would use emoji as ‘full’
or ‘empty’ signs, namely, how much they would rely on understanding
emoji’s cultural meanings. On another level, we questioned if emoji would
provide new possibilities for storytelling in the digital age or would instead
illuminate and solidify the stylistic qualities that make literature an art
form, as distinguished from the reproducibility and easy consumption of
popular culture. We acknowledged the significance Barthes placed on the
act of writing as a means to understand the ‘emptiness of language’. We
also used emoji to query the historical divide between so-called popular
culture and ‘art’ (encompassing literary arts), as two forms of culture that
globalize differently but both figure into Barthes’s Empire of Signs. For the
sake of argument, we adopted the historical and conservative definition
of ‘art’ as the enduring, elite, and sublime culture of museums, human
creative production that is not easily reproducible, and the historical pos-
iting of popular culture as its opposite. The 1999 set of emoji has been
exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (December
2016), showing how the two categories have been blurred.
Emoji Translation
Artists, such as China’s Xu Bing in his Book from the Sky (four volumes,
1987–1991), have experimented in writing texts entirely in pictograms in
order to depict the history of literacy and the power of the acts of writing
and reading (see, for example, Ames 2011), but, to date, no commercial
literary work from any country has been written entirely in emoji. In
2004, American Lauren Myracle’s ttyl (2005), the first volume of her
‘Internet Girl’ series, became the world’s first bestseller entirely written
in SMS–text message format. Three fictional high-school friends tell each
other their troubles through texts that use few emoji. Texts are color-
coded to distinguish the protagonists, whose texting styles are similar.
In 2014, Myracle updated the look of the page and included emoticons,
which were mostly heart marks. ttyl topped lists for banned books in
2009 (third in 2008) and was suggested for banning in 2010 and 2011
because of offensive language and sexual content (see Flood 2015).7 The
text-based format added to the immediacy of the narrative, which makes
the reader feel as if she is privy to a conversation occurring in ‘real time’.
The first book for adults to be written exclusively in text messages and
to extensively use ASCII art as both emoticons and illustrations, along with
visual slang, was Japan’s internet novel Densha otoko (Engl. Train Man,
2007; Nakano 2004), an inspiring romance created from carefully selected
posts in a discussion on 2channel between March and May 2004. (Internet
novels are stories created and first available online.) Train Man was adapted
into a bestselling print book, a film, a television series, a stage play, four
56 Alisa Freedman
manga, and even adult video, all within the same year. As I have analyzed
elsewhere (see Freedman 2009), in addition to changing notions of books
and furthering the marketing trend of cross-media promotion, Train Man
popularized and mainstreamed a certain kind of otaku—here, avid fans of
manga, anime, games, and computer technologies. The story encouraged
debates in the mass media about Japanese men and marriage during a time
of national concern over falling birth rates. Train Man was concurrent with
and helped promote ‘cell phone novels’ (keitai shōsetsu, 携帯小説), novels
written on cell phones and serialized for free subscriptions on specialized
websites (e.g., Magic Island [Mahō no i-rando, i in island a pun for ‘i-mode
digital services’], opened in 1999, one year before Amazon.co.jp). Several
cell phone novels became bestselling print books between 2004 and 2007,
pivotal years in the spread of the internet and the globalization of Japanese
popular culture, and were adapted into manga, television dramas, and films
and inspired spinoffs. Consumed by a different demographic and using less
slang and fewer emoticons than Train Man, cell phone novels represented
an alternative mode of collaborative writing, as authors took reader feed-
back into consideration while serializing stories (see Freedman 2017). With
the exception of stars for emphasis and flair, heart marks to show love, and
musical notes for ringing phones and arriving messages, most internet and
cell phone novels have few emoticons. Thus, the literary trends exempli-
fied by ttyl, Train Man, and cell phone novels demonstrated the potentials
of writing in text-message format to expand storytelling capabilities and
appeal to new audiences, although the trend waned in popularity after
about 2008, in part, because it was no longer new and alluring; concur-
rently, they underscored the impossibility of telling stories, replete with new
information for readers, solely in emoji (see Freedman 2017).
The most common literary use of emoji has been to playfully render
famous world plots, familiar enough to be understood without line-by-
line reading, in new ways for readers who are adept with digital media.
A prime example is Emoji Dick, compiled and edited by engineer Fred
Benenson. Crowdfunded through Kickstarter in 2009, the translation of
Emoji Dick was outsourced through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The
plan was for one team of workers to translate each of the book’s sentences
three times and for another team to select the best option; 800 people
were paid five cents per translation and two cents per vote.8 The book
became available in print in 2010 and was the first emoji novel accepted
into the Library of Congress. Benenson’s goal was to test the impact of
digital media on language and literacy rather than to convey the literary
qualities of Melville’s fiction in an innovative way. He stated:
I’m interested in the phenomenon of how our language, communi-

cations, and culture are influenced by digital technology. Emoji are
either a low point or a high point in that story, so I felt I could
confront a lot of our shared anxieties about the future of human
expression (see: Twitter or text messages) by forcing a great work of
literature through such a strange new filter.
(as quoted in Law 2009, n.pag.)
Perhaps unintentionally, Benenson measured the limits of emoji literacy

in addition to the endurance of literature as an art form. Emoji have
also been used to attract young readers. In 2015 and 2016, Random
House published the four-volume OMG Shakespeare series, and Bible
Emoji: Scripture 4 Millennials became available through Apple iBooks
and iTunes in 2016. In this version of the King James Bible, an anony-
mous translator, represented by the sunglasses face emoji, used software
to match 200 words with 80 emoji; as a result, only 10% to 15% of the
text is in emoji (see Cuthbertson 2016). Machine translation led to mis-
takes, such as inserting the emoji angry face in the word stranger. Most
emoji translations have been of works available in the public domain
without the need for copyrights; the few examples in Japanese are further
evidence that emoji are more popular outside Japan.
Between 2015 and 2017, I held “Emoji Literary Translation Contests”
in my seminars to explore ‘literary’ narrative and aesthetic qualities gained
and lost by rendering novels in emoji to experiment with cross-cultural
mash-ups, to see the boundaries of cultural literacy, and to assess how
students read emoji. Students had an additional seventy-two new emoji
characters, especially faces, people, animals, nature, drinks, and foods, to
use after the upgrade to Unicode 9.0 in June 2016. Students were given the
choice of translating at least two sentences of one of their favorite literary
or popular culture works into emoji or to write parts of original stories
in emoji; almost all students opted to translate. Some students translated
books we read in class, relying on shared references and in-jokes to promote
their translations. The classes then voted on the winners of two categories:
(1) Best Translation Style and (2) Best Overall Translation. As an added
incentive, winners received gift cards to campus restaurants and bookstores.
The vote was held in class: I projected anonymous entries on two sets of
Power Point slides, those with and without the source texts identified.
Some students mimetically used emoji to represent words and concepts,
as evident in the Best Overall Translation from 2017: the first episode of
the popular anime Meitantei Konan (Engl. Detective Conan, which was
mentioned but not studied in class; see Figure 3.1). The class voted for
the translation because it captured the plot and mood of an entire episode
in a few lines and was easy to understand. To the student translator,
the largest impediment was a lack of emoji to sufficiently tell the story:
“Unfortunately, my phone doesn’t have some of the emoji that I wanted
so I had to substitute for something less accurate. (Rather than a gun,
it should be a baseball bat, etc.)” (University of Oregon Student 2017).
Other translations were more literal and substituted emoji for words,
like the runner-up for Best Translation Style 2015: the first two lines
58 Alisa Freedman
Figure 3.1 Best overall emoji translation 2017: Meitantei Konan; (Engl. Detective
Conan) anime
of Natsume Sōseki’s Wagahai wa neko de aru (Engl. I Am a Cat, 1971

[1905]; see Figure 3.2). In this translation, the student repeats the same
emoji for emphasis, a technique common in text messages and found in
literature, like Kawabata’s The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (2005 [1930]),
and uses icons based on Japanese language, like the character mu, 無,
meaning ‘emptiness’, or used as a negator, to show the national origins
of the source text. That mu is the guiding Japanese character of Barthes’s
Empire of Signs, and his notions of Zen-inspired emptiness adds another
layer of meaning to the translation. The student confuses the love hotel
emoji for a hospital, giving the translation unintentional humor.
Other students summarized book plots through single picture emoji,
as exemplified by the Best Translation Style Winner 2015 of Murkami
Haruki’s Noruwei no mori (Engl. Norwegian Wood, 2000 [1987])
included in the course syllabus (see Figure 3.3). Students appreciated how
Figure 3.2 Emoji translation of Natsume Sōseki, Wagahai wa neko de aru; (Engl.
I Am a Cat, 1971 [1905])
Figure 3.3 Best translation style winner 2015: Murakami Haruki’s Noruwei no
mori; (Engl. Norwegian Wood, 2000 [1987])
60 Alisa Freedman
this visual mapping of emoji allowed the story to unfold linearly while
accounting for plot twists and subplots. It captured the dichotomy of
space in the novel, which is divided between 1960s’ Tokyo student life and
a quiet recovery facility in the woods of Kyoto. The student represented
Murakami’s framing of the narrative by the first chapter, in which the
30-something narrator remembers his university days while hearing the
song “Norwegian Wood” while boarding an airplane; the rest of the story
is told from memory. In a similar spirit, a student in 2015 depicted the
climactic suicide scene of Mishima Yukio’s novella Yūkoku (Engl. Patrio-
tism 2010 [1961]) through a single pane emoji created through Snapchat.
This emoji turns the novel into a singular semiotic sign (see Figure 3.4).
When asked the rationale for their votes, students answered that they
most highly valued innovative use of emoji and the ease of recognizing
the source texts. The most immediately understandable translations were
the highest ranked. Concurrently, students enjoyed seeing emoji emptied
of their original meanings and used in innovative ways. They felt that
translations done in Apple emoji were less approachable than those in
Google emoji and this distancing made them feel more detached from the
texts. Students were impressed by the difficulty of writing and writing
sentences solely in emoji. As one student commented:
I have a five-hours-old analogy for this! My 17-year-old brother

texted me today to tell me that he’s reading John Milton’s Paradise
Lost in his AP English Lit class:
By the way . . . Have you read paradise lost? It’s got really weird
phrasing. Ah, phrasing makes this book like 10x harder than it
needs to be tbh xD. Then again . . . The dude was blind and he
had his daughter write it so . . . Blame her?
Emoji stories are to me as Paradise Lost is to my brother . . . Phrasing

is confusing.
(University of Oregon student 2015)
While agreeing that emoji translation helped them to better appreciate the
literary qualities of written texts, students acknowledged their limits in
conveying literary form and style. We questioned how to use emoji to craft
literary devices, like metaphors and personification, and to convey differ-
ent moods. How to distinguish between first-, second-, and third-person
narration and different character voices using emoji? Are irony, parody,
and sarcasm possible in emoji, the comprehension of which is driven by
mimetics? We questioned the differences a text message, literary story, and
other texts, such as the June 2015 Chevrolet automobile advertisements
written in emoji (#CHEVYGOESEMOJI). Other impediments to emoji
translation included a lack of enough emoji for diverse storytelling and
the limitations of vocabulary. For example, until 2016, authors could
Figure 3.4 Climactic scene of Mishima Yukio’s Yūkoku; (Engl. Patriotism 2010
[1961]. Created using Snapchat
62 Alisa Freedman
write a story about a robot who rides a spaceship to the post office but
not about a female professor who writes an article on emoji. We discussed
how, as pictograms, emoji are predominantly nouns and verbs rather than
adjectives and adverbs.
To a certain extent, Japanese culture inherent in emoji hindered their
use in English translation. For example, the visual orientation of emoji
reflects their Japanese origins: side-facing emoji look toward the left, for
Japanese writing has historically been from right to left and have been
structured as reason result instead of result reason. Thus, emoji face the
wrong way for writing sentences in languages other than Japanese, mak-
ing it look if subjects are walking backward. Students generally avoided
using emoji too apparently grounded in Japan, such as holiday symbols
and foods. Even when translating Japanese literature, they used the emoji
best known in the United States and reliant on secondary American read-
ings (like eggplants in Figure 3.3). To my students, emoji were both empty
and full signs, depending on how well they understood them.
As seen through this exploration of emoji as a trend that easily global-
izes while grounded in Japan, system that reflects historical changes in
knowledge about Japan, mode of affective communication, and written
language with literary limits, popular culture, if properly contextualized,
can potentially promote cultural literacy (of Japan and one’s own culture).
While the usage of emoji in Japan may have dwindled due to the pro-
liferation of more elaborate ‘stickers’ (full-bodied, animated emoticons)
available through free apps like LINE, their increase on Unicode has led
to new possibilities for promoting multiculturalism and understanding of
worldwide identities and practices. The growing repertoire of emoji, on
one hand, exemplify conventions particular to Japanese cell phone and
internet use, including access patterns, visual languages, gender concep-
tions, and corporate tie-ins. On the other hand, emoji, preprogrammed
into most smartphones, exemplify how Japanese popular culture is
transforming global communication and reflect the zeitgeist of different
populations and places. Although developed to make text messages more
readable, emoji have frustrated communication by the need for shared
knowledge. Emoji need to be used along with written expressions to avoid
misunderstandings, a lesson taught through literature and its translation.
Unicode emoji are a helpful theoretical tool for analyzing cultural literacy
in the digital age. Yet emoji ultimately affirms the domination of the writ-
ten word in this time of visual narratives and the continued influence of
local contexts on the consumption of global culture.
Using emoji as an ‘empire of signs’, without accounting for their
original Japanese referents and while taking for granted their nods to
global cultures, can lead to new pleasures of the text, but users who look
closely at the icons they embed in writing language, from text messages
to translations, find themselves faced with new requirements for cultural
literacy. In Empire of Signs, Barthes includes examples of French-Japanese
translation, in part to contrast how the two cultures use language differ-
ently to directly express or suggest meaning. One can only imagine how
he would have used emoji.
Acknowledgments
This chapter first appeared in First Monday: Peer Reviewed Journal on the
Internet 23 (9), 3 September 2018. I am grateful to First Monday for giv-
ing reprint permissions. I would like to thank Adana Lindsley, Madeline
Punches, Elise Choi, Gaby Burkard, and Beni Rose for emoji translations
and insights. Joel Gn, Crystal Abidin, and Edward Valauskas were expert
editors. Two anonymous readers and Christopher St. Louis provided valu-
able feedback. The first draft of this paper was presented at a conference
at the Free University of Berlin organized by Elena Giannoulis.
Notes
1. Outside this article are the myriad commercial emoji and stickers inspired by
the success of Unicode emoji.
2. For example, while sending text messages about participating in women’s
marches after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Florie Hutchinson realized
that the only women’s shoe emoji was a red stiletto heel. She then petitioned to
Unicode and worked with a designer to have a blue flat shoe added to Unicode
11.0 (e.g., see Brahampour 2018).
3. See Unicode Consortium. 2018. “Unicode Emoji.” Unicode Technical Reports,
May 21. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://unicode.org/reports/tr51.
4. See anonymous [mroth/matthew rothenberg]. Emojitracker: Realtime Emoji
Use on Twitter. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.emojitracker.com.
5. See anonymous. 2017. “Onsen Emoji [Hot-Spring Emoji].” 2017. Let’s
EMOJI, May 15. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://lets-emoji.com/onsen-emoji.
6. See METI, Creative Industries Division. 2012. “Cool Japan Strategy.” Min-
istry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan, January. Accessed 1 June
2019. www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/mono_info_service/creative_industries/
pdf/120116_01a.pdf.
7. See anonymous [ST Harker]. 2016. “Banned 59: ttyl by Lauren Myracle.”
Banned Library, May 14. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.bannedlibrary.com/
podcast/2016/5/12/banned-56-ttyl-by-lauren-myracle.
8. See Benenson, Fred. Emoji Dick. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.emojidick.com.
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4 Emoticons
Digital Lingua Franca or
a Culture-Specific Product
Leading to Misunderstandings?
Marzena Karpinska, Paula Kurzawska,
and Katarzyna Rozanska
1. Introduction
In the past two decades, the constant development and popularization of
the internet, as well as the emergence of smartphones and other mobile
devices, triggered the emergence of new ways of communication. Among
these, we can distinguish (1) instant messaging (IM)—a tool enabling indi-
viduals to communicate using their phones, laptops, or other devices—and
(2) social media—various platforms facilitating communication between
individuals or between an individual and a larger group. This shift to
digital communication created a need for nonverbal (or nontextual) cues
to overcome limitations of computer-mediated communication (CMC).
Park, Baek, and Cha (2014, 466) point out that such nonverbal cues
account for up to 93% of everyday communication. Although on-paper
communication (e.g., letters or postcards) has existed for centuries, it has
never required a constant, dialogue-like exchange of utterances. Thus,
one could convey one’s emotions only by writing about them. In contrast,
communication in the digital age requires a quick and effective exchange
of information, leaving little space for lengthy messages—but plenty of
room for misinterpretation. Moreover, the emergence of internet forums
and social networking services created a previously nonexistent oppor-
tunity to talk to people one would not have encountered otherwise. This
makes any interpretation of textual messages increasingly difficult, since it
is based on previous knowledge about the respective interlocutor. Digital
pictograms and ideograms like emoticons, and later emoji (encompass-
ing smileys as well as ideograms), were a natural answer to the basic
human need for instantaneous, confusion-free, effective communication,
since these new forms of digital exchange turned out to be largely bereft
of traditional nonverbal cues. Ptaszynski et al. (2010, 46) explain that
emoticons “are virtual representations of body language and their main
function is similar—namely to convey information about the speaker’s
emotional state”. Accordingly, emoticons are considered representations
of body language in a textual form. Sanderson described the very first
68 Marzena Karpinska, Paula Kurzawska, and Katarzyna Rozanska
emoticons (also called ‘smileys’) as “a sequence of ordinary characters you
can find on your computer keyboard” (Sanderson 1993, 1).
In this chapter, we understand ‘Eastern-style emoticons’ as “graphic
representations of facial expressions” (Park, Baek, and Cha 2014, 334),
also encompassing what is known as kaomoji, 顔文字 (face characters),
in Japan, as well as geurim mal, 그림말 (pictorial words), in Korea.
These representations vary across cultures (see Nishimura 2007, 172;
Kavanagh 2010, 70). Emoticons are horizontally oriented and typically
consist of two to four characters, while kaomoji (or Japanese emoticons)
are oriented vertically and created from three to even 20 or more char-
acters (see Ptaszynski et al. 2010, 48). Furthermore, while emoticons
focus on the mouth, the ‘Eastern- style’ ones focus heavily on the eyes
(see Moschini 2016, 16). Not only the appearance, however, but also the
origins of Western and Eastern digital pictograms and ideograms differ.
Moschini (2016, 20) explains that emoticons were first used among
U.S. computer scientists’ user groups as “humour indicators” (most
notably, to signalize the use of irony and sarcasm, and to avoid possible
misinterpretations). On the other hand, kaomoji were most commonly
used among young girls, as well as among manga fans. Presumably, the
reasons they quickly took up these kinds of signs and popularized them
were different from those of U.S. emoticon users. Moschini (2016, 21)
suggests that the reason kaomoji turned out to be so attractive for Japa-
nese teenagers was its kawaii (cute) look appealing to young girls and
the ease with which kaomoji adopted manga symbols (such as ‘sweat
drops’ showing embarrassment), a practice attracting manga fans.
Furthermore, this ease—and the overall structural similarities between
manga facial expressions and kaomoji (see Moschini 2016, 15)—hints
at a high cultural compatibility between these two. Even though the
first emoticon :) was apparently created in 1982 by Scott E. Fahlman
(see Yasuoka 2004, 2; Suzuki 2007, 91), Wakabayashi Yasushi, who is
considered the inventor of the first Japanese kaomoji in 1986, (^_^),
claims that he did not know about Fahlman’s emoticon when creating
his own version (see Suzuki 2007, 94). The fact that the Japanese devel-
oped numerous elaborate kaomoji, as well as an additional system of
emoji, 絵文字, or ideograms (including numerous versions of smileys),
and that they popularized these expressions to the extent that the word
emoji made it into the English language (see Moschini 2016, 12), sug-
gests that all these ‘Eastern-style emoticons’ occupy a special place in
Japanese culture. Indeed, researchers have pointed out a relationship
between kaomoji, the Japanese writing system, and cultural phenomena
such as manga and kawaii (cute) culture (see Katsuno and Yano 2002,
213; Moschini 2016, 20–21).
Although very little research on the development of geurim mal (or
Korean emoticons) in Korea, can be found, their origin can be traced
back to the 1990s when limitations on character length of the first pagers
Emoticons 69
forced people to design strategies to convey messages with the use of as
few characters as possible.1 However, unlike Japan and the United States,
Korea does not have a history marked by milestones in the development
of its’ ‘emoticons’—despite their immense popularity in the country.
Moreover, Kavanagh (2010, 65) associates the immense popularity of
digital pictograms and ideograms in Asia with the ‘high context culture’
of countries such as Japan and Korea. He explains that in case of high
context cultures, which rely heavily on body language, facial expressions,
and so on, rather than exclusively using words to convey a message,
kaomoji serve as compensation strategy to make up for lack of context
when using CMC (see Kavanagh 2010, 68). As both Japan and Korea
represent high-context cultures (see also Merkin 2009), the use of digital
pictograms and ideograms to provide an otherwise missing context can
be interpreted as a compensation strategy in both countries. Katsuno and
Yano (2002, 215) describe the role of digital pictograms and ideograms
as that of an “electronic social lubricant” enabling smooth communica-
tion. More precisely, Katsuno and Yano (2002, 78), as well as Kavanagh
(2010, 78) and Murakami, Yamada, and Hagiwara (2011, 1157) explain
that digital pictograms and ideograms serve to either soften or emphasize
certain aspects of messages and, furthermore, help to “humanize online
interaction” (Kavanagh 2010, 77). Although in the present chapter we
speak of ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ emoticons in some contrast, researchers
tend to increasingly differentiate between Japanese and Korean digital
pictograms and ideograms (see Tomić, Martinez, and Vrbanec 2013,
38; Park 2014, 5). Indeed, Japanese and Korean emoticons visually dif-
fer to some extent. This is, among other things, due to the use of dif-
ferent languages and (consequently) characters derived from different
alphabets and their unique punctuation. While Japanese kaomoji utilize
the Japanese katakana, hiragana, and kanji characters, Korean geurim
mal employ hangeul jamo characters used in the Korean language (see
Tomić, Martinez, and Vrbanec 2013, 39). These differences give rise to
the following questions: Will the Japanese and Korean users interpret
digital pictograms and ideograms similarly despite such differences, or do
variations in ‘Eastern-style emoticons’ create a space for misunderstand-
ing, even for countries sharing such relative geographical and cultural
proximity?
2. Methodology
2.1 Participants
We recruited 76 participants (49 females and 27 males) through social
media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) from January 2016 to November 2017.
Out of these, 41 participants (28 females and 13 males) were Japanese
and 35 (21 females and 14 males) were Korean. Both groups reported
no, or close to no, prior knowledge of the respective ‘other’ (Korean/
Japanese) language. The age of the participants ranged from 22 to 50,
with a mean of 30.99 (SD = 6.612, Table 4.1, Figure 4.1). All respondents
reported using instant messaging applications such as LINE, Kakaotalk,
or Facebook Messenger, on a daily basis, to communicate with their
friends and coworkers.
Table 4.1 Age of Participants (mean, median, standard deviation for both groups)
Age (all) Age–Japanese Age–Korean
Number of Participants 76 41 35
Mean 30.99 32.20 29.57
Std. Deviation 6.612 6.972 5.952
Figure 4.1 Age of participants

Emoticons 71
2.2 Stimuli
Based on findings of previous research processing dumps from plat-
forms like Twitter (see Kitamura 2001; Murakami, Yamada, and Hagi-
wara 2011; Park et al. 2013; Do and Choi 2015; Kazama, Mizuki, and
Takeshi 2016) we selected 17 digital pictograms and ideograms, in order
to cover the widest possible range of different emotions. Subsequently,
we manually cross-checked our selection against internet resources, such
as blogs, social media search engines, and Japanese and Korean forums.
We reduced our selection to 10 digital pictograms and ideograms in
total, by choosing those that appeared in searches more than 100 times
across different platforms and conveyed various different emotions or
states.
Out of these, five were kaomoji observed only (or mostly) within
Japanese sources (see Table 4.2), while five were geurim mal, so they
appeared only (or mostly) in Korean sources (see Table 4.3). Both sets
were designed to contain a range of various emotions, expressing ‘happi-
ness’, ‘anger’, or ‘disappointment’. However, one should note that these
sets do not aspire to cover all the possible states and emotions that can be
conveyed using digital pictograms and ideograms.
Table 4.2 Korean Geurim Mal
geurim mal Meaning
ㅠㅠ Cry
ㅇㅠㅇ puke, disgust
mouth-watering
ㅋ_ㅋ smiling face
ㅡㅡ irritation, bad
feeling
ㅅㅅ smiling face
Table 4.3 Japanese Kaomoji
kaomoji meaning
m(_ _)m apologizing

(≧▽≦) laugh
_l￣l○ disappointment
Σ(°Д°；) surprised
(@_@) confused, surprised
2.3 Procedure
We prepared a self-administered, web-based questionnaire using Google
Forms. The questionnaire contained 35 questions. All participants were
asked to provide their (1) age, (2) gender, (3) profession, (4) information
on prior knowledge of nonnative (either Korean or Japanese) language,
and (5) information on their habits related to the usage of IM applications.
This was followed by a set of ten questions, five regarding kaomoji and
five about geurim mal, presented to the respondents in a pseudo-random
order. Each question consisted of three parts: (1) “In your opinion, what
is the meaning of this ideogram?” (2) “How strongly does it convey this
meaning?” and (3) “How often do you use it?” Both Japanese and Korean
participants answered questions about all ten items (five Japanese kaomoji
and five Korean geurim mal).
For the first part, (1) “In your opinion, what is the meaning of this
ideogram?” no options were given to avoid suggesting answers to the
respondents. Participants were advised to write the meaning they thought
the ideogram conveys or to write ‘X’ if they could not think of any. In the
second part, (2) “How strong does it convey this meaning?”, participants
were instructed to select a number on a 9-point Likert scale (1—“very
weakly”; 9—“very strongly”).2 In the third part, (3) “How often do you
use it?”, participants were given three choices: (a) “often”; (b) “some-
times”; (c) “never”. The questionnaire was presented in the participant’s
native language (either Japanese or Korean). There was also an option to
leave a comment at the end of the questionnaire. The questionnaire was
designed to take no more than 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Results
3.1 Japanese Kaomoji

Even though the Japanese kaomoji used here do not contain any kanji
(Chinese character), they still require some special characters like ‘Д’
(which is used to represent a mouth). Moreover, some kaomoji are
strictly linked to the uniqueness of Japanese customs and culture, such as
m(_ _)m. This kaomoji depicts a person performing dogeza, 土下座—a
traditional kneeling on the floor and bowing while touching the fore-
head on the ground. It is commonly used when asking for something,
apologizing, or showing gratitude. In real life, however, one would decide
to perform dogeza only if matters were serious. As expected, Japanese
participants recognized the meaning of this kaomoji either as an apology
or as showing gratitude: “I’m sorry” (19), “Thank you. I’m sorry” (11),
“Thank you” (1). It should be noted that in Japanese culture it is very
common to say ‘I’m sorry’ instead of ‘Thank you’ since one apologizes for
any inconvenience caused from receiving a favor. Consequently, these two
Emoticons 73
concepts are connected to each other. Other answers like “bow” (1) and
“please” (9) are also strictly related to this schema and convey a similar
meaning. While the practice of bowing is closely related to the concept
of apologizing, asking for something is the initial action related to the
subsequent expression of gratitude. Moreover, the assigned meaning was
perceived relatively strongly, with 28 out of 41 participants rating it at 7
or higher on the Likert scale.
In contrast, Korean participants seemed to be quite confused. Fifteen
out of 35 (over 40%) did not know and could not guess the meaning
of m(_ _)m. Moreover, the answers of those who tried, seemed rather
random: “oink” (2), “greetings” (2), “sad” (1), “ghost” (1), “Did you
come?” (1), “What is this?” (2) or “dissatisfied” (1). Only ten respondents
hinted at the meaning of “I’m sorry” (2), “Thank you” (3), “bow” (4) or
“please” (1), and only four Korean participants rated the strength at 5 or
more on the Likert scale. Moreover, as one may have expected, all Korean
participants reported that they have never used this kaomoji, while 35
out of 42 Japanese participants, admitted that they use it sometimes or
even often.
The next Japanese kaomoji (≧▽≦) is usually used to represent a laugh-
ing, happy, or positively excited face and it was evaluated as such by 39
out of 41 Japanese respondents. There were also two random answers,
containing negative connotations, “dark circles (under eyes)” (1) and “fail-
ure” (1). Nevertheless, the concept of happiness was perceived strongly,
with 34 participants choosing 7 or more on the Likert scale. Interestingly,
“dark circles” received seven, and “failure” got nine, which means that
these negative meanings were perceived as strong. The meaning of this
kaomoji also seemed to be relatively clear for over half of the Korean
participants (20 out of 35), who perceived it as “happy” (18) or “smile”
(2). This may be due to the fact that it is less culture-dependent or just
more informative than dogeza. Nevertheless, there were nine participants
who failed to recognize its meaning. Some other answers contained lemma
like “cute” (3) and “excited” (2), which are, to an extent, connected to
the overall concept of ‘happiness’ and generally carry a positive meaning.
There was also “surprised” (1), which seems to be a miss but may also
be positive. It should be noted that the ratings for the aforementioned
meanings were not particularly strong, with nine participants choosing 5
or less on the Likert scale.
Kaomoji very often represent faces. This, however, is not the case with
_l￣l○, depicting a person on their knees with hands touching the ground
and their head facing downward—an act of disappointment or discour-
agement. Although the answers given by Japanese respondents were quite
diverse, they were mostly related to sad and passive emotions combined
with resignation, like “depressed” (7), “despaired” (5), “disappointed”
(9), “discouraged” (4), “embarrassed” (1), or just “regret” (4). Other
answers included “I’m sorry” (2), “bow” (1), “tired” (1), and “shocked”
(1). One could argue that at least the first three of the preceding are related
to the same ‘passiveness’ concept previously mentioned. Moreover, there
were six participants who did not recognize the ideogram or its mean-
ing. Interestingly, 21 out of 35 Korean respondents evaluated _l￣l○ as
showing “frustration” (19) and as “being desperate” (2), both of which
are negative emotions. Unlike the rather passive ‘disappointment’ or ‘dis-
courage’, however, the former are quite active and possess some dynamic.
In addition, 11 respondents admitted that they did not know what its
meaning is, while other answers (namely “bow”, “sad”, and “fail”) were
given once only. Participants also differed on how strong they perceived
the given meaning to be. Out of 21 participants who choose either “frus-
tration” or “being desperate”, 11 graded it as 7 or higher on the Likert
scale. In addition, all Korean respondents admitted that they did not use
this particular ideogram to enhance their posts or messages. On the other
hand, even though only 19 out of 41 Japanese respondents answered that
they used this kaomoji sometimes or often, 28 out of the 35 who assigned
it a meaning, rated its strength at 7 or higher on the Likert Scale.
When we are surprised or shocked, we tend to open our mouth and
eyes wide. This general idea is recognizable behind the kaomoji Σ(°Д°；).
One can also see a certain disorder within the depiction, unlike most
of the others, which may also relate to something closer to ‘panic’. The
symbols ° refer to eyes, while the symbol Д depicts a mouth. Japanese
participants were quite unanimous when assigning meaning to this one,
with 40 of them writing “surprised” (35), “shocked” (4), or “panicked”
(1)—all of which are semantically related. Only one respondent did
not know its meaning, and those who knew it tended to assess it as
relatively strong (35 out of 40 chose seven or more on the Likert scale).
Surprisingly, 17 respondents said that they do not use this kaomoji
despite being able to identify its meaning and assessing it as a relatively
strong one. Out of 35 Korean respondents, 14 perceived it in accordance
with its basic meaning, which was “surprised” (11) and “shocked” (3).
There were also 16 participants who did not know its meaning. Interest-
ingly, five respondents chose “embarrassed” to describe the meaning of
Σ(°Д°；). Although they did not consider it a strong one (only 6 or less
on the Likert scale), ‘embarrassment’ is an emotion rarely associated with
mouth or eyes opened wide. It usually refers to something more timid, a
feeling that makes you run and hide from everybody else, something argu-
ably more static than the concept of ‘panic’. Therefore, it is possible that
those participants paid more attention to the tiny drop of sweat on the
right-hand side of the face—often associated with embarrassment—than
to the face itself. Moreover, all Korean respondents answered that they
do not use this kaomoji.
Big eyes are very typical of Japanese anime culture and, similarly to
the open mouth, are often used to express astonishment or shock. In
the case of the next kaomoji (@_@) however, big eyes composed from
Emoticons 75
at-signs seem to indicate a confused or surprised look. This kaomoji
apparently confused Korean respondents the most. Ten participants said
that they did not know its meaning, and eight participants chose the
expressions “surprised” (3) or “confused” (5) to describe it. However,
other answers were very random and included guesses such as “dizzy”
(5), “drunk” (2), “wearing glasses” (1), or “busy” (2). According to the
Korean participants, this kaomoji conveys the meaning rather weakly,
and only four of them gave it 7 or more points on the Likert scale. All
respondents reported never having used it. Interestingly, Japanese respon-
dents’ answers were also quite random, although less so than the ones
of the Korean respondents. Twenty-three participants chose “surprised”
(18) or “confused” (5), but there were also answers like “worried” (4),
“uninterested” (2), “thinking” (1), “hungover” (1) or “studying” (1).
Moreover, eight respondents did not know the meaning of it at all. For
answers “surprised” and “confused”, 11 out of 23 respondents evaluated
the meaning as relatively strong (7 or more on the Likert scale), while the
other answers were all lower with only 6 or less. Only nine participants
said that they used this kaomoji sometimes, with two of them using it as
“worried” (1) and “hungover” (1).
3.2 Korean Geurim Mal

The Korean emoticons chosen here use hangeul. Therefore, it is impos-
sible to ‘write them’ without a Korean keyboard. At the same time, they
are also quite similar to some kaomoji used in Japan. For example, the
Korean emoticon for ‘cry’ or ‘tears’ appears to be made up of four letter
Ts in the Korean version ㅠㅠ, while the Japanese one actually uses the
letter T twice (T_T). These similarities should make their meaning easy to
recognize, but only 20 Japanese respondents interpreted the Korean ver-
sion as “cry” (18), “cry, apology” (1), or “cry, sad” (1). Ten of them chose
“sad”, which is also very close to its intended meaning but puts more
emphasis on the interior emotional state (rather than on its physical dis-
play or the actual tears). Nine participants could not fathom the answer
at all, and there were also two random answers: “shock” (1) and “geta”
(traditional Japanese footwear that resembles clogs and flip-flops; 1). In
contrast, its meaning seemed to be quite clear for Korean participants
with all of them choosing “cry” (11), “sad” (18), or “tears” (6). This ideo-
gram also proved to be the most popular among Korean respondents with
the majority using it very “often” (30) and the rest choosing “sometimes”
(5). Not surprisingly, the majority (38) of Japanese participants reported
never having used ㅠㅠ, while three answered that they sometimes do.
The same double ‘T’, or yu (following the official romanization), is also
used to represent a mouth exuding some kind of fluid. Accordingly, ㅇㅠㅇ
can be interpreted as either ‘mouth-watering’ (a drooling face) or just
‘puking’. Interestingly, this geurim mal turned out to be quite unfamiliar
among the Korean respondents with 21 of them not knowing the mean-
ing of it. Ten participants recognized it as “mouth-watering” (5), “puke”
(3), “runny nose” (1) or “showing a tongue” (1), which are the closest
to its original meaning. Other answers contained “helpless” (2), “sad”
(1) and “tears” (1). The meaning was also perceived as relatively weak
with only three participants judging it as 7 or more on the Likert scale.
Japanese respondents were also unsure about the meaning of it and 21
of them answered that they did not know the meaning. Other responses
turned out to be random, with “mouth-watering” (4), “hungry” (1), and
“showing a tongue” (1) being closest to its supposed original meaning.
“Resigned” (1), “showing tongue” (1), and “shocked” (2) were perceived
as the strongest interpretations, scoring 9 on the Likert scale, but the
remaining answers tended to be evaluated relatively low.
Similar to ‘ㅠ’ (yu), ‘ㅋ’ is another hangeul character appearing in our
geurim mal list. Since ㅋㅋ (kk)—or any other number of this symbol
written consecutively—conveys a meaning similar to the English ‘lol’,
the ㅋ_ㅋ is likewise used to express a smiling face. This is also how the
Korean respondents perceived this ideogram, with 21 of them choos-
ing meanings like “smile” (21), “giggle” (6), or “happy” (3). Moreover,
there were four participants for whom the meaning was unclear and one
who described it as “cute”, which similarly to other interpretations at
least conveys a positive meaning. Nevertheless, this geurim mal seemed
to be used rarely by Korean respondents, with only 15 of them stating
they employed it (4—“often”, 11—“sometimes”). Moreover, its mean-
ing was not assessed as particularly strong by Korean participants, and
only 16 of them rated it as 7 or more on the Likert scale. In contrast,
Japanese participants seemed to view the same ideogram in a completely
different way. The majority of their answers referred to sad or negative
feelings, like “worried” (1), “uninterested” (1), “sleepy” (2), “glancing
look, doubt” (3), “I give up” (1), “neglect” (1), and “jealous” (1), among
others. Thus, it seems that the Korean participants rely strongly on the
actual meaning of the hangeul character and do not pay much attention
to the face. Indeed, the ‘mouth’ looks rather flat, which is a characteristic
of sadness rather than of a feeling of joy. There also were 21 participants
who answered that they could not identify the meaning at all. Moreover,
Japanese respondents did not feel that the meaning of this ideogram was
particularly strong, and only five of them assessed it as 7 or more on the
Likert scale.
Eyes are often used to express emotion, like in ^^, depicting smiling
eyes. The same idea is probably behind ㅅㅅ, which is a very similar
geurim mal made of a doubled hangeul character ‘s/t’. Moreover, both ^^
and ㅅㅅ can be spotted in Korean posts and messages. Here, we decided
to take a closer look at the latter because of its building blocks. Surpris-
ingly, 14 out of 35 Korean respondents did not know it. This includes
participants aged 22 to 46, so the unfamiliarity with this expression does
Emoticons 77
not appear to be related to the age factor. However, when we take a closer
look at the other group, we notice that most of its respondents are in their
late 20s or early 30s (mean = 27.95, SD = 4.1). This may mean that ㅅㅅ
is used and/or recognized by a specific part of the internet users only,
namely, by those in their late 20s and early 30s. Most respondents in that
group assigned this ideogram a positive meaning or affirmation related to
happiness, like “smile” (15), “satisfaction” (1), or “OK” (1). There were
also answers like “sex” (3), which refer to internet slang, generated from
the expression ㅍㅍㅅㅅ (ppss) for rough sexual intercourse, 폭풍 섹스
(pokpung sekseu). Another answer was “diarrhea” (1), which may have
appeared due to the fact that the lemma 설사 (seolsa) meaning “diarrhea”
contains the same building block ㅅ. These answers are by no means
random since all the respondents who assigned them answered that they
used this geurim mal either “sometimes” (3) or “often” (1). Among those
who chose the concept of ‘happiness’, 13 answered that they used it either
“sometimes” (12) or “often” (1). Nevertheless, the meaning of ㅅㅅ was
perceived as rather weak overall, with only four respondents evaluating
it as 7 or more on the Likert scale. Although a very similar kaomoji ^^
is being used in Japan as “smile”, 24 of 41 Japanese participants could
not identify the meaning of ㅅㅅ. The answers of those who did, were
also very random, including sad emotions like “cry” (1), “troubled” (1),
“tired” (1), and some other like “people” (1), “I’m sorry” (1), “please”
(2), “walking” (1). Some of these can be explained with recourse to lin-
guistic and cultural backgrounds. For example, the response “people”
may have appeared because there is a very similar Chinese character, 人,
meaning ‘person’. Furthermore, seven answers were related to the concept
of ‘happiness’, namely, “happy” (5) and “laugh” (2). None of the Japa-
nese participants reported having used it, which comes as little surprise,
given that its building blocks are accessible only with a Korean keyboard.
The participants also evaluated the perceived meaning as relatively weak,
with all but one participant having chosen 5 or less on the Likert scale.
Another hangeul character, which is very similar to a hyphen, is ‘ㅡ’
(transcribed as eu). It is used in ㅡㅡ, an ideogram expressing ‘irritation’
or a ‘bad feeling’. It was also quite popular, with 22 Korean respondents
reporting that they used it “sometimes” (11) or “often” (11), while 13
said that they do not use it at all. Only five Korean respondents did not
know it and could not guess its meaning, while the majority chose “irri-
tated” (21). Other answers included “serious look” (2), “embarrassment”
(2), “dazed” (2), “bad feeling” (2), and “disappointment” (1), which are
mostly negative feelings. The respondents also evaluated these meanings
as rather strong, with 19 of them having received 7 or more on the Lik-
ert scale. In contrast, 14 Japanese participants did not know, and could
not guess, the meaning of ㅡㅡ. Among their various answers, the most
common were those expressing ‘passive sadness’ and ‘disappointment’,
or some kind of gloomy feeling, like “sleepy” (7), “depressed” (5), “sad”
(4), “disappointed” (4), “bored” (2), “apologetic” (1), “hmm?” (1), or
“no comments” (1). There were also two more slightly different answers;
namely, “straight line” (1) and “shocked” (1). Interestingly, four Japanese
participants reported using ㅡㅡ either “sometimes” (3) or “often” (1). It
is possible that they were relating to a very similar kaomoji usually writ-
ten with hyphens, separated by a space or dot (—). Some of the reported
meanings (like “depressed”, “sleepy”, and “disappointed”) were rated as
strong, with nine of them receiving 7 or more on the Likert scale. Interest-
ingly, even though the meanings assigned by both groups were, likewise,
gloomy and rather negative, the Japanese participants tended to choose
more passive meanings like “sleepy” or “depressed”, while the majority
of Korean respondents chose the more active “irritated”.
4. Discussion
Many sociologists claim that we are defined by our culture. Similarly, one
can say that our culture shapes our language and the way we communi-
cate. As was mentioned above, the Japanese and the Korean cultures both
strongly rely on body language and might therefore benefit from digital
pictograms and ideograms more than Western cultures. There are many
definitions of these digital pictograms and ideograms, but the general idea
behind them is that they are pictorial signs, showing simplified eyes, faces,
or silhouettes. As such, they should be relatively easy to interpret across
cultures. Yet, in many cases our participants failed to recognize the mean-
ing of a kaomoji or geurim mal derived from a different cultural source.
One of the reasons for this may be that some geurim mal use phonetic
characters, like ㅋ_ㅋ, and thus have a ‘hidden message’ in them. In other
words, they combine the visual level with representations of sounds, cre-
ating a hybrid of both words and pictures ( ㅋㅋ is the transcription of
sound used to indicate laughing). There may also be situations which are
common within (or even specific to) one culture only, which generates
the need for having a related digital pictogram or ideogram that will
essentially stay foreign to other cultures. A good example of this would
be the Japanese dogeza kaomoji m(_ _)m, which was easy to recognize
for Japanese respondents, but not for the Koreans.
In some other examples there was an active-passive shift in mean-
ing. While both groups identified some meanings as negative (express-
ing ‘sad’ emotions), the Japanese group tended to choose more passive
meanings (like ‘depressed’), whereas the Korean group was more likely
to choose its active counterpart (like ‘irritated’). Interestingly, for some
kaomoji and geurim mal the groups seemed to pay attention to their
different building components. This was the case with Σ(°Д°；), where
the Japanese participants seemed to judge the meaning based on the
wide-open mouth, consequently evaluating it as ‘shocked’ or ‘surprised’.
For the same kaomoji, many Korean participants seemed to focus on
Emoticons 79
the semicolon on the right side, which usually symbolizes ‘embarrass-
ment’. Moreover, for some kaomoji and geurim mal there were also
differences within the groups, which shows that even within one cul-
ture some individuals may perceive these ‘representations of a body
language’ differently. Thus, even though digital pictograms and ideo-
grams are ‘universal’ to a certain extent, they are also, as many other
concepts, culture-specific products. This means that, when assigning
meaning to them, we take into consideration not only the solemn shape
of the digital pictogram or ideogram (or what it represents) but also the
culture in which it was created and even the reading of characters (or
letters) which constitute its building blocks. Another important issue,
which was not addressed in this study, is the context in which a digi-
tal pictogram or ideogram appear. We decided to present the kaomoji
and geurim mal without any context (such as a sentence) to avoid a
Korean–Japanese sentence translation, which could affect respondents’
judgment. However, it is possible that some of these kaomoji or geurim
mal would have been easier for our participants to recognize given a
proper context. A closer look at both gender and age differences may
also yield further interesting results.
5. Conclusion
Not only cognitive unfamiliarity with the character components as in
the case of hangeul (which serve as the respective geurim mal’ building
blocks) might lead to misinterpretation or plain incomprehension of an
emotion, but also lack of knowledge on their primary meaning (or read-
ing). Moreover, the geurim mal chosen here tend to express more ‘active’
emotions (reacting to certain outside influences), while the Japanese ones
usually express more ‘passive’ states (which seem to have emerged within
the respective sender). This not only corresponds with the general notion
of Japanese culture as a high-context culture but also suggests that Korean
culture might be a high-context culture (although less so than the Japa-
nese). However, in both cases, a lack of context seems to deepen the con-
fusion, even over seemingly similar ideograms. While digital pictograms
and ideograms are designed to mimic specific gestures and body language
in general, the use of language-specific building blocks (most notably
hangeul) to depict the same emotion, resulted in confusion even when the
ideogram’s structure remained similar. The ㅠㅠ geurim mal, for instance,
was largely incomprehensible for the Japanese participants. When the
geurim mal’s building blocks carried an additional meaning (often related
to its reading in the case of Korean), its interpretation was virtually impos-
sible for the Japanese respondents. A similar problem occurred when a
kaomoji related to culture-specific gestures, for example, dogeza in the
m(_ _)m kaomoji. In such cases, the emotion represented was difficult
to interpret for members of the other culture. However, it is important
to note that many Japanese kaomoji have come to be recognized as a
standard for ‘Eastern-style emoticons’ and thus they will possibly be more
comprehensible for users outside of Japan, while many geurim mal are
used solely in Korea.
While it is true that kaomoji and geurim mal basically mimic certain
emotions and gestures, some knowledge of the user’s language, its char-
acters, their uses, the respective country’s customs, and its body language
amount to significant background information that enables an effective
use of ‘Eastern-style emoticons’. Just as digital pictograms and ideograms
serve as visual cues to facilitate CMC, words might serve as verbal cues
to facilitate one’s understanding of digital pictograms and ideograms.
The preceding research showed that ‘Eastern-style emoticons’ themselves
cannot serve as a lingua franca—but they are rarely used without relevant
context. Therefore, further research on the understanding of ‘Easter-style
emoticons’ and their use in different contexts is recommended.
Note
1. See Korea Herald. 2017. “A Brief History of Emoticons”. 2017. Korea
Herald, June 9. Accessed 1 June 2019. http://koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=
20170609000233.
2. Likert Scale: a well-established method in sociological and psychological
research used to measure attitudes, perception or level of agreement. The most
common type of Likert scale is a 5-point scale used widely to measure the level
of agreement. In this case 1 would usually correspond to ‘disagree’, while 5
would mean that the respondent ‘agrees’ with the given statement. However,
since in this study we investigate the perceived strength of meaning of an
ideogram, we decided to employ a slightly wider 9-point Likert scale.
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Part II
Intersectional Mediations
5 ‘Impact taisetsu da!’
The Use of Emoji and Kaomoji
in Dansō Escort Blogs Between
Gender Expression and
Emotional Labor
Marta Fanasca
Introduction
In this chapter I will focus on the use of emoticons, emoji, and kao-
moji by female-to-male crossdressers (dansō, 男装) who are working as
escorts in contemporary Japan. Within verbal communication, speakers
can employ words, intonation, body language, and facial expressions to
convey complex emotions, irony, skepticism, sarcasm, and so on. These
cues represent a fundamental part of everyday human interactions (see
Mehrabian 1971). Since their first appearance in the early 1980s, differ-
ent sorts of emoticons—typographic representations of a facial expres-
sion—have been employed as a way to express emotions in purely textual
forms of media, adopting nonverbal, visual expressions. In the 1990s,
the Japanese telecommunication firm NTT DoCoMo invented emoji (e,
絵, ‘image’, and moji, 文字, ‘character’), whose meanings span from the
representation of facial expressions, emotional states, judgments of value,
to places, activities, or even objects (see Claudel 2011). Unsurprisingly,
with the increased use of instant communication apps, the use of emoti-
cons, emoji, and kaomoji (literally face, kao, 顔, and character, moji, 文
字) also steadily increased (see Negishi 2014). This became especially
relevant for ‘digital natives’ with the advent of the so-called smartphone
age (see Takahashi 2011). The 2016 Emoji Report stated that 92% of all
participants within online communication adopted emoji and that these
were present in 56% of all messages sent.1 Moreover, the possibility to
send them was “rated as the most valuable experience, alongside sending
photos and videos” (emogi Research Team, endnote 2). Ljubešić and Fišer
(2016) highlighted how the use of emoticons and emoji is a worldwide
trend among Twitter users. Those who adopt them in a higher number
have significantly more followers and tend to produce more tweets.
Notwithstanding such a wide usage of emoticons, emoji, and kaomoji
(hereafter referred to as e-e-k), their role in communication is still ambigu-
ous and controversial. Several investigations have tried to tackle the issue
so far. Early studies defined e-e-k as a form of nonverbal communica-
tion supplementing verbal messages (see Menges 1996), or as a way to
increase the emotional ‘tone’ of a given virtual interaction (see Murray
86 Marta Fanasca
2000; Utz 2000; Derks, Bos, and von Grumbkow 2007), partially equat-
ing the ‘impulsive’, ‘uncontrolled’ nature of bodily emotions with the
assumption that their representations by e-e-k must also be spontaneous.
For Tauch and Kanjo (2016), e-e-k mostly act as amplifiers of a given
message rather than as modifiers, and hence only have the role to enhance
the emotional tone of a message. However, according to Sugiyama (2015),
explanations associating e-e-k with emotional expressions only (although
undeniably an important aspect) are rather simplistic, since they do not
take into consideration two main factors. First, the possibility to use e-e-k
in a more controlled way (through a conscious use of a specific texting
device) in opposition to uncontrolled emotions (expressed by the body, as
a natural reaction toward external stimuli and situations); secondly, the
relevance of the disconnection between emotions and the human body,
when they are expressed and experienced through a purely technological
device. As pointed out by Dresner and Herring (2010, 256), e-e-k not only
occupy a role in the text comparable to those of punctuation, but they also
“help [. . .] convey an important aspect of the linguistic utterance they are
attached to: What the user intends by what he or she types”.
In this sense, e-e-k occupy a meta-linguistic role, providing additional
information alongside that of the written text. E-e-k thus help users in
technology-mediated interactions, to understand meaning ‘between the
lines’: sarcasm, irony, tacit emotions, and so on. They are functional in
creating a ‘correct’ impression of the intended self for the reader(s) of
the message. As noted by Guibon, Ochs, and Bellot (2016), the main
use of e-e-k is to improve the understanding of a message, if more than
one interpretation is possible, providing contextual information about
facial expressions and emotions cues. Consequently, technology-mediated
expressions of the self can be managed in virtual interactions with the
aim of presenting a specific kind of self. For instance, Takahashi (2011)
showed how Japanese and U.S. American teenagers use specific contents
(pictures and videos) to portray themselves online as cool and popular.
Moreover, the recognition they obtain from other users helps them to
sustain not only their virtual but also their real existence and their self-
esteem. In this perspective, e-e-k can also play a central role in the process
of self-creation. Studies have already highlighted how they are used to
add a cheerful and friendly tone to messages (see Sugiyama 2015), to
strengthen the tone of a message, or to express humor (see Derks, Bos,
and von Grumbkow 2008). They also let those who use them appear
more ‘dynamic’, ‘talkative’, and ‘friendly’ than those who do not (see
Constantin et al. 2002).
With regard to questions of deliberate ‘self-creation’, Goffman (1959)
investigated the idea that individuals manipulate their aesthetical appear-
ance (clothing, hair, accessories, etc.) to present themselves to others in
a specific way, thus showing how human interaction is inherently per-
formative.2 Hochschild went one step further with her groundbreaking
‘Impact taisetsu da!’ 87
work The Managed Heart (1983), where she defined “emotional labour”
as “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and
bodily display” (7) to fulfill the requirements of a certain occupation.
Hochschild explained how not only one’s aesthetic appearance but also
emotions can be consciously displayed or suppressed in order to create a
desired emotional state in clients. From this perspective, the use of e-e-k
can be seen as a tool to enact emotional labour in communicating with
users and/or potential customers by virtual means. The possibility to cre-
ate and perform a specific self through e-e-k is also true with regard to
the gender identity individuals aim to present to others through online
messages, posts, and tweets.
The work of Judith Butler (1990, 1993) in particular is focused on
the performative nature of gender identity.3 The central argument of
Butler’s theory is that gendered behavior is neither ‘natural’ nor con-
nected to the actual sexual identity of a given subject. Heteronormative
society compels individuals to learn how to perform masculinity and
femininity ‘correctly’, namely, in accordance with aesthetical, behav-
ioral, and linguistic practices defining masculinity and femininity in a
given time and socio-geographical context, coherently with their innate
sexual identity, with the aim of maintaining unchanged the status quo.
Individuals are thereby reproducing, through their performance, traits
of male and female gender stereotypes proposed as ‘natural’ and as
‘essential’ properties of males and females. This performative process
is continuous and hence gives the idea that gender identity is stable
and fixed. Dressing in a predetermined way, using makeup (or not), or
acting in a certain gender-coded manner, are always ways of present-
ing ourselves as ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ according to certain gender
norms. These acts reconfirm shared assumptions about masculinity and
femininity (in a certain social context), not necessarily according to a
gendered self that exists ‘beyond’ or ‘behind’ these performances. In
this respect, the way individuals interact with others online can also be
understood as a performance of gender.
Several studies have already highlighted the differences between femi-
nine and masculine speech patterns in general (see Ardener 1975; Lakoff
1975; Spender 1980; Hogg 1985; Woods 1989; Irigaray 1998), some
paying special attention to the Japanese cultural context (see Reynolds
1985; Shibamoto 1985; Ide 1993; Abe 1995; SturtzSreetharan 2006). If
we understand virtual communication as a way to use language through
different forms of media, similarly gendered patterns (which, in turn,
relate to gender performances) are also observable regarding the use of
e-e-k. Studies have shown how e-e-k are used more frequently by female
users than male (see Pohl, Domin, and Rohs 2017; Tossell et al. 2012;
Wolf 2000); that women tend to use more e-e-k within single messages
than men but that men add a wider variety of e-e-k to their texts (see
Chen et al. 2018). Moreover, female users are more likely to add only one
88 Marta Fanasca
instance of e-e-k, while male users are more likely to add multiple ones.
The preferred e-e-k are also different: while women favor face-related
e-e-k, men more frequently choose heart-related e-e-k (see Lu et al. 2016).
Taking into consideration instant messages, blog posts, and tweets, I thus
argue that female-to-male (FtM) crossdressers who are working as escorts
in contemporary Japan (dansō) use e-e-k on social media and blog posts
for two main purposes: (a) as a form of emotional labor, as a way to foster
‘love’ feelings in clients, in order to enhance intimacy within technology-
meditated communications and (b) to negotiate their gender identity, to
create their character and to present themselves as appealing for (poten-
tial) clients and fans.
Setting and Methodology

Dansō is a Japanese term that literally means ‘male clothes’. It is widely
used to describe a girl or a woman who cross-dresses. From 2006, what I
term the ‘dansō movement’ started to spread, mainly (but not exclusively)
in the Tokyo area.4 The entertainment business linked to FtM crossdress-
ers has been developing into two different main branches: the dansō café
(男装きっさ or 男装カフェ), and the dansō escort service (男装エスコー
ト店). The first one can be considered the flip side of the ‘maid café’: dansō
cafés are a kind of ‘concept café’ where the staff is composed entirely of
cross-dressing women serving food and drinks to their customers and
entertaining them with light conversation. In contrast, dansō escort com-
panies offer customers the possibility to buy a date with a cross-dressing
woman upon the payment of a rate of roughly ¥4,000/hour.5 Those dates
can be of a romantic or friendly nature, they can involve a dinner in a
restaurant, singing together in karaoke, sipping a coffee in a nice coffee
shop, or they might comprise a stroll in the park. In any case, dansō
escorts do not provide sexual services, since it is not sexual entertainment.
To investigate the phenomenon, I adopted an ethnographic approach and
spent nine months working as a crossdresser escort in Tokyo myself. To
keep the company anonymous, I have given it the fictitious name ‘Dream-
land’ for this chapter. According to my interviews and own observations,
clients make frequent use of dansō escorts due to the host’s ability to
listen and to provide understanding and emotional support. The people
the clients meet in their everyday life might be unable to provide them
with these kinds of experiences. The position dansō occupy, however, is
not one of pure friendship or love, since the relationship is always based
on monetary transactions. The escort offers the possibility for a rather
unique kind of relationship, something between an expert counselor and
a best friend who, at the same time, also displays an emotional attachment
to his client.6
The relationship between dansō and client can thus provide friend-
ship or, alternatively, be viewed as a love-like experience in which the
crossdresser’s role becomes that of the ‘perfect boyfriend’. In any case,
clients consider their escorts to be the best partners possible for their sup-
posed ‘matchless blend’ of masculine and feminine positive features. This
makes the crossdresser the ‘ideal man’ (risōteki na otoko, 理想的な男),
deprived of all the rudeness and insensitivity of actual men but equipped
with positive feminine aspects, such as the ability to listen and to perfectly
understand a woman’s psychology. Regardless of the specific type of rela-
tionship, my interviews and observations revealed that clients’ feelings are
usually very intense. Their commitment to an escort can usually be seen
as high, even as faithful. Hence, to become a successful escort, it is neces-
sary for dansō to make sure clients develop intense feelings for them: the
stronger the involvement, the more frequent their dates will be, which, in
consequence, has a positive impact on the escort’s income. Thus, dansō
try to achieve the development of deep emotional intimacy with their
clients, specifically through continuously performing emotional labor and
through the strategic use of mostly performed emotions.7 These strategies
assure customers their feelings will be appreciated and reciprocated. These
feelings are also managed in online interactions on social media, with
the final aim to make customers experience the tokimeki,ときめき (the
‘fast heartbeat’) characterizing an intense emotional involvement. This is
seen as necessary for the development of deep affection and a committed
relationship (and hence highly rewarding for dansō in monetary terms).
During my fieldwork, I was able to interact on a daily basis with my
cross-dressing coworkers, meet customers on paid dates and for special
events, and observe the interactions between fellow dansō and their cli-
ents. Starting my work as a dansō, I was informed about my duties: what
would be forbidden and what was allowed in the office, during dates,
and, in some instances, even in my free time. After having created a male
alter ego (the only ‘self’ allowed to interact with clients and coworkers),
new crossdressers will first be advertised on the company website. All new
dansō are presented to the audience by a special introductory banner on
the website’s main page, and the staff at the reception desk will suggest
them to clients about to book a date. At the same time, crossdressers
have to start and maintain a personal blog and a Twitter profile to pro-
mote themselves. All dansō are requested to create and update their blog
one month before starting work in order to introduce themselves and to
establish a channel of communication with (potential) future clients and
fans—even before actually being ‘on the market’. This is considered a way
to create suspense and anticipation for clients and hence to get more dates
once the crossdresser starts working. It is also mandatory to start a Twit-
ter account as soon as a crossdresser becomes available for dates. In my
case, before I started my Twitter account and my blog (neither of which
I previously had), I checked those of my colleagues to understand how to
successfully use these forms of media communication to attract clients.
I soon realized that, on social media, dansō were presenting themselves
90 Marta Fanasca
through specific kinds of contents and different styles of writing in accor-
dance with their respective stage persona. From the colors and titles they
chose for their blogs to the quantity and individual choices of uploaded
pictures, crossdressers aim to reinforce the corresponding image of their
performed self. Through this, I learned how the use of e-e-k was function-
ally adopted (or avoided) to strengthen a specific appearance, as well as
a specific performance of gender. Furthermore, the contents uploaded on
social media were especially tailored to enhance a sense of intimacy with
the audience. Here, e-e-k played a pivotal role in establishing intimate
relationships. In contrast, crossdressers’ use of e-e-k was considerably
different in private or in a group conversation with other dansō on LINE,
highlighting a difference between public and private interactions and their
respective performed identity.
My analysis in the present chapter is thus based on personal observa-
tions of dansō’s blog posts, of corresponding Twitter profiles (in the times-
pan of about one month), and of messages sent within LINE conversations
in shared chat rooms (in a timespan of one month). I observed recurrent
trends among my interviewees’ use of e-e-k, with special consideration of
the construction of a masculine self, of their self-presentation in terms of
their performed ‘character’, and of e-e-k’s use as emotion-conduits to per-
form emotional labor. Looking at the number and styles of their respective
e-e-k, my analysis focuses specifically on individual strategies to produce
or to sustain gender performances and to carry out forms of emotional
labor for clients. I also stress the differences between the use of e-e-k in
private conversations (through LINE) compared to public posts within my
pool of interviewees. Taken together, I discuss the use of e-e-k by dansō
in my three most exemplary case studies. These three individuals were
selected from among my 14 interviewees as being the most ‘iconic’—and
most distinct from each other—in how they used e-e-k to create specific
stage characters, convey masculinity, and establish, or nurture, intimacy
with clients in online interactions. The names of the interviewees and
places will be kept anonymous in order to protect privacy. The respective
age of the interviewees refers to 2016, that is, the time of my interviews.
Differences Between the Usage of Blog and

Twitter Posts by Dansō
As previously stated, dansō are requested to open a blog one month prior
to dating clients, to allow the latter to become acquainted with the new
‘character’ that crossdressers will be performing, and to create curiosity
and arouse interest for them. The blog should reflect the dansō’s personal-
ity and, at the same time, it must be captivating and ‘eye-catching’. Most
dansō blogs exhibit a sense of ‘coolness’, with dark shades of colors and a
seemingly poetic title (such as “Gymnopaedia of a Rainy Day”, “Welcome
to Eden”, or “Twilight Romance”). Dreamland asks its staff to update
their blogs at least once a week. Blogs, providing the possibility to share
texts with no word count limitations, are mainly used to tell their readers
stories. These stories are usually accounts of free-time activities, such as
nomikai, 飲み会 (drinking parties typical of Japanese culture), with other
crossdresser staff, day trips to famous tourist locations, visits to specific
restaurants, or accounts of short vacations abroad. Blogs are also used
to convey long messages, such as the promotion and the more detailed
explanation of a future event. Furthermore, blogs offer readers the possi-
bility to explore the emotional state of the writer at specific moments, in a
sort of shared ‘secret’ diary. Crossdressers often fill their blogs with posts
devoted to the explanation of their inner world, offering clients a glimpse
into their thoughts. This is considered a fundamental way to establish a
deeper connection with clients who should feel closer to their favorite
dansō through the sharing of private moments and personal reflections.
When it comes to Twitter, dansō open a new work account as soon as
they start to be available for dates. However, the use that dansō make
of their respective profile is partially restricted by Dreamland’s rules and
guidelines. Crossdressers can follow fellow dansō as well as other private
or public profiles that they find interesting, but it is forbidden to follow
clients’ accounts and to reply to their comments. The only kind of direct
interaction allowed is to ‘like’ comments left by clients on tweets (their
own or those of fellow dansō). Direct messages are also forbidden. The
company requires all dansō to send them their passwords in order to check
their online activities and have them erase tweets that do not conform to
the company’s intended image. However, interactions between coworkers
and retweets of other dansō’s status updates are encouraged. Jokes and
positive comments on coworkers’ social media profiles are intended to
present dansō as a close group of friends, scotching ideas of rivalry or
hostility among crossdressers. These kinds of tweets are, consequently,
strongly supported by the company since they are not only considered
positive for the promotion of the company to possible clients but also help
prevent antagonism and fights between supporters of different dansō. The
use of Twitter is thus exceedingly important for dansō to establish a daily
communicational routine with clients. Posting short, cheerful sentences
and a small amount of visual content are easy ways to be present in a
client’s everyday life. For instance, dansō usually post ‘good morning’ or
‘good night’ tweets, pictures of their meals, and they also share ‘selfies’
taken alone or with coworkers during the hours spent together at the
office. Twitter thus offers fans the possibility to ‘peak into’ the daily life
of the crossdressers, expanding a sense of closeness, and fostering an
emotional bond with their favorites. During the interviews, several clients
stated that reading on Twitter what crossdressers were doing or eating
was a way to feel closer to them, even if it was not possible to meet them
in person, and that seeing pictures of their daily activities (such as lunch)
was a way to think about the crossdressers not as distant idols but as
92 Marta Fanasca
the people ‘next door’, sharing the same lifestyle and problems as their
fans. Twitter is also a tool to keep friendly relations with other dansō
performers, active throughout Japan, and eventually to develop working
collaborations. For instance, part of the Dreamland staff was invited to
perform in a show with members of a dansō idol band based in Ikebu-
kuro, thanks to a mutual friendship on Twitter. It must be noted that, in
spite of the image Twitter has as an international networking tool, it is
not actively used to create connections with foreign supporters or other
dansō communities outside of Japan.
Case Study One: Haruka

At the time of the interview, Haruka was 31 years old and had been
working as a dansō escort for five years. At the time of my data
collection he was one of the three top-selling escorts of the com-
pany (soon afterward he was no longer employed by Dreamland).
I chose to present his case because his use of emoticons, emoji, and
kaomoji was exemplary for creating a recognizable stage character,
and for performing ‘virtual emotional labor’ to develop a feeling of
intimacy with clients.
Haruka was extremely self-confident in his abilities to charm cus-
tomers. When I inquired how he had managed to become so popu-
lar, he stated: “Thanks to my personal style! I am what I am, and
nobody else; customers like my character”.8 Stressing the impor-
tance of being ‘unique’, he then added that the best thing to do in
order to satisfy his clients (and thus to earn money) was to make
them feel special, always reassuring them with sentences like “The
others are only customers, but you are special!” or “You are differ-
ent, I really like you!” Haruka was also extremely active on social
media. When I inquired about his use of blog posts and Twitter,
he explained: “Yes, I update my blog every week, and I tweet four
or five times every day, sometimes more. I upload pictures, videos,
and I update my status. It is important to let customers know about
you, to be present in their daily life”. Apparently, Haruka’s tal-
ent in developing intimate relationships with his clients rested on
his performance of a unique character, as well as his enthusiasm
to interact with clients. It was intensified by an avid use of social
media to maintain continuous communication and, by this, cre-
ate opportunities to develop intimacy with his clients. In Haruka’s
tweets and blog articles, the writing style was very simple: on both,
he only used short sentences, few kanji, and a lot of onomatopoeia.
At the same time, he employed a huge number of emoticons, emoji,
or kaomoji. Out of a total of 164 tweets analyzed, 94% contained

at least one (or more) e-e-k.
The first thing to be noted regarding Haruka’s extensive use of
e-e-k is that they rarely acted as substitutes for punctuation, which
was considered their most important function by Markman and
Oshima (2007). In many instances, Haruka’s sentences did not fea-
ture any punctuation at all. He specifically used kaomoji at the end
of sentences as well as in the middle, with the only practical purpose
of making his writing graphically appealing. In 6% of all cases, his
posts consisted entirely of kaomoji (this occurred only in Twitter).
As has been emphasized in many previous studies (see Werry 1996;
Murray 2000; Utz 2000; Markman and Oshima 2007), e-e-k can
be understood as a form of nonverbal communication adding emo-
tional tone to what would otherwise be a plain, text-based message.
This also applies to Haruka to a certain degree, whose use of e-e-k
seemed to have no practical meaning (such as punctuation) other
than giving his presented emotions a visual conduit. With regard to
his extensive use of e-e-k, Haruka stated:
“The impact is important (Impact taisetsu da)! A customer can

understand that it is my blog post or Twitter post, even without
reading my name. Just by looking at it, they know it’s obviously
me (yappari Haruka da)! I don’t think they [e-e-k] are girlish
(onnappokunai to omou), they are the best way to transmit
emotions (kimochi o tsutaeru tame ni ichiban ii da yo)! [In this
line of work] it is fundamental to transmit emotions (kimochi o
tsutaeru koto wa hitsuyō da naa)!”
Haruka thus used emoticons, emoji, and kaomoji as a way to add a

‘personal touch’ to his messages. Moreover, it can be assumed that
gendered aspects of e-e-k were not especially relevant for Haruka:
he did not find them very feminine, and he was very confident of
his status as the clients’ favorite crossdresser. Rather than reinforc-
ing his masculine image avoiding to use e-e-k, he found it more
productive to create a unique style on social media, based on the
pronounced visual appearance of his messages—his emphasized use
of e-e-k. His fans were mostly long-term clients who were fond
of him. With many of them, he fostered quite intimate emotional
relationships. For this reason, he did not feel any pressure to reaf-
firm his masculine identity, focusing instead on the transmission
of specific feelings to his clientele. He further explained that his
use of e-e-k underlines his emotions: an internal rule of the com-
pany explicitly prohibited dansō writing depressing status updates
94 Marta Fanasca
and posts, aiming to promote an overall positive and happy image

instead. Accordingly, Haruka used e-e-k to strengthen the positive
emotional tone of his messages.
Scrolling through Haruka’s blog posts and tweets, it is noticeable
that his messages were not particularly meaningful: 35% of them
were intended to give clients insight into his private life with pictures
of his meals, drinks, or recently purchased items, while another 34%
were ‘good morning’ or ‘good night’ posts. Overall, his blog posts
were fairly short and usually devoted to the same topics as his tweets,
just with more pictures and more text (usually no more than 200
characters, however). In such a brief and simple communicative style,
e-e-k never failed to appeal. In one specific instance, he even wrote
“oyasumi” (goodnight) without e-e-k and then immediately tweeted
again the same message along with the ‘overlooked’ kaomoji (˙ω˙). As
Haruka explained to me, he used this specific kaomoji (resembling
a bear) as a representation of his own face, and thus, it was pres-
ent in 79% of his total tweets and in 93% of his blog posts, with
small variations to better match expressions for different emotional
states—as, for instance, (˙ω˙’) for ‘anxiety’, and ‘(•ω•)’ for ‘surprise’.
Even more interesting, Haruka also said: “I use it so often because,
when a customer sees the same symbol used by somebody else, he
still thinks about me, and I am able to always be in their thoughts”.
In this usage, Haruka’s kaomoji (˙ω˙) can be read as a specific sig-
nature, easily recognizable everywhere. Since this kaomoji is widely
used on the Japanese internet, Haruka took advantage of its popular-
ity and invested it with a kind of indexical meaning. We can speak
of ‘indexicality’ when something “gets you to think about something
else because the ‘thing’ (sign) and the ‘something else’ (meaning) are
linked by way of cause or association” (Brummett 2014, 46). In this
case, by associating the (˙ω˙) kaomoji with Haruka (who overdeter-
mined it with his own use), readers of his blog and Twitter posts
thought of him every time they spotted the same kaomoji within digi-
tal media. It is also interesting to note that, when exchanging public
messages on Twitter with Haruka, other dansō who usually did not
use e-e-k, adjusted their styles to Haruka’s and increasingly relied
on them, too. Eventually, thanks to his position as a star within the
company’s ensemble, Haruka set the tone for conversations for his
coworkers (see Park et al. 2013). From this analysis of Haruka’s use
of e-e-k, it is possible to argue that he added them to his posts and
tweets mainly with the aim to create and/or enhance a sense of inti-
macy with his customers, and as a vehicle to transmit his emotions.
In spite of the large number of e-e-k used in conversations visible
to clients, Haruka barely used e-e-k within his private messages on
LINE. If one looks at the messages exchanged in three common

chat rooms with other dansō, it is striking that he only made use
of a limited number of stickers (in 18% of the 57 messages taken
into account). It must be noted that these messages were, in almost
all cases, work-related and that they had a serious or official tone.
Hence, they were not linked to the transmission of emotions in the
first place.
Case Study Two: Shin

Shin was 32 years old at the time of interview (March 2016), and
he was still working for Dreamland at the time of writing (May
2018). He was one of the ‘veterans’ of the company, and one of the
top-selling escorts when the data were collected. His position in the
company’s internal ranking, however, was less stable than Haru-
ka’s.9 He and Haruka often competed for the ‘top star position’, but
Shin was rarely able to outperform his rival. For the present study,
Shin was chosen as an exemplary case to illustrate how dansō can
perceive e-e-k as gendered and to highlight respective differences in
their dealing with clients, in contrast to private conversations.
Just like Haruka, Shin was an active user of social media, although
he tweeted less than his rival did. On his blog and Twitter posts,
Shin made use of very few emoticons and emoji and of even less
kaomoji. In comparison to Haruka, his writing style was remark-
ably different, too: Shin’s blog posts were usually longer (300 char-
acters or more), with more articulated sentences, a higher number
of kanji, and less onomatopoeia. The tone and the content of his
posts were also different: most of them were devoted to a pondering
reflection of his own feelings or meant to explain his respective emo-
tional state. In addition, ample space was provided for more ‘offi-
cial’ posts, filled with information about Dreamland. Some posts
were also intended to promote special events (since he was also one
of the company’s supervisors). In these messages, e-e-k would clearly
have been out of place. Likewise, within his personal status updates,
Shin preferred words to graphics to convey his feelings. When he
used e-e-k, they often appeared at the end of sentences, as a kind
of closing remark. When I enquired directly about his use of e-e-k,
he immediately stated: “I do not use a lot of e-e-k. That’s Haruka’s
style, but I am different”. Shin also stressed the importance of hav-
ing a personal style for his virtual communication with fans. Yet, at
the same time, he continually stressed the importance of distinguish-
ing himself from Haruka (and his style of posts): knowing that it
would leave him at a disadvantage to compete with Haruka on the
96 Marta Fanasca
latter’s turf, Shin chose an entirely different style to perform his iden-
tity. Presenting himself as a fundamentally different type of person,
he hoped to attract different kinds of clients as well, thus avoiding
direct competition for the same niche.
Moreover, he stated: “Another reason why I do not use a lot of
e-e-k is that they are very feminine (sugoku onnappoi). So, it is bet-
ter not to use a lot of them in order to look more masculine”. Here,
it is quite evident that Shin had specific concerns with regard to the
gender performance he enacted, how he perceived e-e-k as gendered,
and how he thought about their corresponding use: they could have
a negative impact on the creation of his male identity. Even if Shin
was not new to the crossdresser escort profession, he felt that his
(masculine) gender performance needed to be constantly maintained
and reaffirmed, not only by his physical behavior but also through
his online activities. He did not assess his position to be as stable as
Haruka’s and understood that he needed to carefully present and
promote himself in order to keep his clients and to protect his rank.
Moreover, while Haruka openly claimed to be a ‘flirty character’
(chara chara) for customers, Shin, being a veteran and a supervisor,
constructed his role as more grounded and reliable. He consequently
played the ‘older brother’ (onī-chan) type of escort, and accordingly,
his writing style was very different, aiming to present himself as a
more serious persona. Taking into account Shin’s private conversa-
tions on LINE, however, his communication style varied significantly.
Here, Shin used a large number of stickers and e-e-k (in 72% of 53
messages taken into account). When asked about this, he explained:
In my private conversations, I love e-e-k and stickers. They

help me to write quickly. I use them instead of words such as
‘thank you’ [in English], ‘hello’ (ohayō), or ‘all right’ (daijōbu).
They also help me to be closer to my friends. If I write to my
friends or family without stickers, they might think that I am
cold towards them, so I prefer to use some.
Summing up, Shin used emoticons, emoji, kaomij, and stickers for
two main reasons: firstly, from a pragmatic perspective, his use of
e-e-k allowed him to write faster. Especially when he was busy, or
when he was on dates with clients, the possibility to answer with
a single image helped him converse fast. The second reason was
connected to the possibility of conveying feelings through e-e-k: in
conversations with friends or relatives, where the degree of inti-
macy and mutual knowledge was stronger, Shin did not feel the
same pressure to talk as he did in his official role as the company’s
veteran, nor did he need to uphold a strongly gendered identity.

Hence, e-e-k allowed him to make his messages appear more
vibrant. His masculine gender was not being judged in this context,
so he did not feel a conflict with ‘feminine’ e-e-k. Analyzing Shin’s
use of e-e-k, their gender performance function was most prevalent,
while any emotional labor aimed toward clients was mostly man-
aged through words. This is probably due to the more ‘earnest’
image Shin performed both as a person responsible for the com-
pany and as a dansō escort. For Shin, e-e-k were reserved for unof-
ficial conversations with friends, relatives, and coworkers, as a way
to transmit his emotions. Communicating with those groups, there
was no necessity to sustain a male gender performance to the same
extent as during his professional duties. In this sense, his usage of
e-e-k corroborates what has been observed in other studies, spe-
cifically, that males tend to use more e-e-k in private conversations
than during public interaction (see Lu et al. 2016).
Case Study Three: Ichi

At the time of my study, Ichi was 26 years old and employed by
Dreamland from October 2015 to May 2016. His case is also rep-
resentative of the strongly (female) gendered nature that some users
recognize as a prominent feature of e-e-k, although for other rea-
sons. Ichi started to work as a crossdresser escort after a short time
of experience in a dansō kissa. He mainly chose a dansō occupation
because of the opportunity to wear male clothes. He also enjoyed
presenting himself as masculine during work, although he was not
sure how to define himself as a dansō (understood as a woman
who cross-dresses). In fact, when he started to work as a cross-
dresser escort, he was not able to define his ‘actual’ gender identity:
aware of being an (‘innate’) female with regard to his body, he was
only able to think about himself in masculine terms. He thus only
felt at ease in male attire, even experiencing a sense of discomfort
when wearing female clothes. Ichi was also unsure about his sexual
orientation: he was attracted to women, but he did not identify
as homosexual. The definition of a ‘lesbian’ as ‘a woman who is
romantically and/or sexually attracted to other women’ did not
seem to fit. Coming to terms with his identification, Ichi was look-
ing for the best ways to define and present himself on a daily basis.
In contrast to the previous two examples, Ichi was not overly
active on social media. He posted one blog entry a week, as required
by company rules, but rarely wrote additional posts; he tweeted no
more than three times a day, sometimes less. He described himself
98 Marta Fanasca
as a very introverted person. This was reflected in his use of posts.

In his blog, Ichi devoted most of his posts to descriptions of his cur-
rent emotional state, often with regard to his gender and his sexual
identity. The tone of his messages was very serious, and more than
once he was warned by his superior to choose lighter styles and top-
ics. His messages on Twitter were rather impersonal compared to
those of Haruka and Shin, mostly limited to formal greetings. Unlike
the two previous interviewees, Ichi was neither extremely popular
among clients, nor did he have regular fans with whom he had
developed intimate relationships.10 Ichi used e-e-k and stickers only
in 10% of his Twitter messages (out of a total of 67 tweets), and not
once in his blog posts. He also employed few e-e-k in private conver-
sations (only in 18% of 53 messages on LINE). When asked about
this, he explained: “e-e-k are a very feminine way to communicate, I
do not want to use them. I do not want to be perceived as a woman,
and even less so, that kind of girlish (sonna ni onnapoi) woman who
uses emoji and kaomoji all the time!” Ichi consequently avoided
any behavior that could be considered ‘feminine’. Other scholars
have highlighted how Japanese non-cisgender individuals manage
the presentation of their gender and sexual identity through gen-
dered speech patterns (see Maree 2008, 2013; Abe 2010). Similarly,
Ichi’s aversion to emoticons, emoji, and kaomoji can be read in the
same terms: not only did he identify e-e-k with a ‘feminine’ way of
communication—to him they specifically represent extremely girlish
forms of expression, completely at odds with the position he feels
he occupies on the gender spectrum. Moreover, e-e-k are often used
to strengthen or to emphasize positive feelings and emotions. In his
blog, however, Ichi frequently wrote about serious topics or reflected
on his quest for identity. Thus, the lighter tone expressed by e-e-k
was not in line with his narrative.
After working for six months at Dreamland, Ichi eventually
decided to quit the dansō escort occupation: initially, he had been
questioning his identity and trying to find a way to define himself.
After having experienced the life of a crossdresser for a while, he
realized he was not a dansō but instead identified as transsexual.
He soon afterward began hormone therapy to transition to a male
body. This choice helped him find more balance and self-confidence
in his life. When I met him again, about one year after his treatment
had begun, he was proudly displaying hints of a beard and his voice
was much deeper than before. In organizing our meeting, he texted
me on LINE, this time using kaomoji. Possibly, his (re)discovered
stability made him feel more at ease with e-e-k in private conversa-
tions among friends or acquaintances.
Conclusion
My analysis of dansō escorts’ blog posts, Twitter profiles, and conversa-
tions on LINE showed that, in their daily routines of virtual interactions
with potential customers, fans, and coworkers, crossdressers make very
different choices in their use of emoticons, emoji, and kaomoji. They
employ a range of strategies matching their respective gender perfor-
mances to work their emotional labor. My findings show that, first of all,
the more active a crossdresser is on the internet, the higher the number
of e-e-k tends to become. A second important finding confirms that e-e-k
are, almost invariably, used to strengthen or reaffirm positive feelings and
avoided in messages with a more serious or introspective tone. E-e-k are
also absent in official posts used to communicate information about the
company to clients. Their role is, hence, linked to playful messages about
the crossdressers’ daily experiences. Moreover, the gendered aspect of
e-e-k is clearly recognized, at least by my sample of interviewees. In public
interactions on Twitter, crossdressers have mainly shown two different
patterns of use: crossdressers who feel self-confident and who occupy a
strong or esteemed position within the internal ranking of the company
are more confident in using e-e-k, and they do not perceive them as a
threat to their masculine gender performance. In contrast, those who
cannot clearly define themselves in terms of their gender identity and/
or occupy a lower or unstable position within the company’s ranking do
not feel comfortable in using them, since they are perceived as feminine.
They fear that emoticons, emoji, and kaomoji could negatively affect their
gender performance and, consequently, their opportunities to develop
intimate relationships with their clients, reducing their monthly income.
Crossdressers belonging to this second category, however, also tend to
adapt their communicative styles to those of more popular crossdressers
once they start to interact with them. This even holds true if the domi-
nant (or at least more successful) crossdresser makes more frequent use
of e-e-k. In addition, the use of e-e-k in public and private interactions
is extremely differentiated. In private communications with coworkers,
friends, and family members, almost all my 14 interviewees used a higher
number of e-e-k than in a professional context. In almost all cases, they
also used them as a means of adding an emotional tone to their messages.
To conclude, this analysis shed light on the use of emoticons, emoji, and
kaomoji by non-cisgender individuals. My focus was on Japanese FtM
crossdressers, dansō, working as escorts, and especially on their virtual
communication. I tried to demonstrate how gender performances can
be enacted and negotiated not only by physical means but also through
e-e-k. Moreover, e-e-k are a fundamental tool in transmitting emotions in
technology-mediated forms of interaction. They thus play a pivotal role
in performing emotional labor in blogs and social media primarily aimed
at clients.
100 Marta Fanasca
Notes
1. The use of the terms performance and performativity throughout the present
article is intended in relation to Butler’s theory of gender performativity (1990).
2. See Emogi Research Team. 2016. “2016 Emoji Report.” Emogi, November 16.
Accessed 1 June 2019. https://cdn.emogi.com/docs/reports/2016_emoji_report.
pdf.
3. Before the development of gender and queer theories, the constructed nature
of identity through performances had already been investigated by Goffman
(1959, 1963), Garfinkel (1967), and West and Zimmerman (1987).
4. Even though most of the dansō-related forms of entertainment are based in
Tokyo, dansō kissa, escort companies, and host clubs can also be found in
Sapporo, Osaka, Nagoya, and Fukuoka.
5. This is the hourly fee adopted by Dreamland where I conducted my fieldwork
and by most other companies (as of May 2018). However, it cannot be taken
as representative of all the dansō escort companies in Japan.
6. When referring to my dansō informants, I use male pronouns from here on
as they asked me to do during the interviews.
7. Dansō perform emotional labor mostly through feigned emotions. However,
as also highlighted by Ashforth and Humphrey (1993), the communication
of sincere emotions to achieve an economic purpose can also be considered a
form of emotional labor.
8. All the quotes are taken from personal interviews conducted in Japanese
between September 2015 and July 2016. Translations were provided by
myself—M.F.
9. The ranking is based on the number of dates obtained by every dansō in a
time span of one month. It is updated monthly.
10. It can take up to six months for a dansō to ‘sell’ a date, even longer to
obtain regular clients, and intimate relationships between dansō and custom-
ers develop only over time. Since Ichi worked for Dreamland for only eight
months, he was not able to establish significant and intimate relationships.
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6 Emoticons in Social Media
The Case of Japanese
Facebook Users
Michaela Oberwinkler
Introduction
The usage of emoticons has spread like wildfire on the internet since their
introduction in 1982, and a large number of studies have been conducted
on the phenomenon from the perspectives of various academic disciplines.
Owing to the fact that emoticons contribute to the way communication
works on the internet, linguists naturally have a great interest in them,
too. However, even though many approaches have been taken, to date,
some questions that are not completely clarified, still exist. One urgent
question that is controversially discussed is the question of how emoticons
function in written conversation and what kind of role they play in com-
puter-mediated communication (CMC). This article aims to shed more
light on this question and to deepen the understanding of the functions
that Japanese emoticons, the so-called kaomoji, 顔文字, can serve. Fur-
thermore, it intends to point to particularities in gender and generational
differences. In order to understand the role that kaomoji play in natural
written language, a data corpus consisting of public posts and comments
(more than 200,000 tokens) of Japanese Facebook users was created.
1. Background and State of Research

In the United States, the most frequently used emoticon (see Oleszkiewicz
et al. 2017) is the ‘smiley’ face that can be produced with ASCII symbols
and that is horizontally oriented, such as :). Some researchers also include
graphically rendered pictograms, such as ☺, or graphical symbols such
as emoji in their definition of emoticons (e.g., see Dresner and Herring
2010; Skovholt, Gronning, and Kankaanranta 2014). However, this study
considers only the traditional variations. The first emoticon is said to have
been invented by Scott E. Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon
University in the United States in 1982 (see Garrison et al. 2011).1 In his
often-quoted post Fahlman proposes that :-) should be used to mark jokes
and :-( for the opposite. In Japan the use of Western emoticons was adopted
by the JUNET (Japanese Unix Network) community which linked research
Emoticons in Social Media 105
institutions and universities through a noncommercial computer network
(see Katsuno and Yano 2002). The first creation of Japanese emoticons,
so-called kaomoji (lit. face marks), which are not oriented sideways but
depict a front view, “is extremely difficult to document” (Katsuno and
Yano 2002, 210). According to Katsuno and Yano (2002, 2007), kaomoji
began to appear around 1986, in the second major Japanese network
community pasokon tsūshin, which connected public users (and not aca-
demic users like JUNET did). The main reason for the growing popularity
of kaomoji was their adoption by Japanese high school girls who were fre-
quently writing messages using a Japanese pager called pokeberu, which
was widespread at that time (see Miyake 2001).
Emoticon research has a long tradition with varying perspectives
focusing on different phenomena or aspects thereof. Some research
emphasizes the intentions of the emoticon sender (see Garrison et al.
2011; Amaghlobeli 2012; Kaye, Wall, and Malone 2016; Chen and
Siu 2017), while other research is interested in interpretations of the
emoticon receiver (see Walther and Addario 2001; Arakawa and Suzuki
2004; Takahashi, Fukuda, and Akimitsu 2005; Lo 2008; Taguchi 2014;
Duan, Xia, and Van Swol 2018). In particular, Takahashi, Fukuda, and
Akimitsu (2005) observed that emoticons have the effect of decreasing
the state of anxiety in the receiver. Filik et al. (2016) point to the emo-
tional impact of emoticons if compared to other textual devices such as
punctuation marks, in the case of sarcasm. Research that focuses on the
emoticon sender often discusses what kind of communication strategies
can be pursued using emoticons. Some studies stress the playfulness
of emoticon usage (see Miyake 2002; Harada 2004; Hsieh and Tseng
2017). Huang, Yen, and Zhang (2008) likewise observe an apparent
enjoyment that the usage of emoticons can bring but, moreover, argue
that emoticons also serve as a valuable addition to communication
methods and facilitate information richness. While emoticons are often
seen as paralinguistic devices that substitute for nonverbal cues (see
Kiesler, Siegel, and McGuire 1984; Marcoccia 2000; Miyake 2007;
Duan, Xia, and Van Swol 2018), Amaghlobeli (2012) argues that
emoticons have an additional function as structural markers. Rinas
and Uhrova (2016) compare emoticons to other punctuation marks.
Dresner and Herring (2010, 250) point out that, in some cases, their
primary function is not to convey emotion but pragmatic meaning,
which “needs to be understood in linguistic, rather than extralinguis-
tic, terms”. Skovholt, Gronning, and Kankaanranta (2014) determine
three such functions: emoticons (1) serve to mark positive attitude (in
combination with email signatures), (2) signal the use of jokes and
irony, and, most important, (3) serve as hedges (as softeners in cases
of requests, corrections, rejections, and complaints, or as strengtheners
in cases of thanks, greetings, wishes, appraisals, promises, and admis-
sions). While Western research has been focusing on the importance of
106 Michaela Oberwinkler
context (see Derks, Bos, and Grumbkow 2007; Garrison et al. 2011),
some Japanese studies have investigated the emotional meaning of
emoticons without relying on the respective context (see Kato et al.
2006; Kawakami 2008; Toratani and Hirayama 2011; Hayashi and
Hayashi 2016). Kato et al. (2006) suggest that many emoticons, espe-
cially the ones that represent negative emotions, do not readily corre-
spond with one specific emotion but are rather ambiguous and open to
more than one interpretation. The question remains, however, if this is
true for emoticons without verbal context only.
Gender differences have also been of interest in emoticon research,
but the results of the research are inconsistent. In the majority of
cases, the studies argue that women use more emoticons than men (see
Witmer and Katzman 1997; Herring 2003; Baron 2004; Tossell et al.
2012; Oleszkiewicz et al. 2017). Only one study (Huffaker and Calvert
2005) indicated that teenage boys use emoticons more frequently than
teenage girls in weblogs. Tossell et al. (2012) observed that men use
a wider array of emoticons than women do, but—in contrast to this
finding—Fullwood, Orchard, and Floyd (2013) suggest that a general
convergence of emoticon usage toward the female expression style, is
observable. Wolf (2000) argues in a similar vein that due to the influ-
ence of the respective conversation partner, gender differences disap-
pear in gender-mixed forums or, more precisely, that men adopt the
female style in gender-mixed forums. Furthermore, according to the
same study, the purpose of emoticon usage also shows gender differ-
ences: women use emoticons to indicate humor, while men tend to use
emoticons to express sarcastic nuances. Luor et al. (2010) report that
women perceived positive emoticons in simple business instant messag-
ing more positively than did men, while there was no gender difference
in the case of positive emoticons in complex messages. Some studies
have also considered cultural differences: Kavanagh (2016) concludes
that Japanese blog comment writers use significantly more emoticons
that help to convey positive politeness strategies than Americans do.
Markman and Oshima (2007) point out that Japanese kaomoji have
a wider range in variation in contrast to English emoticons and not
only are therefore used as a punctuating device but also potentially
convey wider meaning as TCUs (turn-construction units). According to
their study, kaomoji are more performative and expressive than English
emoticons. Comparing mobile phone use by university students in Swe-
den, the United States, Italy, Japan, and Korea, Baron and Campbell
(2012) stress the fact that cultural differences are, in some cases, more
explanatory than gender.
Only a few studies, however, consider the influence that age might have
on emoticon usage and perception. While Krohn (2004) has discussed
generational differences in the reception of emoticons and suggests that
electronic communication employing emoticons needs to be written
keeping in mind the age of the respective recipient, Fullwood, Orchard,
and Floyd (2013) state, in contrast, that age only has little influence on
the usage of emoticons or the types of emoticons chosen in a chat room
context. On the other hand, Oleszkiewicz et al. (2017) statistically ana-
lyzed data from 86,702 U.S. American Facebook users and concluded
that emoticon usage decreases as one becomes older. They suggest that
one reason for this phenomenon might be the frequent co-occurrence of
positive and negative emotions at an older age that leads to difficulties
for elderly people to choose a single-emotion graphical symbol that they
might consider as insufficient and not representative of their actual feel-
ings. To the author’s best knowledge, there has been no research on the
relationship between age and gender concerning the usage of Japanese
kaomoji yet. The present study attempts to fill this gap by analyzing a
small-scale corpus of naturally occurring computer-mediated discourse
data.
2. Data and Methodology

Since Facebook is the world’s largest social network,2 it was determined
to be the best choice to collect natural language data for this study. At the
time of data collection, Facebook had 1,393 million active users world-
wide; 24 million of them were Japanese. Another reason for choosing
Facebook was the fact that it had a well-balanced age distribution in
Japan.3 More than 10% of both men and women were over 50 years old,
whereas the user population of mixi, another big social network in Japan,
was much less well balanced.
The corpus language data were collected between October 2014 and
March 2015. It was drawn from around 200,000 tokens of public posts
and comments on Facebook in Japanese. The data were classified accord-
ing to age and sex and divided into four subcorpora: men over the age of
60 (M60) and under the age of 30 (M30) and women over the age of 60
(W60) and under the age of 30 (W30) (see Table 6.1).
When compiling the text corpus, the text size was equalized to some
extent, with the number of users being adjusted accordingly. In order to
determine age and gender of the users, information provided on Face-
book regarding these two variables was taken for the first preselection
and then double-checked with a ‘systematic ethnographic observation’
(see Androutsopoulos 2006, 2008). Finally, the data were taken from
589 men (313 men over the age of 60; 276 under 30 years old) and 536
women (181 women over the age of 60; 355 women under the age of
30). This approach resulted in a total of 2,454 Japanese kaomoji: 677
kaomoji used by men (130 kaomoji by men over the age of 60, 547
kaomoji by men under the age of 30) and 1,777 kaomoji used by women
(411 kaomoji by women over the age of 60, 1,366 kaomoji by women
under the age of 30).
Table 6.1 Corpus Size
CORPUS SIZE Men Women
Post Comment Post Comment
Age over 60 Users 16 297 16 165

Words 16,181 16,181 15,683 15,468
Sentences 1,404 1,776 1,528 1,980
Emoticons 11 119 184 227
(kaomoji)
Age under 30 Users 21 255 22 333
Words 15,980 15,449 14,660 13,949
Sentences 1,882 2,674 2,043 2,341
Emoticons 104 443 560 806
(kaomoji)
3. Results
In the posts and comments of 1,125 Japanese Facebook users, 2,454 Japa-
nese emoticons (kaomoji) could be identified. The following tendencies
could be observed: kaomoji were more frequently used in comments than
in posts, and they were more often added to shorter sentences than to
longer ones. Women under the age of 30 had the highest proportion of
kaomoji use, while men over the age of 60 the lowest. Regarding variety,
436 types of kaomoji could be recognized, with men over the age of 60
having the highest type-token ratio. To mark irony, kaomoji were com-
bined frequently with different notations of laughter: 笑, わら, or w—a
usage that was only found in the data of users under the age of 30.
4. Discussion
Distribution and Structure of Kaomoji

The following table (Figure 6.1) shows the absolute numbers of kaomoji
in posts and comments, with the kaomoji in all groups being used more
often in comments than in posts. This finding is in contrast to Tossell et al.
(2012), who suggest that a closer relationship between sender and receiver
reduces the need to signal emotions by adding emoticons explicitly. The
Facebook users of my study write their posts for all their readers, open to
the public, whereas comments—albeit accessible by a public audience—are
addressed to a specific person (the poster) and hence include a closer rela-
tionship with a higher impact of emotions. According to Kishimoto (2017,
95), emoticons are rarely added to sentences that do not express emotional
content. This could be considered to explain the higher proportion of
1000
806
800
560
600
443
400
184 227
200 119 104
11
0
men over 60 men under 30 women over 60 women under 30
posts comments
Figure 6.1 Number of emoticons (kaomoji)
kaomoji in comments that carry more emotional content, as in cases of

greeting, praising, or thanking.
In all four groups (M60, M30, W60, W30) the word/sentence ratio
was higher in posts than in comments, while conversely, the kaomoji/
sentence ratio was higher in comments than in posts—with one exception:
women over the age of 60 had a slightly higher kaomoji/sentence ratio
in posts (0.12) compared to comments (0.11; Table 6.2). If the group of
women over the age of 60 is excluded, what remains reveals a tendency
to use kaomoji more frequently in shorter sentences than in longer ones.
Male Japanese users over the age of 60 produced the longest posts
(12 words/sentence) and comments (9 words/sentence) but added the least
kaomoji (0.01 kaomoji/sentence in posts and 0.07 kaomoji/sentence in
comments). Female Japanese users under 30 wrote the shortest posts
(7 words/sentence) and comments (6 words/sentence) but inserted the most
kaomoji (0.27 kaomoji/sentence in posts and 0.34 kaomoji/sentence in
comments).4 This result corresponds to the findings of Oleszkiewicz et al.
(2017) who claim that the use of emoticons among U.S. American Face-
book users decreases with age. Furthermore, this finding is also in line with
Kishimoto (2017), who states that sentences with ‘web marks’ (emoticons
and other graphical symbols) are shorter than sentences without.
In terms of variety, men over the age of 60 used 50 different types of
kaomoji, reaching a high diversification with every third (2.6) kaomoji
being a different one. Despite the fact that all the other groups used a
greater diversity of kaomoji, the group with the greatest variation in rela-
tion to the total number of kaomoji is men over the age of 60. In the
other groups, only about every fourth kaomoji is a different one. Table
6.3 shows the exact type–token ratio: men over the age of 60 nearly reach
40%, whereas all other groups are under 25%. This finding is consistent
Table 6.2 Word/Sentence and Kaomoji/Sentence Ratio
WORD/SENTENCE Posts Comments

and KAOMOJI/
SENTENCE RATIO Words/ Kaomoji/ Words/ Kaomoji/
sentence sentence sentence sentence
Men over 60 12 0.01 9 0.07

Men under 30 8 0.06 6 0.17
Women over 60 10 0.12 8 0.11
Women under 30 7 0.27 6 0.34
Table 6.3 Type–Token Ratio of the Kaomoji
KAOMOJI Men Women
Types Type/token Types Type/token
Over 60 50 38.5% 101 24.6%

Under 30 131 23.9% 326 23.9%
with the results of Tossell et al. (2012), who also report a more diverse
range of emoticons in the male usage compared to the female. The ‘gen-
eral convergence’ of Western emoticon usage observed by Fullwood,
Orchard, and Floyd (2013) cannot be confirmed for the kaomoji usage
in this study.
In my study, 436 types of kaomoji could be identified. The most popu-
lar kaomoji in the data is a happy face with a round mouth: (ô^). It
occurs 286 times in the corpus data and covers 12% of the total kaomoji
usage. The top 20 kaomoji, shown in Table 6.4 represent 52% of all
kaomoji posted. This finding is different from the results of Oleszkie-
wicz et al. (2017). Even though they analyze data from 86,702 Ameri-
can Facebook users, they identify only 136 different types of emoticons.
Furthermore, they report that the usage of the top five most-often-posted
American emoticons represented 88% of all emoticons posted to Face-
book. The top 15 emoticons represented even 99.6% of all posted emoti-
cons. Therefore, it can be concluded that the Japanese use a much wider
range of kaomoji than U.S. Americans do on Facebook with Western
emoticons.
With 22 occurrences (total instances: 176, see Table 6.5), the kaomoji
that is most favored by men over the age of 60 is (^^). This kaomoji has
no representation of the mouth. According to Moschini (2017, 21) this
is an important contrast to the American face marks, where the mouth is
“the main locus of expressivity”. As Katsuno and Yano (2002, 214; origi-
nal emphases) point out, in “manga and kaomoji, the eyes are considered
Table 6.4 Distribution of the Most Popular Kaomoji
Ranking Kaomoji type Sum M60 M30 W60 W30
1 (ô^) 286 13 78 33 162

2 (^^) 176 22 43 17 94
3 (*^^*) 124 7 10 47 60
4 (^_^) 101 9 78 7 7
5 (^-^) 94 14 37 33 10
6 (´▽‘) 75 3 11 5 56
7 (´･_･’) 64 0 9 0 55
8 (T_T) 43 0 5 0 38
9 (*ﾟ▽ﾟ*) 33 2 5 5 21
10 (°_°) 32 0 3 1 28
11 ( ^ω^ ) 31 0 1 0 30
12 (((o(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)o))) 30 1 5 4 20
13 (￣▽￣) 27 2 21 1 3
14 (;_;) 26 0 8 3 15
15 (´・ω・｀) 24 0 0 0 24
16 (*´ω｀*) 23 0 0 3 20
17 (*^_^*) 22 5 7 5 5
18 (^.^) 20 1 2 15 2
19 (^ ^) 20 1 18 1 0
20 (^_^;) 19 1 1 15 2
Table 6.5 Top 10 Kaomoji without a Mouth
Type (^^) (*^^*) (o^ô) (..) (;;) (_ _) (--;) (^^;) (*´’) (^^)
Sum 176 124 15 12 7 7 5 5 4 3
to be the locus of facial expressivity”. Accordingly, the mouth is less

important and can be omitted. This is also true for the kaomoji in my
study that is most favored by women over the age of 60: (*^^*). Again,
the mouth is not included, but instead, a representation of the cheeks is
inserted. Although the corpus data contain various creative individual
illustrations of a mouth (like (o´罒’o) with teeth illustrated), altogether
those representations of kaomoji without mouth account for 21% of all
kaomoji posted.
Young men under the age of 30 prefer to insert a mouth into a kaomoji
using an underscore (^_^). Young women prefer the round mouth (ô^),
which is the most often used kaomoji as described earlier.
Meaning of Kaomoji
Due to the great popularity of kaomoji in Japan more than 20 kaomoji
dictionaries have been published so far, both in print and on the internet
(see Katsuno and Yano 2002, 211). In these dictionaries, kaomoji are
typically classified based on emotional patterns, in this way suggesting
that each kaomoji has one specific emotional meaning. As Kato et al.
(2006) and Kawakami (2008) point out, it is difficult to attribute only one
emotion to a kaomoji. Kato et al. (2006) stress that negative emotions,
in particular, are difficult to match with kaomoji, but Kawakami (2008)
reports on positive emotions like joy and pleasure that cannot be explicitly
differentiated in the case of kaomoji.
According to Oberwinkler (2006, 248), emoticons cannot be analyzed
without the context they appear in. This is also true for the data of the
present study as the following examples of the kaomoji o(｀ω´ )o will
show:
1. 俺車傷つけられたよ(´･_･’)台風にo(｀ω´)o [comment 1,893, W30]

Ore kuruma kizutsukerareta yo (´･_･’) taifū ni o(｀ω´)o
[My car got damaged (´･_･’) by the typhoon o(｀ω´)o]
2. 結構馴染んでるしょ？o(｀ω´ )oどーゆーこと！？ [comment 1,577,
M30]
Kekkō najinderu sho? o(｀ω´)o dō yū koto!?
[You are pretty familiar, right? o(｀ω´ )o What is going on?]
3. 久しぶりに東府や行ってから2人で初めての海ーーo(｀ω´)o　
[post 1,491, W30]
Hisashiburi ni tōfuya itte kara futari de hajimete no umi—o(｀ω´)o
[It has been a long time since I last went there, but we visited Tōfuya
(name of a resort spa) and then went to the ocean together for the
first time—o(｀ω´)o]
In the first sentence the writer is upset because of the damage caused by a
typhoon; thus, the emotional categorization can be described as ‘anger’. The
second example shows the irritation of a poster who does not understand
what is going on, the same kaomoji thus being an example for ‘surprise’.
Finally, the third example of the same kaomoji displays the emotion of a
pleasant experience of the young female writer who visited a resort spa
(Tōfuya) in Izu and went to the ocean for the first time together with her
boyfriend. In this case the kaomoji represents the ‘excitement’ and ‘joy’ of the
writer. In these three examples the same kaomoji is used in three different situ-
ations resembling three opposing emotions: anger, surprise, and happiness.
Nevertheless, there is also evidence of kaomoji that are used only for
one single emotion: The crying face, which takes the capitalized letter T
two times to visualize tears streaming down the face, is a good example
of a determined usage: (T_T). In the data examined in the present study,
it is exclusively used for sad feelings.
Table 6.6 Frequency of the ‘Crying Face’ Kaomoji (T_T)
CRYING Men Women

FACE
(T_T) Absolute Crying Absolute Crying
n = 66 frequency face/total frequency face/total
kaomoji kaomoji
Over 60 2 1.5% 2 0.5%

Under 30 6 1.1% 56 4.1%
Table 6.6 shows the frequency of ‘crying faces’ (T_T) used by the dif-
ferent groups listed. Young women under the age of 30 achieve the out-
standing number of 56 in comparison to the other groups. Considering
the different total amount of kaomoji in the different groups, the relative
frequency for each group was calculated, which again proved the major-
ity of users were young women under the age of 30.
Although the meaning of emoticons is mostly said to be a substitute
for emotions, kaomoji can also just represent the physical condition of a
person—such as feeling cold—with freezing and shivering cheeks—like
example 4:5
4. さみーよーさみーよー。{{{(+＿+)}}}
Samī yō samī yō. {{{(+＿+)}}}
[It is cold, it is cold. {{{(+＿+)}}}]
This usage has also been found in the present data, but only in a few cases.
Example 5 is a well-known way to use the Q-character to represent the
tongue hanging out of the mouth to indicate how delicious the soup is:
5. おしるこだああああ（^Q^）　[post 781, W30]

O-shiruko daaaaa （^Q^）
[It is Shiruko (sweet adzuki [red-bean] soup with pieces of rice cake)
(^Q^)]
Since kaomoji are constructed with keyboard strokes, the possibilities

for representing actual appearance are limited. In many cases, the more
elaborate kaomoji are harder to understand and more difficult to inter-
pret. Hence, this kind of usage might be less popular, because of the wish
to avoid misunderstanding. Categorizing kaomoji according to emotional
categories is very difficult, just as difficult as the interpretation of facial
expressions in real life. The ‘crying face’ (T_T) might be easier to dis-
tinguish independent of its respective context, but most of the kaomoji
cannot be analyzed without the surrounding verbal context.
Functions of Kaomoji
Already in 2000 Schlobinski (2000, 76) described three functions of
emoticons: expressive/emotive, evaluative, and communicative/regu-
lative. The last one is often found in greetings and helps to establish
a friendly and positive communication mode. This function is also
described by Skovholt, Gronning, and Kankaanranta (2014, 792), who
call it a “marker of positive attitude”. Since their study is about work-
place emails, they observed this function particularly when the emoticons
were accompanying signatures. In the Facebook data of my study the
posters do not need signatures because the user name is automatically
added by Facebook. Nevertheless, there are many greetings that include
markers of positive attitude. The following are three examples of daily
greetings:
6. おはようございます＼(ô^)／　[post 747, M60]

Ohayō gozaimasu ＼(ô^)／
[Good morning ＼(ô^)／]
7. こんにちはლ(❛◡❛✿)ლ　[comment 499, W60]
Konnichi wa ლ(❛◡❛✿)ლ
[Good afternoon ლ(❛◡❛✿)ლ]
8. お休みなさい(-.-)Zzz・・　[comment 675, W60]
Oyasuminasai (-.-)Zzz・・
[Good night (-.-)Zzz・・]
In examples 6, 7, and 8, the main function of the kaomoji is to spread a

positive attitude. Interestingly, men over the age of 60 use greetings most
frequently, in more than 70% of a total 192 of greetings (see Table 6.7),
whereas young men in the Facebook data of the present study do not, with
one exception, use any greetings at all.
The second function according to Skovholt, Gronning, and Kankaan-
ranta (2014) is to identify jokes or irony. Oberwinkler (2006), who
Table 6.7 Frequency of Greetings
GREETINGS Men Women

n = 192
Absolute Relative Absolute Relative
frequency frequency frequency frequency
Over 60 138 72% 42 22%

Under 30 1 1% 11 6%
Sum 139 72% 53 28%
analyzes Japanese mail magazines, makes the point that, in Japanese,
this function is usually not accomplished using kaomoji but rather using
so-called kakko tsuki moji ( )付き文字 (characters within brackets), a
term introduced by Kishimoto (2000). Schlobinski and Watanabe (2003,
31) compare kakko tsuki moji with German inflectives that are used in
SMS messages. Nishimura (2007, 172) uses the phrase “isolated kanji in
parentheses”.
Table 6.8 shows a comparison of the frequency of characters within
brackets between the mail-magazine corpus (see Oberwinkler 2006) and
the Facebook corpus of the present study. In 2006, there was a greater
variety of kakko tsuki moji, like ‘exploding’, ‘mystery’, ‘sweating’, and
‘tears’, but the character for ‘laughing’ was already by far the most fre-
quently used character (66%).
In the present data, ‘laughing’ is even more frequent. ‘Exploding’,
‘mystery’, and the ‘what’ characters have disappeared, and there is
only one instance of the ‘sweating’ and the ‘tears’ character. The ‘cry-
ing’ character has as much as four occurrences, but in comparison to
the instances of ‘laughing’ (260 instances), the number is negligible.
The popularity of the ‘laughing’ character can be deduced from the
fact that it is already part of the regular functional keyboard layout. If
one types in wara (laugh), Japanese typing software can automatically
switch the character into the bracket version （笑）. This might be an
example of an ongoing conventionalization as a textual marker—which,
as Dresner and Herring (2010) suggest, is an important direction for
future research.
Table 6.8 Frequency of ‘Characters Within Brackets’
Characters Meaning Mail-magazine corpus Facebook corpus

Within Brackets (see Oberwinkler 2006) (present study)
Absolute Relative Absolute Relative

(笑) Laugh 144 66% 260 98%

(爆) Explode 41 19% 0 0%
(謎) Mystery 9 4% 0 0%
(汗) Sweat 9 4% 1 0%
(涙) Tears 6 3% 1 0%
(泣) Cry 5 2% 4 2%
(何) What 4 2% 0 0%
Sum 218 100% 266 100%
Table 6.9 Frequency of Wara, 笑, Without Brackets
WARA WITHOUT Men Women

BRACKETS
笑 Absolute Relative Absolute Relative
n = 692 frequency frequency frequency frequency
Over 60 1 0% 22 3%
Under 30 324 47% 345 50%
Sum 325 47% 367 53%
A further development of this trend is a version in which the character

笑 is written without brackets. As Table 6.9 shows, this is a phenomenon
mainly found in posts and comments of men and women under the age
of 30. There are only very few examples (22 instances, 3%) of women
over the age of 60 and only one instance of a man over the age of 60 of
wara, 笑, without brackets.
The next step of this development is the typing of wara in hiragana
as わら. This spelling is only evident in Facebook users under the age of
30. As shown in Table 6.10 there was no instance of a user over 60. The
following examples demonstrate this usage:
9. はやくこっちサイドにおいでーわら [comment 1,711, F30]

Hayaku kotchi saido ni oide—wara
[Come quickly to my site—laugh]
10. 普通10個とかしかくえなくない？わら [comment 968, M30]
Futsū 10ko toka shika kuenakunai? wara
[Usually you don’t eat more than about 10, don’t you? Laugh]
In example 9, a young woman wants her friend to visit her homepage. She
humorously urges the friend to hurry—joking wara at the end indicating
humor. In example 10, a young man is laughing about an amount that
was eaten—he thinks that about 10 portions should have been enough—
and marks his criticism as a joke with wara. In the present study, elderly
people over the age of 60 have not yet adopted this usage of wara without
brackets and in hiragana. It is still a new element of written colloquial
language amongst younger people.
A third notation variation of the laughing is the Roman letter w, the
initial of the Japanese word for laughter (warai). Again, it is often used
by Facebook users under the age of 30, and only very rarely by users over
the age of 60, as demonstrated in Table 6.11.
The Facebook data of the present study confirms the results of the mail-
magazine study of 2006: Unlike Western emoticons, Japanese kaomoji
are usually not used to mark jokes or irony, but with one exception: they
Table 6.10 Frequency of Wara, わら, Without Brackets
WARA WITHOUT Men Women

BRACKETS
わら Absolute Relative Absolute Relative
n = 39 frequency frequency frequency frequency
Over 60 0 0% 0 0%
Under 30 19 49% 20 51%
Table 6.11 Frequency of Wara, w
WARA Men Women

w
n = 528 Absolute Relative Absolute Relative
Over 60 5 1% 2 0%
Under 30 184 35% 337 64%
Sum 189 36% 339 64%
can be used in a humoristic or ironic utterance, if combined with wara

in all variations: in kanji notation, 笑; in hiragana notation, わら; and in
Roman letter notation as w, as the following examples illustrate:
11. おぃ!!俺は一人だったぞ!?バカにしやがって( →_→)笑 [comment

1,809, M30]
Oi!! Ore wa hitori datta zo!? Baka ni shiyagatte (→_→)wara
[Hey!! I was all alone by myself!? Don’t fool me ( →_→)laugh]
12. 食いしん坊((((；ﾟДﾟ)))))))わら [comment 967, M30]
Kuishinbō ((((；ﾟДﾟ)))))))wara
[Glutton ((((；ﾟДﾟ)))))))laugh]
13. ちょっと反省してる(´・ω・｀)w [comment 1,090, F30]
Chotto hansei shiteru (´・ω・｀)w
[I am a little bit regretting (´・ω・｀)laugh]
In example 11, the poster pretends to be angry because he thinks that he

was made a fool of but withdraws it with the ‘laughing’ character that is
directly added to the kaomoji without brackets. In example 12, the writer
calls his friend gluttonous and adds the ‘laughter’, here in hiragana, to
mark the ironic tone. In example 13, the young woman does not really
think that she has done something bad, even though she says that she
regrets her action, as indicated by the laughing w. This combination of a
kaomoji with the ‘laughing’ character has evolved in the last few years,
and it is still so new that it is practiced by young people in nearly all cases.
Older users have not yet adopted it.
Table 6.12 Frequency of Kaomoji in Combination with Wara
COMBINATION Men Women

of kaomoji and
wara Absolute Relative Absolute Relative
笑わら w 笑わら W 笑わら w 笑わら w
Over 60 1 0 0 1% 0% 0% 1 0 0 1% 0% 0%
Under 30 24 6 1 27% 30% 4% 62 14 24 70% 70% 96%
As displayed in Table 6.12, there is only one occurrence of a combi-

nation of kaomoji plus the kanji version of wara, 笑, for both men and
women over the age of 60. All the other kaomoji with wara combinations
were posted by users under the age of 30. In addition, a considerably
higher proportion of young women’s uses can be noted; this is especially
true for the notation with the Roman letter w, where young women
under the age of 30 represent 96% of the total usage.6
The last function that Skovholt, Gronning, and Kankaanranta mention
is “acting as a hedge” (2014, 792). Hedges include, on one hand, soften-
ers in the case of requests, corrections, rejections, and complaints and,
on the other hand, strengtheners in the case of thanks, greetings, wishes,
appraisals, promises, and admissions. In the Japanese data of my study,
kaomoji can also adopt the function of hedges, but a detailed analysis
leads, sometimes, to different classifications of softeners and strengthen-
ers. In particular, requests that are supplemented with kaomoji are not
only softened but, in some cases, also strengthened:
14. 今度は、ご馳走して下さいなm(__)mがんばれ　[comment 436, M60]

Kondo wa, gochisō shite kudasai na m(__)m ganbare
[Please treat me to a meal next time m(__)m make an effort]
15. 連れてって !!m( 。 ≧Д≦。 )m クリスマスイヴー＼ (^^) ／ ♡　 [post
644, F30]
Tsuretette!!m(。≧Д≦。)m kurisumasu ivuu＼(^^)／♡
[Please take me out!! m(。≧Д≦。)m on Christmas eve ＼(^^)／♡]
In example 14, the writer wants to be asked to dinner. This request is

softened, just as described by Skovholt, Gronning, and Kankaanranta
(2014), in a polite way with the kaomoji that symbolizes a bow.
Also in example 14, the poster wants to be taken out, but in this
posting the kaomoji adds greater emphasis to the request. The kaomoji
combines a bow pictured with the m letters (depicting the hands on the
ground) together with hesitating eyes m(。≧Д≦。)m. This combination
has a strong impact and strengthens the request and does not soften
it. Therefore, the account which is stated by Skovholt, Gronning, and
Kankaanranta (2014) does not apply to this posting. The second kaomoji
in the same posting ＼(^^)／♡ (example 15), however, can be analyzed
as a hedge with a softening function. It is also important to note that this
example with the strengthening kaomoji, was posted by a young woman
who does not care so much about polite conventions but is more con-
cerned about emphasizing her request. For users over the age of 60, this
usage could not be found anywhere in the data of my study.
5. Summary
In the present study, 2,454 Japanese emoticons (kaomoji) were col-
lected from naturally occurring posts and comments of 1,125 Japanese
Facebook users. The analysis indicated the following tendencies: kao-
moji are more frequently used in comments than in posts, and they are
more often added to shorter sentences than to longer ones. Various gen-
der and generational differences could be observed: Women used more
kaomoji than men, and users over the age of 60 used fewer kaomoji
than users under the age of 30. Four hundred thirty-six (436) differ-
ent types of kaomoji were analyzed, showing divergent gender-specific
and generation-specific preferences. Diverse functions of kaomoji were
discussed. Kaomoji differ from Western emoticons in the way that they
are not usually used to mark irony. For an ironic usage, kaomoji are
combined with 笑, わら, or w, all three of which are abbreviations of
the Japanese word for laughter (warai). This kind of ironic usage is
only found among users under the age of 30. Therefore, generational
differences are, in some cases, more explanatory than gender in the case
of Japanese kaomoji.
In this study, only traditional kaomoji were treated. Future research
should consider a comparison of kaomoji with emoji as well as with other
graphical supplements such as stickers used in messenger communication.
Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge the support and generosity of the 12th Hakuho
Foundation Japanese Research Fellowship, without which the present
study could not have been completed.
Notes
1. In contrast, Wei states that the origin of emoticons can be traced back to an
article in Reader’s Digest in 1967 (as cited in Jibril and Abdullah 2013).
2. See Statista. 2019. “Most Popular Social Networks Worldwide as of April
2019, Ranked by Number of Active Users (in Millions).” Statista. Accessed
1 June 2019. www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-
ranked-by-number-of-users.
3. See App Ape Lab. 2015. “LINE, Facebook, Twitter . . . Itsutsu no mejā SNS
danjo-betsu nendai hiritsu no tettei hikaku! [A Detailed Comparison of Five
Major Social Networking Services' User Age Ratios According to the Gender
of Men and Women!].” App Ape Lab, February 20. Accessed 1 June 2019.
https://lab.appa.pe/2015-02/sns-demographics.html.
4. Men under the age of 30 have the same word/sentence ratio in the case of
comments, but a higher ratio in posts.
5. This example is discussed in more detail by Oberwinkler (2006, 248).
6. Since the repetition of the letter w resembles a pictorial representation of a
lawn (wwww), this notation is also called kusa, 草, meaning ‘grass’. The num-
ber of w letters indicates the intensity of the laughing.
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Part III
Linguistic Mediations
7 ‘Iconographetic
Communication’ in
Digital Media
Emoji in WhatsApp, Twitter,
Instagram, Facebook—From
a Linguistic Perspective
Christina Margrit Siever
1. Introduction
Digital communication has become an integral part of everyday life.
Linguistic research is interested in how digital communication can be
described. Taking into consideration the relevant literature in the field
of digital communication, the following typical characteristics for digital
communication are mentioned frequently: (1) emoticons, (2) nonstandard
spelling and creative use of writing systems, (3) abbreviation, and (4)
nonstandard punctuation (e.g., see Bieswanger 2013, 464). Contempo-
rary digital (informal) communication, however, is characterized by yet
another, more recent feature: emoji. In a sense emoji can be seen as the
successors to conventional ASCII emoticons. Usually, conventional ASCII
emoticons (horizontally oriented Western face symbols) are explicitly dis-
tinguished from the later emoji. Sometimes the former term is also used
as an umbrella term for different (sub)types of facial symbols such as
kaomoji, Western ASCII emoticons, and smiley faces, among the emoji.
Several linguistic works dedicated to the subject of emoji—usually in
the context of larger media linguistic studies—have been published in the
last four years: Dürscheid and Frick (2014), Kelly (2015), Siever (2015),
Engling, von Hertzberg, and Tschernig (2016), Menezes de Oliveira e
Paiva (2016), Danesi (2017), Evans (2017), Dürscheid and Siever (2017),
Herring and Dainas (2017), and Siebenhaar (2018). The first European
scientific publication that treated emoji from a linguistic point of view was
an exploratory and contrastive study on German- and Japanese-language
Short Messaging Service (SMS) communication by Peter Schlobinski and
Manabu Watanabe (2003). At that time the use of emoji was still referred
to as a specific feature of ‘Japanese’ mobile phone communication (see 31).
Today, emoji are part and parcel of digital communication worldwide.
The present chapter is structured as follows: Following the clarification
of the terminology used, a brief overview of the history of iconographetic
128 Christina Margrit Siever
communication—combinations of pictographs and characters (rebus let-
ters, hybrids of text and images for the teaching of reading, as well as
messages in advertising and within the public sphere)—is provided. Sub-
sequently, emoji are examined from a semiotic and semantic perspective.
Finally, different communicative functions of emoji are explored using
examples from German-language communication.
2. Clarification of the Terminology

In a sense, ‘emoji’ could be considered successors of earlier forms of
‘emoticons’. Nevertheless, in some ways, they clearly differ from their
ancestors: ASCII emoticons are not composed of preconstructed images,
meaning that their composition is less restricted by technological stan-
dardization. Sometimes they possess a directional flexibility—e.g. :-) vs.
(-:—with or without a nose—e.g. :-) vs. :). Emoji, on the other hand,
are preconstructed graphics that cannot be modified or just barely. They
allow for a small degree of alteration as it has been possible to employ
a so-called Skin Tone Modifier for certain emoji since 2015. Since the
release of iOS 10 in 2016, there also exists a so-called Gendered Emoji
List, meaning that the gender of certain emoji can also be chosen. This is
realized via ‘Emoji ZWJ Sequences’, combining different ‘sub-emoji’ on a
technological level hidden from the user.
The term emoji thus refers to all pictorial characters encoded within
Unicode. These can further be divided into emoji showing facial expres-
sions (which, to a certain degree, seem to mimic ASCII emoticons), and
emoji that depict animals and objects, such as food, fruits and vegetables,
beverages, vehicles, sports, commodity items, or symbols of various
kinds (see Figure 7.1). These non-facial emoji constitute the second big
Figure 7.1 Terminological delimination of emoticons and emoji

‘Iconographetic Communication’ 129
difference to conventional ASCII emoticons: emoji can do more than just
show facial expressions (to display emotions or irony) like their ances-
tors. Rather, it has become possible to depict all kinds of objects within
digital communication, a fact that is of great interest from a linguistic
point of view. Although representational ASCII emoticons depicting
commodity items already existed, such possibilities were quite limited at
the time and thus rarely used. The best known and most used is probably
the heart: <3; rarely did one encounter more complex signs such as the
rose: @}-,-’-.
Communication with emoji coded in Unicode is distinct from their
various earlier forms, because emoji have a digital ‘identity’ as static and
fixed as any of the ASCII parts that emoticons were composed of. The
mode of language and the mode of image can thus be entwined in quite
complex ways and mixed as required. In accordance with Hartmut Stöckl
(2004b, 11–13), this study understands modes as systems of signs. We can
distinguish four core modes: ‘image’, ‘language’, ‘sound’, and ‘music’.
Each mode exists in different medial variants. In this chapter, the com-
bination of the modes ‘image’ and ‘language’ is of interest. The medial
variants of the mode ‘image’ are ‘static’ versus ‘dynamic’ and of the mode
‘language’, ‘writing’ versus ‘speech’. Communication using emoji can thus
be described as essentially multimodal; the modes combined being the
written language and the static image.
However, communication with emoji is fundamentally different
from other forms of multimodal (text-image) communication, such as
adverts. As the term multimodal communication is relatively broad,
I believe that a more specific expression is required. I would like to
propose filling this terminological gap with the term iconographetic
communication, which I have modified with recourse to Waltraud
Wiethölter (2008, 117). She speaks of “icono-graphy” with regard to
rebus letters that, to some extent, could be considered the historical
forerunner of today’s emoji-text communication. In the term I have
coined, the element icono (from the Greek for image), generally refers
to pictorial characters; it does not matter whether these are iconic or
symbolic characters in isolation. The second part of the term, graphetic,
is understood in terms of the Greek word graphé (or writing) and will
hence refer to all kinds of written characters: typed characters in the
case of digital communication.
3. Iconographetic Communication Before Digitalization

Obviously, iconographetic communication already existed before digital
communication. The rebus letters mentioned previously—which con-
tained picture puzzles—were very popular throughout the 19th century.
Let us take a brief look at an English example (of course, such letters and
cards could be found in other languages as well).
Figure 7.2 Calling card from 1865; retrieved from Wikipedia. “Rebus.” Wikipe-
dia. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus
In Figure 7.2 we see a calling card, or ‘escort card’, dating from approx-
imately 1865 (see Thompson 2013, 12). The pronoun I is represented
by the image of an eye. This is followed by the rebus letters CU for ‘see
you’, then by a picture of a house for home, concluded by a pictorial deer
for dear. Rebus letters, in contrast, are naturally much longer and hence
more difficult to decipher.
The rebus letter in Figure 7.3 was sent by the Swabian Adolf Rueff
(1820–1885) from Reutlingen to the sisters Alma and Bertha Froriep in
Berlin (see Wiethölter 2008, 125). It begins with ‘Ihr lieben Berliner Hasen!’
(‘My dear Berlin rabbits!’), whereby the Ber in Berlin contains an acoustic
analogy (Bär meaning ‘bear’ in German), while the word Hasen literally
consists of a drawing of two rabbits: the image replaces the text. Here, one
can speak of a “referential function” (Schlobinski and Watanabe 2003, 30;
translation C.S.), meaning that the emoji refers to an extra-linguistic unity
and is thus part of the proposition of the sentence. As we will see shortly, in
contemporary emoji communication there are only a few instances of rebus
functions but more instances of the referential function. Therefore, at least
from a linguistic perspective, emoji are not just old wine in new bottles.
Iconographetic communication can also be found in books that com-
bine text and images to teach reading skills. Here, individual words are
replaced with images to make the text easier to comprehend for beginners
(see Figure 7.4). However, Manfred Tücke and Klaus-Thomas Schnittger-
Bähr (1998, 309) have argued that, in the long run, such well-meant read-
ing aids can have a detrimental effect on the actual acquisition of literacy.
Figure 7.3 Rebus letter from 1844; retrieved from Wiethölter (2008, 125)
Figure 7.4 An Example for a text as found in books combining text and images
for the acquisition of reading skills; arrangement C.S.
The Koordinierungsstelle Alphabetisierung im Freistaat Sachsen

(‘Alphabetization Coordination Office in the Free State of Saxony’) has
created advertising postcards based on this principle: “Kati will mit dem
[Bus] nach [Plauen] zu ihrem [Mausebär]. Sie kann das [Berlin] nicht
lesen. Jetzt hat Katis Mausebär eine neue [Flamme]. Kati ist traurig”
(‘Kati wants to take the [bus] to [Plauen] to see her [mouse bear, a term
of endearment in German]. She can’t read the [Berlin]. Now Kati’s [mouse
bear] has a new [flame, an idiomatic expression for a new love interest].
Kati is sad’, Figure 7.5). This shows that while some things can be com-
municated via images, actual reading skills are still mandatory because
toponyms such as ‘Plauen’ or ‘Berlin’, proper names like ‘Kati’, as well
as nonnominal words, are very difficult, or even impossible, to depict
through images.
As Winfried Nöth (2000, 49) points out, the creative substitution of
words with pictorial symbols is generally a popular stylistic device in
advertisements. In Figure 7.6, we see an example from an airline company:
Figure 7.5 Advertising postcard from the ‘Alphabetization Coordination Office

in the Free State of Saxony’; used with Permission
Figure 7.6 Advertising for an airline on a tram in Zurich; photograph C.S.

“Wo die [Sonne] an über 45 [Destinationen] rund um den [Globus] für Sie
scheint” (‘Where the [sun] shines for you at over 45 [destinations] around
the [world]’). In the advert, pictorial symbols are used with a referential
function to create an eye-catching effect.
One sometimes encounters iconographetic communication also in
everyday life, beyond purely instrumental contexts. In Figure 7.7, one
can see a public bus in the city Brugg (Switzerland) displaying a picto-
rial representation of a coffee cup, followed by the German word Pause
(break), which we can interpret as a ‘coffee break’ (that the driver is
apparently having).
Thus, the question arises, with regard to emoji, whether such picto-
rial characters will become more frequent in the public sphere (and in
Figure 7.7 Display on a bus; photograph C.S.

advertising) since they have long found their way into everyday com-
munication. In this regard, future research into the matter is imperative.
4. Emoji From a Semiotic and Semantic Perspective

Having explored some of the history of iconographetic communication,
we now consider emoji from a semiotic and semantic perspective. One
thing should be mentioned right from the beginning: there is no general
answer to the question of whether emoji are iconic or symbolic characters.
There are two reasons for this. First, it should be noted that Charles S.
Peirce’s well-known trichotomy of symbol, icon, and index should be
conceived not as an absolute three-way split but as a graduated scale.
Peirce himself never claimed that signs can only fall into one of those
categories. Second, not only are there very different types of emoji, but
one and the same emoji can be used as both an icon and as a symbol. Some
emoji are purely symbolic characters as, for instance, the Japanese symbol
for ‘beginners’ , the ‘CND peace sign’ , or the ‘recycling’-symbol .
In addition, there are emoji such as the eggplant , which can be seen
as iconic by most users while simultaneously being used as a phallic sym-
bol in the United States. Consequently, pictorial characters that initially
appear purely iconic (such as the ‘eggplant’ emoji) can, at any given time,
be employed as a symbol by particular groups.1
When emoji are used symbolically, misunderstandings are very likely to
occur. Here, culture-specific aspects play a key role. Not all emoji are used
and understood in the same way, internationally or even nationally. It can-
not be guaranteed that the intended meaning will be grasped. Therefore,
emoji cannot be called a ‘universal’ or ‘global’ language as is occasionally
stated in the media. The Unicode Consortium, for example, states that
“[t]he images represented by emoji can have or develop very differ-
ent overtones and usage depending on a user’s language and culture”.2
Although emoji clearly do not have a fixed meaning, surprisingly many
newspaper articles criticize their ‘incorrect’ use. For instance, the topic
was featured in an article in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, titled
“Emojis, die jeder falsch benutzt” (“Emoji Everyone Uses Incorrectly”,
May 26, 2015); an article in the NZZ am Sonntag bore the title “Die
grössten Emoji-Irrtümer” (“The Biggest Emoji Mistakes”, May 15, 2015).
Such statements work on two assumptions.
First, many mistake the initial Japanese use as the universally ‘correct’
one. This means only the ‘regular’ meaning within the original Japa-
nese context is viewed as the appropriate one. In the Western world, the
so-called sleepy face emoji is mostly interpreted as a ‘sad’ emoticon.
The blue bubble on the face is, accordingly, understood as a ‘tear’ (see
Figure.7.8). Cultural knowledge is required to understand the original
meaning. In Japanese manga, sleeping people are often depicted with
bubbles coming out of their noses. Another example is the ‘face with a
Figure 7.8 Culture-specific aspects: ‘sleepy face’ and ‘face with look of triumph’
look of triumph’. While it is interpreted as an expression of ‘determina-

tion’ in Japan, the Western world often uses it as someone panting in
rage (see Figure 7.8).
The Unicode Consortium has added short explanations to its list of
official descriptions for some emoji that are used differently in the Western
world (than in Japan). For the ‘face with look of triumph’, it thus reads
“indicates triumph, not anger”.3
The second assumption is that many of the official descriptions allo-
cated by the Unicode Consortium can be taken as the ‘actual meaning’ of
the emoji. Quite often, however, the descriptions simply serve to clearly
identify a given character. For example, if we look at the Latin alphabet
(which is coded in Basic Latin), we can find the descriptions ‘Latin capital
letter A’ and ‘Latin small letter a’ for the respective characters A and a.
Aside from descriptions such as these, the Unicode Consortium merely
provides a sample character. So that emojis can be displayed in a specific
font, specific glyphs of the characters must be developed for the character
set and assigned to the corresponding code point. Digital texts are usu-
ally stored as abstract Unicode characters while the visual appearance
(the ‘typeface’) varies depending on the font (e.g., see Figure 7.9). The
appearance in one font can thus differ more, or less, strongly from the
appearance in another, which is the case in different fonts that contain
glyphs for emoji, such as Segoe UI Emoji, Noto Color Emoji, or Apple
Color Emoji. With regard to emoji, the Unicode Consortium states that
[t]he character name is a unique identifier, but may not encompass all
the possible meanings of an emoji character, and in some cases may
even be misleading. There are annotations in the Unicode Charts that
help to define the intended meanings and usage.
(Unicode Consortium, endnote 2)
Using another example, I will briefly show that people with differ-
ent cultural backgrounds, interacting via emoji, might not interpret
Figure 7.9 ‘Person with folded hands’ emoji
them in the same way. In Japanese culture, the emoji (‘person with
folded hands’, see Figure 7.9) is used to indicate ‘please’ or ‘sorry’;
in other cultures, however, the same character is interpreted as ‘pray-
ing’ (hands), while US Americans sometimes use it as a ‘high five’ (see
Bethge 2015, 116).
However, this is not the only difficulty that pertains to the interpreta-
tion of emoji, since their appearance greatly depends on the respective
operating system. The ‘person with folded hands’ emoji looks very dif-
ferent in the various glyphs on diverging operating systems. While the
graphic realization of Microsoft and Samsung appears to be closer to the
‘praying hands’ or ‘please/sorry’ interpretation, the Apple and Google
variants tend to be interpreted as ‘high fives’.4 Images in general—and
thus emoji, too—are therefore highly dependent on culture and context,
and they cannot necessarily be understood around the world in the same
way (see Stöckl 2004a, 101). This applies to the use of symbolic charac-
ters based on certain communicative conventions of various groups and
societies, but, on a more fundamental level, it pertains to all representa-
tional practices, that is, culturally determined patterns and preferences
for communication.
5. Functions of Emoji in Iconographetic

Communication
Finally, we should address the actual communicative functions of emoji.
In this final part of my article, the various functions emoji can fulfill in
digital communication are discussed. My examples are findings from
Social Media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Instagram, Facebook), as well
as from WhatsApp. They were collected by me, personally, from vari-
ous friends and should therefore be seen as purely illustrative. In future
research, these functions should also be investigated in a quantitative
perspective.
Schlobinski and Watanabe, who were among the first to conduct lin-
guistic research on emoji in the European academic context of 2003,
distinguished between a ‘modal function’ and a ‘referential function’. The
modal function refers to the use of emoji to complement and modify
written messages. A statement can, accordingly, be both strengthened
and mitigated. This is typically true for conventional emoticons, and it is
also the most common function of emoji. In many cases, emoji of facial
expressions are intended for this purpose. From a linguistic perspective,
however, the referential function is more interesting, because the proposi-
tion of a sentence or a phrase is ‘split across’ the modes of language and
image. It is, therefore, the main focus of the following section, even if
the referential function is generally much less common than the modal
function.
Non-facial emoji can fulfill the referential function, which means that
they are employed to replace words or parts of words. We can see both
functions in Figure 7.10: “Cool..dann viel [Glück] noch bei der [Pilz]-
suche [smiley]” (‘Cool. . well, good [luck] gathering [mushrooms] [smi-
ley]’). Here, the smiley at the end of the message clearly fulfills a modal
function. It lends a positive ‘basic tone’ to the entire message. Generally,
it can be interpreted as a positive attitude toward the recipient of the
message; one can accordingly speak of a ‘phatic’ function. This is very
different from the two previous emoji. In the German-speaking region,
a four-leaf clover indicates ‘good luck’ and is hence used symbolically.
However, the ‘mushroom’ emoji is to be interpreted quite literally—it
forms the first part of the compound noun Pilzsuche (gathering mush-
rooms). It is to be assumed that primarily nouns (or parts of nouns) can
be replaced by emoji. This, of course, must be empirically investigated in
the future. Concerning the compound noun—it is of importance to note
that the emoji and the written section are hyphenated and thus treated
like regular written language. There are examples in which this is not
the case. A corpus would have to be examined to determine whether
Figure 7.10 An Example for referential and modal functions in WhatsApp

new writing conventions are developing here or might be developing in
the future.
However, it is not just parts of compound nouns that can be replaced
by emoji as seen in Figure 7.10. In Figure 7.11, we can see the ‘Herz’
emoji (English: ‘heart’ emoji) being used both for its modal function (in
the final Facebook comment) and its referential function, as in the word
herzig (lovely). In this case, the ‘heart’ symbol replaces the noun basis in
the suffix derivation, the suffix -ig being separated by a space.
Notwithstanding, emoji are rarely used to replace whole adjectives or
verbs. The first line of the WhatsApp message in Figure 7.12 does not
contain any verbs, but the pointing hand can be interpreted as the verb
was (in German: war), just like the respective linguistic expression in the
second line. This is because we might interpret the hand not for its ‘hand-
iness’, but for its indexing function: it points to the burger. The emoji at
the end of each line means something like ‘super’ or ‘great’. This highlights
Figure 7.11 Multiple ‘heart’ emoji with modal as well as referential function in
Facebook comments
Figure 7.12 Emoji replacing nouns and a verb in a WhatsApp message

another cultural difference: in the German-speaking region, the emoji for
‘everything is okay’ (the last one in Figure 7.12, which is described as an
‘OK hand’ in Unicode) is usually not interpreted as ‘OK’ (as in Asia or
in other parts of the world) but, rather, as ‘excellent’. The international
connotation signifies ‘agreement/assent’, whereas the German usage is
intended to communicate some kind of ‘evaluation/judgment’. In some
parts of the world, the sign even has a negative connotation.5
As the example of a family chat in Figure 7.13 shows, even entire proposi-
tions can be expressed by emoji. In the first message, the mother writes about
the largest lake in Mongolia. In the second message, one daughter writes
“wow!!” followed by a camera emoji and a question mark. She is asking
to see a picture of the lake. This is followed by a response from her other
daughter, after which the mother replies with animated pictures of the lake.
Ultimately, several emoji in combination can also serve as a framing
device. By ‘frame’, I refer to the following definition by Alexander Ziem:
Frames are conceptual knowledge units that linguistic expressions

evoke. In other word, language users call up these frames from their
memories to grasp the meaning of a linguistic expression. Accord-
ingly, knowing what an expression means and how it is to be used
Figure 7.13 Whole proposition expressed with an emoji

means having a certain cognitive structure at one’s disposal that is
conventionally associated with an expression.
(Ziem 2014, 2)
In the example in Figure 7.14, a ‘sun’ emoji (surrounded by two ‘palm

tree’ emoji) replaces the word holiday. This means that the three emoji
together evoke the frame of ‘holiday/beach holidays’. The last sentence
of the message reads: “Am Freitag [fliege ich in den Urlaub]” (On Friday
[I’m flying off on my holiday]). The plane can therefore be seen as a verb
substitute, while the arrow fulfills the function of a preposition. Framing
is therefore a subclass of the referential function, where several emoji
stand for a whole concept. In contrast, in the types of referential functions
mentioned before, a single emoji was used to replace a specific word or
merely a part of a word.
Alongside the referential function, emoji often have a decorative func-
tion. In Figure 7.15, the verbal statement “schöne Weihnachten” (Merry
Christmas) is surrounded by two Christmas trees. The communicative
function thus becomes mostly aesthetic. An associative relationship
between the emoji and the text (‘Christmas tree’—‘Christmas’) can also be
identified here. Therefore, ‘Christmas trees’ belong to the evoked ‘Christ-
mas’ frame.
In addition, emoji can take on a contextualizing function as in Figure 7.16.
The circular ‘highly confidential’ symbols (Chinese characters) are used as
decorations, but they serve a contextualizing function, too. Jürgen Spitz-
müller observed that Japanese characters are often used as decoration in
Western contexts. This also applies analogously to Chinese characters:
“We can assume that few German-speaking recipients can actually deci-
pher them, which [. . .] is not actually necessary [. . .]. In this respect,
the [. . . emoji] have a primarily visual/contextualizing function here”
(Spitzmüller 2007, 412; translation C.S.). Since the emoji do not come
with descriptions on WhatsApp, it is likely that neither the sender nor the
recipient knew that this is the symbol for ‘highly confidential’.
If we consider the intermodal relationship between text and emoji, a
semantic redundancy can occasionally be detected; that is, the information
is expressed both in writing and through emoji. In the example in Figure 7.17,
Figure 7.14 Emoji evoking a whole frame

Figure 7.15 Emoji with a decorative function
Figure 7.16 Emoji with a contextualizing function
Figure 7.17 Semantic redundancy between emoji and text
Figure 7.18 Emoji used as allographs (first sentence) and in a decorative function
“Gute Nacht Twitter Welt” (goodnight Twitter world), the word world is
complemented by a globe emoji.
In theory, emoji could also be used as allographs, as we can see in
Figure 7.18, although this possibility is rarely mentioned within existing
research. ‘Allography’ is defined as a variation in the realization of a graph:
instead of a single letter, an emoji is employed. In some cases, the emoji
hold no semantic value derived from their pictorial content but only sub-
stitute or ‘prettify’ actual letters or numbers by their formal similarities.
A smiley is thus treated as a letter O, which deliberately nullifies its picto-
rial or iconic dimension. However, there may also be semantic relations
between the chosen emoji and the word in which it replaces a letter. This is
the case in the first sentence of Figure 7.18: in the greeting “good Monday
morning”, letters are replaced by the ‘hot beverage’ emoji and the ‘sleep-
ing face’ emoji: “g ten m ntag m rgen, liebste #instagram welt !”
(‘g d M nday m rning, dearest #instagram world !’). This part
of the posting contains 452 characters (without spaces), of which 36 are
Figure 7.19 ‘Emoji art’

emoji. This is quite a large number—especially in comparison to ‘regular’
multimodal artifacts from WhatsApp, Twitter, or Facebook.
Last, emoji can also be used in a similar way to conventional ASCII emoti-
cons, in order to produce ‘emoji art’: here, the pictorial characters combine
to form a larger image themselves. In the example shown in Figure 7.19,
basketballs form the trunk of a tree, while the crown consists mainly of ‘ten-
nis ball’ emoji.
6. Conclusion
Let me briefly summarize the most important functions of pictorial char-
acters (see Figure 7.20) in iconographetic communication. So far, research
on emoji has mostly paid attention to the modal and referential functions
of emoji. However, their referential function is not solely restricted to the
replacement of nouns; the analysis of iconographetic communications
has shown that pictorial characters can also replace verbs, adjectives, and
even propositions as a whole. The respective substitution does not just
take place at word level; individual elements of compounds or even the
noun basis in the suffix derivation can be replaced with emoji too. Picto-
rial characters can also be used as allographs at the level of the individual
graphs (as a substitution of letters, sometimes without any pictorial mean-
ing). Furthermore, the use of several emoji can evoke frames and these
frames can, in turn, act as word substitutes.
Moreover, the modal function can take on quite different forms. Most
prior research has focused on the communicator’s attitude toward the
linguistic propositional content. Specifically, emotions like joy, sadness,
anger, love, fear, or embarrassment are easily communicated with emoji
but also irony or approval. In addition, however, the contextualizing func-
tion can be viewed as a special variant of the decorative function. The
commenting function should be mentioned here too; comments encom-
pass evaluations and emotions. Finally, some emoji repeat the textual
statements they accompany, thus creating semantic redundancies. Such
emoji can be viewed both as a decoration and as a comment, since they
reinforce verbal statements. Emoji that combine into new images (simi-
larly to ‘ASCII art’) can be considered a special form of decoration.
In the case of the referential function, the emoji is part of the proposi-
tion, while in the case of the modal function the emoji supplements the
statement. However, there is another function that emoji can fulfill: they
can separate individual propositions from each other. If they are employed
to provide this function, they are located where there would be punctua-
tion marks in conventional texts (see Dürscheid and Siever 2017, 281); an
example for this is shown in the first line of the message in Figure 7.14.
This chapter has aimed to illuminate the many functions that emoji
can assume in various forms of digital communication. Further empirical
research is necessary to determine how, and to what extent, emoji are
Figure 7.20 Functions of emoji in iconographetic communications; illustration C.S.
actually used in informal, day-to-day communication. These questions
are currently being explored in more detail in the subproject “Language
Design in WhatsApp: Icono/Graphy” as part of the “What’s Up, Swit-
zerland?” research project for WhatsApp communication.6 In the future,
different forms of communication should also be compared with each
other regarding the use of emoji. Comparative studies concerning the use
of emoji in different languages would also be useful. In addition, it would
be interesting to investigate whether conventions regarding the use of
emoji and their functions develop over time.
Notes
1. The fact that emoji are thus both iconic and symbolic is reflected by the desig-
nation given to the Unicode block in which emoji appear. Emoji are classified
as ‘Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs’, whereby pictograph can refer to
both a ‘pictogram’ and a ‘pictorial character’. Interestingly, however, the indi-
vidual categories within the block are always labelled by the term symbols, for
example, ‘Animal Symbols’, ‘Beverage Symbols’, or ‘Plant Symbols’, although
the respective animals, drinks, and plants are depicted iconically.
2. See Unicode Consortium. 2018. “Emoji and Pictographs.” Unicode.org: Fre-
quently Asked Questions, December 14. Accessed 1 June 2019. http://unicode.
org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html.
3. See Unicode Consortium. “Emoticons.” Unicode.org. Accessed 1 June 2019.
www.unicode.org/charts/nameslist/n_1F600.html.
4. Since October 2017 (Windows 10 Fall Creators Update) and February 2018
(Samsung Experience 9.0) the emoji from Microsoft and Samsung have only
shown the hands and no longer any person.
5. “The sign has a pejorative meaning in parts of West Africa and some of the
Middle Eastern countries including Iraq and Iran where the sign is equiva-
lent to showing the middle finger”, see Wikipedia. “Thumb Signal: 20th
Century.” Wikipedia. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Thumb_signal#20th_century.
6. A university project financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (2016–
2020, CRSII1_160714).
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8 A Cultural Exploration of
the Use of Kaomoji, Emoji,
and Kigō in Japanese Blog-
Post Narratives
Barry Kavanagh
1. Introduction
Research on online extra-linguistic signs such as emoticons has tended to
examine how they are used as substitutions for those verbal and visual
cues which are missing in computer-mediated, text-based interaction
(see Derks, Bos, and Grumbkow 2008). Some research has extended this
inquiry to examine how these signs can index politeness and pragmatic
intention (see Markman and Oshima 2007; Kavanagh 2012a, 2016). The
majority of the literature looks at these extra-linguistic signs in the context
of one-to-one interactions as in email or chatroom exchanges. They are,
however, not just limited to direct interactions and dialogues. There is a
place for these so-called semasiographic signs (see Fouser, Inoue, and Lee
2000) to be used outside of the boundaries mentioned earlier and within
monologues and narratives. The use of these extra-linguistic signs within
such contexts therefore does not fit with the assumptions made about
them in the bulk of the literature—which suggests that they merely fill
in the blanks left by the absence of nonverbal cues online. The function
and use of emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji in blog-post narratives or in
one-to-many online platforms, where no specific reader is targeted, have
largely been underrepresented in the current research literature. The pres-
ent research article aims to address this gap.
Based on a corpus of 100 Japanese blogs comprising 500 blog entries,
this article explores the cultural usage of extra-linguistic signs, specifically,
kaomoji, emoji, and kigō, in online personal blog journal entries. It aims
to show how they are multifunctional and multifaceted by playing differ-
ing roles when the focus is not on two-way online interaction. The extra-
linguistic signs examined within this study are defined as the following:
a. Text-Based Kaomoji:
Text-based kaomoji are typographic face marks which can be drawn
or created from a computer keyboard such as the basic smile ^_^.
Kaomoji, 顔文字, literally means ‘face letters’. They are the Japanese
equivalent to Western text-based emoticons such as :).
Exploration of Kaomoji, Emoji, and Kigō 149
b. Emoji:
Emoji, 絵文字, literally meaning ‘picture letter-marks’, are graphic
pictures or pictograms. They were originally used in mobile phones
in Japan but have now become internationally ubiquitous.
c. Kigō (Nonlinguistic Symbols):
Kigō, 記号, can consist of musical symbols such as ♩ or heart marks
❤. They are usually employed to punctuate sentences in Japanese
online communication. They are made on the keyboard, and both
Japanese and Western users can create them through word-processing
software such as Microsoft Word.
These three kinds of extra-linguistic signs are illustrated in Table 8.1.
These extra-linguistic signs are commonly found within the discourse of

computer-mediated communication (CMC). This is a form of interac-
tion carried out predominately online, with or without the aid of visual
and auditory cues and without any visible or audible human presence.
Herring (1996, 1) defines CMC as “communication that takes place
between human beings via the instrumentality of computers”. This is
essentially what differs between CMC and face-to-face communication.
The CMC environment, however, has inspired users to create unique
ways to compensate for the lack of vocal tone and facial expression (see
Walther 1992). These methods of compensation may include the use of
extra-linguistic signs and symbols. CMC can be divided into synchro-
nous communication (as in chatrooms in which interaction is conducted
in real time) and asynchronous communication (as in email, which has
no time constraints, allowing the user to respond and interact at their
leisure). Therefore, personal blogs should be considered an example of
the latter.
The term weblogs was first coined by John Barger in December
1997. The terms blog and blogging were included in the Oxford
English Dictionary in 2003. Subsequently, blog was elected as Merriam-
Webster’s ‘Word of the Year’ in 2004 (see Puschmann 2013). Weblogs
are defined as web pages that are consistently updated, consisting of
Table 8.1 Examples of Kamoji, Emoji, and Kigō
Text-based kaomoji (^_^) Smile

(Ｔ_Ｔ) Sadness
(＞ε＜) Anger
(ﾉﾟοﾟ) Surprise
Emoji
Kigō (nonlinguistic symbols) ♪♬★❤
150 Barry Kavanagh
posts or entries, typically archived in reverse chronological order (see
Nardi et al. 2004). They are usually written by one author and read
like diaries or journal entries, which detail the blogger’s daily life and
activities and illustrate his or her thoughts on a range of topics that he
or she is interested in.
2. Background and Concepts Related to the Study
Japanese Scripts and Word-Processing Technology

To understand the origins and contemporary variety of text-based
kaomoji that are available to Japanese writers, a brief introduction to
Japanese scripts, in addition to how digital word-processing technology
has contributed to the creation and the subsequent spread of kaomoji,
will be helpful. In general, the Japanese writing system uses logographic
kanji (Chinese characters) and phonographic kana alongside the Roman
alphabet (rōmaji). The kana consist of hiragana and katakana, the latter
being mostly used to indicate foreign loan words. The logographic script
(kanji) provides the word stem for nouns and verbs, complemented with
the syllabic (hiragana) script for grammatical inflections and particles.
Fouser, Inoue, and Lee (2000) write that the inclusion of kanji enhances
the visual nature of the language and that a purely phonographic system
would complicate or slow down reading as the Japanese language has
few sounds and subsequently a large number of homophones. The most
common method of inputting Japanese on a computer is through the FEP
(Front-End Processor) that converts kana directly into kanji. In other
words, PC users can enter words via rōmaji and the computer converts
them automatically to a Chinese character (kanji) with the help of an
optional drop-down bar. Here, the user can choose the appropriate kanji
from a list of characters that have the pronunciation they have typed in.
As a result of always having four scripts to choose from, the Jap-
anese language offers a rich flexibility of orthographic choices, and
Japanese writers can use their script preference for specific contexts
that such a writing system allows (see Smith and Schmidt 1996). This
is also reflected in contemporary computer technology used for online
communication. Alphabetic characters are usually written in single byte
character sets or letters and the amount of single or 1-byte characters
is limited. This means that ‘Western’ emoticons tend to be simple as in
the basic smiley of :). As Japanese scripts are far more complex than
the Roman Alphabet, Japanese have access to and can use both 1 and
2-byte characters. Kaomoji are created from these double or 2-byte
character sets which results in a larger number of possibilities for creat-
ing emoticons. Therefore, a larger variety of kaomoji can be created in
Japanese in comparison to ‘Western’ emoticons rooted in a one-byte
technology. Table 8.2 shows examples of one and two-byte letters.
Table 8.2 A Comparison of One-Byte and Two-Byte Combinations/Letters
1-byte letters ABCDabcd,.^=123456?+-*/=[]’@. . . . . . .

2-byte letters あいうえおカキクケコ＠１２３漢字♣♥〒♀♂ゞ∀≒ΩωЯф♪
Text-Based Kaomoji
Spatial arrays are techniques often employed by CMC users to draw
pictures—using the features available on the keyboard—that are often
visual representations of emotions. Examples of this are Western emoti-
cons such as a smile :-) or the depiction of a frown :-(. Japanese kaomoji
are written ‘upright’ as in (^_^) which is the basic Japanese smiling face.
These extra-linguistic signs are labeled as ‘text-based kaomoji’ throughout
the paper.
As the Japanese language consists of logographic kanji, it could be
argued that it is generally easier for many Japanese to express and rec-
ognize ‘graphic’ signs. The existing literature reflects this and points to
the ‘visual nature’ of the Japanese writing system in comparison to the
Roman alphabet (see Akizuki 2009). Manga (Japanese comics) are also
very visual and have a variety of graphic depictions and notations that
describe the characters’ emotional or psychological states. Some of the
current basic kaomoji have their roots in the countenances of the charac-
ters found within manga (see Kavanagh 2012b).
Emoji
Emoji literally means ‘picture letter mark’ and refers to a graphic picture
or pictogram. These pictograms are numerous and originally emerged
from mobile phones. Emoji are built into most Japanese mobile handsets
such as the original keitai, 携帯, and the latest smartphones. The main
difference between emoji and text-based kaomoji or Western emoticons
is that emoji are computer-codes read and processed by specific software
and then decoded into predefined images that users can see (see Blagdon
2013).1 They are thus strictly limited in terms of numbers and variety.
Text-based kaomoji, in contrast, are user-created, text-based images, and
their possible combinations are infinite. Emoji can consist of computer-
generated images of faces, weather conditions, activities, actions, and
many more. They were first introduced in Japan through the mobile
communications network NTT DoCoMo’s ‘i-mode’ invented by Kurita
Shigetaka (see Blagdon 2013). Kurita stated that he drew inspiration from
manga, as well as from Japanese kanji, in the creation of these graphic
depictions:
In Japanese comics, there are a lot of different symbols. People draw

expressions like the person with the bead of sweat, you know, or
152 Barry Kavanagh
like, when someone gets an idea and they have the light bulb. So
there were a lot of cases where I used those as a kind of hint and
rearranged things.
(as quoted in Blagdon 2013, para.7)
From this backdrop, emoji soon spread across all mobile communica-
tion companies that hurried to implement them into their mobile com-
munication devices. Although this trend was initially limited to Japan,
other countries and transnational companies followed suit. This happened
quickly around 2010, so that emoji were soon incorporated into Unicode:
a standardized indexing system for characters, which allowed them to be
used outside of Japan and across different operating systems.
Kigō (Nonlinguistic Symbols)

Kigō (nonlinguistic symbols) are usually all black and can be described
and categorized according to the following two categories:
a. Hankaku Kigō, 半角記号, are the conventional punctuation marks

used in written online text such as @ ( )/< > ? * !. They can be
inserted via regular computer keyboards. Some of these punctua-
tion marks are used to create kaomoji, as in the basic smiling
face (^_^).
b. Word-Conversion Symbols: These are conventional symbols, but
they are not found in conventional standard forms of (online or
offline) written communication. On the Japanese computer keyboard,
when on’pu, 音符, (meaning ‘musical note’) is typed in using Micro-
soft Word, a search engine, or most online interfaces, a drop-down
menu gives the user the option to choose the appropriate kanji—but
also the musical note ♪. The same applies to the word heart (kokoro,
心), which lets users choose from a kigō drop-down list offering
different ‘heart’ kigō such as the following: ❤ or ♡.
From Analogue to the Digital Platform: Deformed Characters

and Subcultures
Kinsella (1995) describes how a ‘cute’ (kawaii) handwriting ‘craze’
developed around 1974 among large numbers of Japanese teenagers.
Used significantly more by female writers, their writing practice created
a new style of ‘childish’ characters that went national by 1978. An
estimated total of more than 5 million people soon used these uncon-
ventional characters. This reached a stage where respective practices
were banned from schools because they were too difficult to read. The
new handwriting style was given many labels, from marumoji, 丸文
字 (round writing), and nekoji, ネコ字 (kitten writing), to manga-ji,
漫画字 (manga writing), and burikkomoji, ブリッ子文字 (fake child
writing). In the 1980s, these handwritten ‘deformities’ were given fur-
ther media exposure when magazines, comics, advertising, and even
word-processor software adopted the new style. Yamane (1986) labeled
these developing forms collectively as hentai shōjo moji, 変体少女文字
(distorted girlish letters). They typically feature exaggerated round let-
ters and an unorthodox usage of hiragana and katakana, along with the
frequent addition of pictorial symbols to express emotional states—such
as heart marks and the sweat symbol (see Yamane 1986; Kataoka 1997).
Yamane (1986) argues (contrary to the commonly held view that these
handwriting ‘deformities’ were spawned from comics or manga) that
teenagers created these styles themselves. In his study, Yamane asked
young users of the new handwriting craze why they had adopted it.
Some of the answers given were the following:
“It’s got a kind of cute feel”

“I think it’s cute and it’s my style”
“Cute! They are hard to read but they are so cute, so I use them.”
(as quoted in Yamane 1986, 132; translation B.K.)
The word cute (kawaii) is mentioned in every one of the preceding

comments. It is central to the discussion as to why people used these
unconventional analogue notations and how they were arguably carried
over into new digital forms online. The Japanese consumption of kawaii
(pretty/cute) culture represents, as McVeigh (2000, 135) has noted, a
“standard aesthetic of everyday life”. This standard is not necessarily
gender-determined, as Bryce has pointed out:
[t]he Japanese obsession with cuteness has been condemned as a sub-

culture peculiar to children and women, although the extent of the
quotidian reach of its signifying use extends throughout Japanese
society to include even governmental documents and signs.
(Bryce 2004, 2265)
Akizuki (2009) thus argues that creative online orthography is the con-
temporary digital equivalent of previous shōjo moji. Miyake (2004)
writes consequently, that the analogue handwritten shōjo moji of 30 years
before have been transposed to the online communication of the digital
age within keitai (mobile) communications. This history of language play
and hentai shōjo moji, along with the notion of cute culture, can pro-
vide us with the backdrop to explain the functions, usage, and reasons
for extra-linguistic sign usage in monologue blog narratives. The fol-
lowing review looks at how online Japanese extra-linguistic signs have
been examined and analyzed in both Japanese- and English-language
literature.
154 Barry Kavanagh
3. A Short Literature Review of Japanese
Extra-Linguistic Signs
The majority of current research has treated emoticon usage as a strategy
for compensating for the ‘missing’ auditory and visual cues absent in
text-based CMC environment (see Walther and D’Addario 2001; Derks,
Bos, and Grumbkow 2007). But this notion has been challenged in recent
works by scholars such as Dresner and Herring (2010) or Kavanagh
(2010, 2016) who found that all these forms of emoticons can also be
used to punctuate speech acts or to pursue politeness strategies.
Interestingly, research on kaomoji by Japanese authors mainly examines
these kinds of signs from a more ‘cultural’ perspective. Miyake (2007), for
instance, suggests that, unlike Western emoticons, which function primar-
ily to accentuate emphasis, tone, or meaning, Japanese extra-linguistic
signs often do not carry a specific semantic meaning but reveal important
emotional cues or act as an atmosphere-building device. She stresses that
“[t]hese writers are very concerned, when writing their messages, not to
hurt their interlocutor, and not to be thought badly of. This anxiety is
very much a characteristic of traditional Japanese communication” (61).
Some studies have looked at ‘impression formation’ in relation to emoti-
con and kaomoji usage. Writers who use these signs are perceived of as
being friendlier, more interesting, and even more creative (see Huffaker
and Calvert 2005; Satake 2005; Harris and Paradice 2007). Hanai and
Oguchi (2008) found that emoticons have the effect of softening tense
relationships between users. Katsuno and Yano (2007) suggest that the
sense of ‘playfulness’ and ‘creativity’ produced by kaomoji, keeps readers
interested and entertained.
There is no research on kigō use (within English CMC language plat-
forms), but a number of studies on Japanese CMC have examined their role.
Miyake (2007) found in an examination of young Japanese people’s phone
messages, that kigō such as ♡ or ★ were culturally recognizable icons that
offered only vague meanings within emails. They thus serve mainly decora-
tive functions. She describes emoji as having somewhat clearer meanings
when appearing in text messages. In comparison, kaomoji had the clearest
of meanings when used in conjunction with mobile phone messages. The
majority of literature on Western emoticons shows that women use more
emoticons and emoji than men do (see Witmer and Katzman 1997; Wolf
2000; Tossell et al. 2012). These findings are mirrored within Japanese
research that has found that women use more kaomoji, emoji, and kigō
(see Miyake 2004). In addition, Nakamura (2001) explains that these signs
are strongly linked to the concept of ‘cuteness’ (kawaii) and marumoji, the
‘rounded’ letters of the analogue past discussed earlier.
Although Japan has a rich history of ‘language play’ in one-to-many
forms of communication (as in diaries and letter writing), none of the
current body of research has looked at how online extra-linguistic signs
are used in one-to-many blog post narratives which are not addressed to
a specific reader. According to the semiotician Peirce (1955), signs can be
divided into icons, indexes, and symbols and this model has been used
to explain extra-linguistic signs offline within female letter writing (see
Kataoka 2003). In an adaptation of Peirce’s semiotic model, this chapter
aims to analyze extra-linguistic signs in blog posts, looking specifically at
the following three questions:
1. How do kaomoji, emoji, and kigō function in monologue narratives

found in personal blog postings?
2. How do these signs foster ‘impression formation’ and the creation
of an ‘online persona’?
3. Are there gender differences in how these extra-linguistic signs are used?
4. Methods and Data
Blog Data Selection Process

A total of 100 blogs were taken from a variety of popular blog directories
(specifically Yahoo! blogs,2 Ameba,3 FC2,4 and Blogmura5). An equal bal-
ance of female and male-authored blogs was selected, 50 per gender. Within
each blog selected, five of the most recent entries were taken, giving a total
of 500 blog entries from the 100-blog corpus. Blogs are ranked by popu-
larity within blog directories from number one to 500 (or higher, in some
cases). The data collection process aimed to get a snapshot of the most
popular blogs at the time of writing; blogs ranked over 30 were not gathered
and included within the data. The 100 blogs collected consisted of different
authors, so the same blog was never chosen twice. The blogs were collected
and coded in monthly intervals as the rankings changed. The content of
the personal blogs predominately focused on family, childrearing, hobbies,
cooking, and travel, and they shied away from controversial topics such
as politics. This mirrors Japanese personal blog practices as a reflection of
personal musings and a desire to meet people of similar interests. Kavanagh
(2010) found that the general topic of any given blog may encourage or
discourage the use of kaomoji, such as politics, where the use of emoticons
is sparse in comparison to everyday (less controversial or debatable) topics
such as cooking, which inspired many instances of emoticon use.
Classification of Extra-Linguistic Signs Into NEDs,

RDPs, and VTMs
In an adaptation of Peirce’s (1955) semiotic model discussed above, the
extra-linguistic signs analyzed within this paper are categorized into
‘icons’, which act as narrative-enhancing devices (NEDs); ‘indexes’, which
are reader-directed prompts (RDPs); and ‘symbols’, which are classified
156 Barry Kavanagh
as visual tone markers (VTMs). These categories will now be explained
in greater detail:
a. Narrative-Enhancing Devices (NEDs)

NEDs were classified into the following subcategories:
• Depictions of Author Emotions: These extra-linguistic signs act
as vehicles of the author’s tone, emotion, feeling, or attitude
toward the propositional content. They can be facial representa-
tions of emotion or sweat marks (as found in manga) to empha-
size the psychological state of the writer.
• Lexical Replacement: Here, the emoticon is used instead of a lexical
item in verbal form. It can be employed creatively to substitute a
noun, or it can stand alone to represent the author’s emotion.
• Emphatic Usage: These signs are visual depictions of who (people)
or what (inanimate objects) the narrative or story is about. Emphatic
usage is employed to highlight a particular lexical item visually and
to reinforce its meaning; it does not relate to author emotion
b. Reader-Directed Prompts (RDPs)
RDPs are extra-linguistic signs used pragmatically to indicate a
certain type of speech act or a specific form of politeness strategy
(see Kavanagh 2016 for a comprehensive discussion on how emoti-
cons index ‘politeness’ in blog comments). They punctuate sentences
that are intended for their readership. Although such instances were
infrequent within the data in comparison to NEDs, they are still
included in the analysis to illustrate the multifunctional way these
extra-linguistic signs can be employed.
c. Visual Tone Markers (VTMs)
The connection between VTMs and the writer’s psychological state
is loose and highly arbitrary when these are attached to sentences.
In comparison to NEDs and RDPs, VTMs do not add semantic or
pragmatic meaning to the sentence to which they are added. However,
VTMs do not lack meaning or function entirely (although, in some
cases, they may simply have a decorative effect). They may still serve
to represent the writer’s public or self-created online image and
consequently appeal to their positive ‘face’. In this sense, they can
be linked to Goffman’s (1967) ‘public self-image’ and to the Brown
and Levinson’s (1987) notion of ‘face’. Once the extra-linguistic signs
were classified based on the earlier model, they were counted, and
the number of sentences they were attached to was recorded.
5. Results
Table 8.3 shows the number of sentences that had NEDs, RDPs, and
VTMs attached to them.
Table 8.3 Text-Based Kaomoji
Number of kaomoji
attached to sentences
Total number of text-based kaomoji 949

Narrative-enhancing devices (NEDs) 883
Reader-directed prompts (RDPs) 66
Visual tone markers (VTMs) 0
According to these results, NEDs were predominately used as icons to

convey author tone and emotion. Within the data, the overall RDP count
was low. This is not surprising, as most of the reader–blog author interac-
tion takes place within the blog comments.
Text-Based Kaomoji as NEDs

Examples 1 and 2 show how text-based kaomoji are used to enhance the
respective blog writer’s expressions. The kaomoji below, highlight the
author’s tone or feeling towards what they have typed. The use of these
kaomoji adds visuals to what is otherwise a text-based blog post.
1. 週末には、毎週自分の部屋を掃除し、天気がよければ、布団を干
しております・・・^_^;
[I clean up my room every weekend. If the weather is good, I hang
the bedding outside]
This comment explains the cleaning habits of the writer, something she
does once a week. The three ・・・ dots prior to the kaomoji indicate an
awkward silence. The kaomoji with sweat on the side of the face shows
the embarrassment of the author concerning what she believes to be a poor
cleaning routine (this is something she mentions in the subsequent blog post).
2. 旦那が横で見ていたのですが「お前、口開けてやってたぞ！」と
笑われました。。(￣∇￣;)
[My husband watched and said that my mouth was open, so he
laughed at me]
Similar to the first example, the kaomoji expresses embarrassment at

being laughed at by her husband.
Text-Based Emoticons as RDPs

The RDP data within the text-based kaomoji amounted to only 66
instances, the majority used at the end of the blog entries. The RDPs acted
158 Barry Kavanagh
as indexes to highlight and soften requests, the bulk of them (39 in total)
asking readers to support the blog by both reading and commenting on it.
The following is an example of an interaction between a blog writer and
reader, the latter leaving a comment as shown in example 2:
Blog Writer
1. ポチッと応援
↓↓ お願いしまーーす<(_ _)>
[Pochi and support please]
Blog Reader/Comment Writer

2. 次もよろしくお願いします。ポチッ(*’▽’*)
[More blog posts, please! Pochi]
The first example above marks the end of a blog article. The use of the
onomatopoeia ‘ポチッ pochi’ represents the sound of typing on a key-
board, used frequently within Yahoo! blogs. Specifically, it is associated
with pressing the kessaku, 傑作 (masterpiece), button, which elevates the
blog or the article within the rankings (see Kavanagh 2012b). Writers
concerned with their ranks within blog directories often post such a com-
ment at the end of the article to remind people to support the blog and
press this button. The added kaomoji represents a person bowing, placed
next to the phonetic spelling of onegai shimasu (please) that uses the two
dashes ーー to elongate the vowel sounds to onegai shimaaasu. It not only
is polite but also indexes friendly intentions. Example 2 is a comment
written by a reader of the blog (comments are placed at the end of each
article and generally open to everyone for contributions). The comment
writer asks the author to produce more entries, which is followed again
by the pochi, ポチッ, sound, punctuated by the kaomoji (*’▽’*). It is
used here to index the writer’s pleasure in pressing the masterpiece button.
The small tsu, ッ, sound written in katakana is used to indicate a glottal
stop and is widely used in manga (see Akizuki 2009). Such interactions
between blog writers and comment writers can lead to rapport building
and even to online friendships (see Kavanagh 2016).
3. お祝いコメントたくさんありがとうございました！
コメントの返事もう少しお待ち下さい(*—)(*_ _)ペコリ
[Thank you for your congratulatory comment]
[Please wait a little longer for my response to your comment]
Example 3 shows an instance in which the blog writer (female) thanks

her readers for comments that have been posted before. The request in the
second line is then punctuated with two kaomoji. It is written in the polite
honorific form of omachi kudasai, meaning ‘please wait’. The two kaomoji
work in tandem with the eyes looking straight forward in the first kaomoji
(*—) and down in the second kaomoji (*_ _), which represents the lower-
ing of the head in a bow. This is emphasized with the word pekori, ペコ
リ(meaning the action of quickly lowering and bowing one’s head).
What all these examples of RDP kaomoji show is how closely they are
related to the culture they stem from. In the case of example 3, the kaomoji
itself reflects the cultural practice of bowing to express thanks or to emphasize
a request. The kaomoji used in examples 1 through 3 soften the illocutionary
force of the request by acknowledging that they might be imposing on a per-
son to do something. The use of keigo, 敬語 (polite or humble verbal forms),
in conjunction with the respective kaomoji is a further testament to this.
Emoji
Emoji were used nearly as frequently as kaomoji. In total, 838 sentences
were punctuated with emoji (see Table 8.4). These emoji are preinstalled
into the Japanese blog interfaces under the emoji menu which blog provid-
ers, such as Yahoo! or FC2, have implemented.
Emoji as NEDs
Of the 419 instances of emoji classified as NEDs, 135 (32%) were used
as semantic vehicles to represent the author’s tone, emotion, or feeling.
1. お腹痛いの～。。
おとといからお腹の調子が悪いもも姫。。
[My stomach hurts and has been in a bad condition since the day
before yesterday]
2. 一体何処に向かうんだよ･･･
[Where does this thing go?]
3. おなかすいちゃいますーー
[I’m hungry]
4. 説明書はそれだけしかありません！　まことに不親切ですっ
[The instructions were just that! Very unpleasant indeed!]
Table 8.4 Emoji
Number of emoji
Total number of emoji 838

Reader-directed indexes (RDPs) 0
160 Barry Kavanagh
In some instances, nonhuman faces (usually animals) were used to
depict author emotions (as in example 1). In other instances, the emoji
acted as visual enhancers of the verbal content. Pictograms were employed
that are often found in manga to visualize the psychological state of the
characters—such as sweat drops to indicate awkwardness, frustration, or
distress of the writer (as in examples 2 and 3). The emoji in example 4 can
typically be found on the temple of manga character’s faces to represent
anger, just as it does here.
5. 今日は最近購入して以来、愛用しているスキンケアを紹介します
ね
[Today I will introduce a new skin care product which I love to use]
6. 乾燥も気になるこの季節、かなりおススメです
[It is the season where the dryness [of the skin] is a concern, so I
recommend this product!]
7. ラッキー
[Lucky!]
8. やっぱりキレイでした
[Just as I thought, it was very pretty!]
9. 説明書にはまず Wi-Fi の設定をすれば良い！
[First things first, best to set up the Wi-Fi!]
The small runrun, ルンルン, spelled out by the emoji of example 5

indicates a ‘euphoric’ or ‘exuberant’ mood and is an expression of the
author’s feelings as she is excited at the prospect of introducing new skin
care products to her readers. Example 6 merely repeats the last word of
the sentence (osusume, おススメ, ‘recommendation’) in emoji form. It
does not just add emphasis to what is said but also aims to be playful
and ‘cute’. Examples 7 and 8 feature the typical ‘peace sign’ that many
Japanese present in photographs. Here, the gestures are used to provide
proof of the author’s excitement. Arguably, this sign has lost its original
meaning. In conversations amongst young people it is often used in just
the same way, to represent a positive feeling. The ‘OK sign’ in example 9
indicates the author’s general mood within the comment: that things are
proceeding well with the new Wi-Fi router.
Emoji as NEDs for Lexical Use (to Represent Animate

or Inanimate Objects)
Out of the 419 NEDs, a total of 284 (68%) were used ‘lexically’, accord-
ing to the definitions above. Here, the icon is employed to resemble a
lexical item either by
1. replacing the vocabulary as a kind of ‘lexical substitution’, or by
2. using the kaomoji right before or after a word or phrase whose
lexical meaning the emoticon emphasizes.
Emoji NEDs as Lexical Substitutions

1. 今日も会社へ行って、仕事を片付けてきました.
[Today too, I went to work, got it all sorted out and came back home]
2. これから移動です
[Heading off by bus]
3. じゅわじゅわ～
ジュージュー
(The sound of a burning or sizzling fire)
4. パパママありがとう
[Mum, Dad, Thank you]
5. ７歳になりました～
[(My daughter) turned seven]
The emoji in examples 1 and 5 give a visual representation of things in

the sentences that precede them. Example 2 is an instance of lexical use,
whereby the bus indicates how the person will travel. Example 3 only
features the onomatopoeic words juwa juwa and jū jū, which both mean
‘sizzling’ (as in ‘cooking meat’). The context of the utterance is a barbecue
that the author writes about in his blog post. The emoji in example 4
replaces the word for ‘birthday present’.
Emphatic Use of Emoji Icons

The emoji in the following examples 1 and 2 are intended to emphasize the
characters of the story. They are used after the character’s names (or, in this
case, after their respective roles within the family, as mother or older sister).
1. 奥さんからは、
「あんまり痩せると気持ち悪いから、もうやめて」
と言われてます・・・。
[My wife says that it is creepy if I lose too much weight, so she
told me to stop]
In the preceding example, the father is chastised for losing too much
weight by his wife. The ・・・ represent some discomfort in his wife’s opin-
ion. This is followed by an emoji that aims to illustrate his subsequent mood.
2. 明日は、長女と奥さんが小学校のPTC活動に参加する為、

会社に行くことができず、強制的に久々の休日を楽しみま～す.
162 Barry Kavanagh
[Today, my eldest daughter and my wife went to the school PTC,
(Parents, Teachers and Children activity event), so I couldn’t go to
work and had a forced day off which I will enjoy now]
The emoji in examples 1 and 2 first emphasize who the characters within
the respective narratives are. The word for eldest sister (chōjo, 長女), for
example, is emphasized by the emoji that depicts the sibling. It is therefore
different from a lexical substitution that removes the lexical item entirely in
order to replace it with an emoji. The final emoji in example 2 punctuates
the sentence, a NED expressing the author’s emotional reaction.
3. スクランブルエッグとベーコンかソーセージです
[These are scrambled eggs with bacon or sausage]
4. ラストのパリのホテルを紹介
[Introduction to the Last Paris Hotel]
The emoji examples in 3 and 4 place an emphasis on the objects within

the story while also punctuating the sentence (by representing the main
object of the proposition). In example 3, we actually see the sausage the
account is about. Example 4 illustrates the hotel mentioned in the post.
5. 明日、報告しますね
[Tomorrow, I will write the report]
6. 明日も早いのに～早く寝よ～
[Tomorrow, I have to get up early, so I’ll be off to bed early too]
Examples 5 and 6 place an emphasis on the respective verb of the sen-

tence. There were no examples of emoji that acted as RDPs.
Emoji as Visual Tone-Markers (VTMs)

There were 375 instances of emoji used as VTMs, constituting 66% of
their total amount.
1. こんな感じでプルプルのジェルで、ジェルだけどサラッと伸び
て顔だけじゃなく全身にも使えるんですよ
[The gel is very smooth and elastic, so it can be used not just on
the face but the whole body, too]
2. 私はお風呂上りに毎日使っていて、顔と全身にたっぷり塗ってま
す
[I use it every day after the bath on my body and face]
3. 孫ができたら作ってみよう
作ってみよ～と
[I will try to make it myself (a knitted children’s sweater) when I
get a grandchild]
The preceding examples do not act as NEDs in representing a lexical

object or a person, nor do they aim to aid in the visual representation of
the author’s feelings or emotions. In examples 1 and 2, the emoji merely
have a decorative effect and have no semantic or pragmatic meaning. This
is reflected in the name of these kinds of emoji which are sometimes called
decome emoji, デコメ絵文字, (decorative emoji). Example 3 expresses the
desire of the writer to do something, specifically to knit a sweater. The
star and heart emoji have no relationship to the propositional content of
the utterance and are very vague in their meaning. Here, they simply add
some decoration to the comment and lend it a jovial tone.
Kigō
Table 8.5 presents the data figures for the total amount of kigō (nonlin-
guistic symbols) that were attached to blog sentences. These were the least
frequently used extra-linguistic signs within the data.
By their nature, kigō cannot reproduce the author’s facial expressions
for direct iconic or indexical association with the tone/emotion of the
writer or signify a pragmatic intent. Therefore, there were no kigō used
as NEDs and RDPs within the data. They were used frequently, however,
to add joviality to the comment or sentence as in the following examples:
1. ルンルン♪帰国♪
[ Run run (expressing euphoria), going back home (to Japan)]
2. ね♪ トマトちゃん（＾＾）「ウンチなんて気にしない♪」
[Tomato-chan (a cat) is not worried about his poo] This was
placed under a picture of the blog author’s cat to illustrate what
is happening.
今日もみんな元気だったね♪
[Today too, everyone (the cats) is full of energy]
では、また明日 (^-^)ノ~~
[See you tomorrow, then]
Table 8.5 Kigō
Number of kigō
Total number of kigō 380
Reader-directed indexes (RDPs) 0
164 Barry Kavanagh
Table 8.6 Gender in Relation to Extra-Linguistic Sign Usage in Blog Posts
Japanese female-authored Japanese male-authored

blog entries blog entries
(n = 50) (n = 50)
Total Mean ± SD Total Mean ± SD
Total number of sentences 6.036* 120.7 ± 121.3 4.473 89.5 ± 56.8

Text-based emoticons 580 11.6 ± 18.9 369 7.4 ± 14.2
Emoji 557 11.1 ± 20.1 281 5.6 ± 14.1
kigō 264 5.2 ± 8.6 116 2.3 ± 5.06
Note: SD = standard deviation.
*p ＜.05.
Example 1 has two musical notes attached to the utterance and the
intention is probably to add joviality to the blog or convey an overall
positive atmosphere. The author in example 1 seems happy to return to
Japan. In example 2, the kigō (musical notes) add a sense of humor or
fun to the narration of the story, but they again contribute no emphatic,
semantic, or pragmatic meaning. This is quite different from the final
text-based kaomoji of the message that highlights the end of the comment
with a waving hand. Within the blog entries of the data, there were no
examples of ❤ or ★ symbols.
Gender and the Use of Extra-Linguistic Signs in Blog Entries

As illustrated in Table 8.6, women published significantly more blog
entries than men (p ＜.05). There were, however, no significant differences
between men and women, in the number of extra-linguistic signs. This is
not in accordance with existing literature, which often states that women
use more emoticons than men do.
6. Conclusion
The results of this chapter show that the extra-linguistic signs used within
the blog-post data were often employed as icons, acting as lexical replace-
ments and as emotional emphasizers. Additionally, they were used as
symbols feeding back into the writer’s online self-persona, their desired
‘public image’ or ‘face’. Extra-linguistic signs were also frequently supple-
mented by unorthodox phonetic notations, as shown within the examples
in the paper (such as the elongation of vowel sounds and irregular font
sizes). Although there were no significant differences in the frequency of
emoticons used per gender, women utilized more kaomoji in conjunc-
tion with other extra-linguistic signs (such as kigō) and unconventional
phonetic spelling. These devices not only added semantic and pragmatic
meaning but also aided the writer’s self-representation, reflecting Japan’s
current ideology of cuteness and the desire to appear charming and inter-
esting within their blogging community. It could be argued that the use of
semasiographic extra-linguistic signs in contemporary Japanese blog entry
narratives reflects a lasting cultural preference exemplified by traditional
‘language play’ (as in hentai shōjo moji) and by the highly coded visual
language of manga. This preference might be influenced and reinforced
by an omnipresent kawaii culture, as well as by the available technology
enabling writers to produce new forms of visual depictions.
Notes
1. See anonymous [EmojiChat]. “Where Did Emoji Come From?.” iEmoji. Accessed
1 June 2019. www.iemoji.com/articles/where-did-emoji-come-from?page=2.
2. See Yahoo! “Yoshimoto burogu rankingu [Blog Ranking].” Yahoo! Blogs.
Accessed 1 June 2019. https://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/THBLOG/top.html?p=1&pt=
a&dt=w.
3. See Ameba. “Zentai rankingu (deirī) [(Daily) Overall Ranking].” Ameba.
Accessed 1 June 2019. https://blogger.ameba.jp/ranking/daily.
4. See FC2. “FC2 burogu rankingu [FC2 Blog Ranking].” FC2. Accessed 1 June
2019. https://blogranking.fc2.com.
5. See Blogmura. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.blogmura.com.
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Part IV
Pictorial Mediations
9 The Elephant in the Room
of Emoji Research
Or, Pictoriality, to what Extent?
Lukas R.A. Wilde
1. The Lynchpin of Pictoriality

At this point it has almost become a truism amongst scholars that emoji
are not any kind of ‘universal’ language, free from cultural codings, con-
textual ambiguities, or countless opportunities for misunderstanding. This
seems to be an issue not only of pragmatics—mistaking the respective
employment of emoji to reinforce, expand, or annotate the meaning of
linguistic messages—but also of emoji semantics themselves. It is well
known that the ‘meaning’ of the notorious ‘eggplant’ emoji has become
ambiguous, to say the least, even before it is put to any particular applica-
tion within digital messages. The emoji for ‘nail polish’ similarly bears
erotic connotations in some parts of the world (see Danesi 2017, 31). In
his groundbreaking Semiotics of Emoji, Marcel Danesi investigated such
diverging semantic dimensions as “cultural codings” (31) or as “cultural
connotations” (59). It is for this reason that the various shifting poten-
tials for emoji ‘meaning’, far from being evident or transparent, certainly
deserve the academic attention they are increasingly getting. On the other
hand, however, no one would deny that digital pictograms and ideograms
possess at least some degree of ‘immediate’ intelligibility, very different
from ‘regular’ linguistic scripts. When the ‘dumpling’ had achieved the
status of a candidate for a new emoji in 2016 (see Evans 2017, 28), the
new sign U+1F95F was straightaway ‘comprehensible’ not only to people
who have had access to respective linguistic expressions (such as ‘dump-
ling’ or ‘gyōza’) or to connoisseurs of the actual food alone. It is probably
safe to say that at least some people who never have tried any kind of
dough-wrapped dish could at least suspect that the new emoji represented,
or, in fact, depicted, some sort of food product (see Figure 9.1). Some
graphic depictions of U+1F95F are certainly more ‘transparent’ than oth-
ers; the Apple or the Facebook versions at least appear quite naturalistic.1
The same would not hold true for a corresponding German expression
like Speise or for the respective Japanese term tabemono, which both do
not provide easy access to their semantic content. Probably not even the
somehow ‘more pictorial’ kanji spelling of the latter, 食べ物, would be
helpful to someone who did not study Chinese characters before.
172 Lukas R.A. Wilde
Figure 9.1 The ‘dumpling’ emoji (U+1F95F); Twitter version
Of course, one might respond that although emoticons, kaomoji, and

emoji are not universally intelligible, they are still somehow ‘pictorial’.
And it is this very same level of pictoriality that is usually taken as given,
up to a point where it is rarely investigated or questioned. Not even Dane-
si’s chapter on emoji semantics (2017, 51–76) has much to say about this
“intrinsic semantic structure” (52). But what is ‘pictoriality’, exactly, and
to what precise extent are emoji pictures? Compared with photographs
or classical paintings, they certainly are more limited, restrained, and
functional in their ‘aesthetic’ dimensions. But are they, at their core, the
same perceptual phenomena that we encounter on television screens, at
the movies, in comic books, and in museums? To what disciplines could
we turn for an answer to this recurring elephant in the room of emoji
research?
The specificity and distinctiveness of pictoriality—of ‘being a picture’—
remain extremely hard to grasp, whether it is considered a ‘base medium’
or a ‘semiotic mode within medial configurations’ (see Wilde 2015;
Potysch and Wilde 2018). In his survey on “Multimodality and Theories
of the Visual” (2014), David Machin thus remained extremely skeptical
whether there is a single mode that can be called image (or pictoriality,
for that matter): “Even the idea of calling the complex range of things that
we can think of ‘images’ [ . . . ] a single mode of communication would in
itself be considered problematic” (Machin 2014, 218; original emphasis).
One of the most complex models of multimodality was provided by Lars
Elleström (2010). However, Elleström can contribute little to a distinct
definition of pictoriality (as a mode) within this article, as he simply makes
The Elephant in the Room of Emoji Research 173
use of the well-known semiotic basic distinction between iconic, symbolic,
and indexical signs. Later on, he further developed his understanding
of iconicity through a highly nuanced adaptation of Charles S. Peirce’s
theory of signs. Here, iconicity is understood as
firstly, the (not necessarily visual) observation of some intrinsic quali-

ties of a potential representamen [the material object which is taken
to be a sign—L.W.]; secondly, the establishment of a relation of simi-
larity between the potential representamen and a potential object;
and thirdly, an interpretive act in which the potential representamen
is established as an actual representamen that stands for its similar
object.
(Elleström 2014, 101)
Yet, if iconic signs are taken to establish “a relation of similarity between

representamen and object [. . .] based on the intrinsic qualities of the repre-
sentamen” (100), this does not necessarily help us any further (one could,
however, turn to Elleström [2013] for an even more detailed account of
‘iconicity’). An emoji of the Japanese flag represents the country of Japan
or a diffuse notion of ‘Japaneseness’. It would be difficult to find cases in
which said flag is used to represent an actual physical object. How can
an emoji be ‘iconic’ in relation to the abstract concept of ‘Japaneseness’?
Or, to make the problem even more apparent, what does a smiley depict?
Danesi’s answer is unambiguous: Smiling emoji represent an “emotive
referent—happiness” (Danesi 2017, 54).
Apparently, some kind of representational ‘chain’ must be taken into
account, a layered succession of signification and meaning. While the
manifold abstract ‘connotations’ (sexuality, Japaneseness, happiness)
would be highly culturally coded, the ‘denotations’ (nail polish, a flag, a
face) are, more or less, universal (see Danesi 2017, 63). This is not at all
obvious: Danesi postulates a “university scale” (13) according to which
emoji can be distinguished from each other. But even the least universal
ones seem to salvage an immediate pictorial intelligibility. The Star Trek–
inspired emoji signifying ‘Live long and prosper’ by means of the fictitious
Vulcan gesture is, nevertheless, as easily recognized (as this very gesture—
a human hand) as all the other hand emoji higher up Danesi’s scale are.
Before nail polish can represent sexuality, before a flag can represent a
culture, and before a smiley can represent happiness, the respective emoji
must first depict visible objects by visible means: physical things in time
and space that we can, at least in some respect, ‘see’ with our very eyes.
To be very careful here, we have to be able to perceive regular letters
(such as these here) visually as well in order to interpret them, but we
would never be fooled into thinking we could ‘see’ any kind of eggplant
if we encounter this word on the page (the written term eggplant also
does not seem to bear the same sexual connotations as its depiction).
In contrast, we must first recognize two (already ‘meaningful’) dancing
women in bunny suits in an emoji before we can infer distinct cultural
codings: ‘sexualized and subservient women’ versus ‘girls’ night out’ (see
Evans 2017, 197). Again, we return to an apparently universal aspect of
pictorial comprehension (‘iconicity’) on which all ‘higher’ (more symbolic
or connotative) meanings must be based. Within all the articles that have
been written on emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji, surprisingly little has
been said about this ‘intrinsic semantic structure’. This is either because
it is taken as trivial or, the other way around, because the authors set out
to prove the exact opposite: their task was to demonstrate that these signs
were not at all transparent—although some level of immediate ‘pictorial’
comprehension is never seriously questioned.
So it must come as no surprise that many riddles remain. What, for
instance, ‘is’ the physical object our well-known ‘face with tears of joy’
establishes a relation of similarity to (see Figure 9.2)? What do those
yellow faces, the “core emoji” (Danesi 2017, 42), depict? A species of
flying yellow balloons or cutout circles with faces printed on them? Would
the latter assumption even explain what exactly it is we comprehend
there? Would an actual (physical) yellow balloon with a face painted on
it not also be some kind of iconic representation, if only a slightly more
‘plastic’ one? Do those yellow faces then ‘resemble’ bizarre creatures as
presented in Tony Leondis’s The Emoji Movie (2017), where anthropo-
morphic emoji characters in fact inhabit a distinct ontological realm?
Figure 9.2 The ‘face with tears of joy’ emoji (U+1F602); Twitter version
The film’s protagonist is Gene, a three-dimensional, animated yellow
sphere preparing for his first workday as an emoji: His destiny is to wait
in a cubicle-like office where a sophisticated machine is going to scan,
photograph, or—quite literally—depict him and his mates, every time a
user of a smartphone conjures up a yellow face within his messages. The
comical premise of the film apparently rests on the fact that we usually
do not understand emoji as representations of particular creatures (with
yellow or unspecified faces).
Intuitively, we seem to recognize only ‘some laughing face’ or even just
‘the facial expression of laughter’ in a smiley: not any particular creature,
probably no yellow one and certainly not a beheaded one, even if we can
clearly see all of this. What we take into account, if we look at an emoji
face, is apparently only some kind of diagrammatic structure, eyes in
relation to brows and to a mouth. Even before any cultural codings and
second-level connotations come into play, this begs countless questions
that have rarely been addressed. On what grounds would we investigate
whether this ‘taking into account’ versus ‘ignoring aspects of what we
see’ (yellowness, beheadedness) is dependent on conventions and cultural
preferences? Do people across the globe ‘see’ only the representation of
‘a laughing face’ in the ‘face with tears of joy’ (represented in yellow, as
some photographs are printed in monochromatic colors, not represented
as yellow)? Where does perception stop and interpretation start? I would
argue that the terms iconicity or resemblance, by themselves, do not help
significantly to entangle these conundrums. They hardly explain to what
extent emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji are comprehended ‘pictorially’
before cultural scripts and second-level connotations come into play. For
this reason, I think it is necessary to turn to the interdisciplinary field of
picture theory to indicate some directions for how prelinguistic ‘pictorial
comprehension’ might be conceptualized.
For this chapter, I would like to take the assumption that there is a
specificity of pictoriality, an ‘intrinsic semantic structure’, at face value. In
contrast to many recent articles which discuss in what respect digital picto-
grams and ideograms are, or are not, a language (universal or not), I want
to approach the question from the ‘opposite’ perspective: To what extent
are emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji pictures? At what point must cultural
knowledge be considered when accounting for their comprehension? I
first (2) briefly outline and contextualize the ‘picture theories’ to which
I then turn—an umbrella term for the nexus of philosophical, semiotic,
phenomenological, and cognitive accounts of ‘pictoriality’. Subsequently
(3), I trace some of the key arguments connecting cognitive-semiotic and
phenomenological perspectives in order to explain the perceptual or
phenomenological sensation of seeing three-dimensional objects ‘in’ two-
dimensional shapes and colors. I will show how this is made possible by
the iconic categorization of surrogate stimuli according to relevant cogni-
tive types. Bearing this in mind, I (4) outline a picture-theoretical model of
prelinguistic misunderstandings. First, I am going to address three types
of misunderstandings ‘below’ what is called the iconic threshold, where
recipients must actively draw inferences in order to ‘see’ a represented
object or scene. Then, I turn to pictorial misunderstandings ‘above’ this
threshold where usually no explicit knowledge is necessary to ‘see’ a
represented object or scene. Finally (5), I am going draw some picture-
theoretical conclusions. Specifically, I return to those ‘yellow creatures’ to
indicate a variety of open questions about the role of human imagination
within the ongoing transformations of communication in the digital age.
2. Remarks About the Field of Picture Theory

While the term picture theory is most strongly connected to William J.T.
Mitchell (1995), his understanding of ‘pictoriality’ is somewhat special
since it includes all kinds of ambiguous ‘images’, be they conceptual,
mental, or purely metaphorical. For the purposes of this investigation,
my understanding of pictoriality will be limited to prototypical cases of
representational pictures, that is, material artifacts that somehow ‘show’
things perceptible in time and space which are currently not present
(see in more detail Wilde 2018a, 82–156). Differing from the recently
emerged Visual Culture Studies (which consider visual phenomena
mainly with a critical stance toward their relation to social power, see
Elkins 1996, 2003; Stocchetti 2011), picture theories share a theoreti-
cal and systematic interest in pictorial artifacts. Or, as the philosophers
Klaus Sachs-Hombach and Jörg R.J. Schirra put it, “[t]he immediate
focus of interest is indeed not on single pictures at all, but on the faculty
to use (i.e., produce and visually explore) pictures” (2007, 37; see Sachs-
Hombach 2011).
The two most prominent strands within such theories treat ‘pictorial-
ity’ either as part of semiotics, investigated by the means and methods of
analytical philosophy and the theories of the sign (see Goodman 1969;
Novitz 1977; Lopes 1996), or as theories of perception and conscious-
ness, investigated by the means and methods of phenomenology (see
Wollheim 1992; Böhme 1999; Wiesing 2005). It is important to note
right at the outset that most of these controversies concern the fun-
damental question of how a recipient is able to recognize something
‘in’ material objects (in what is sometimes called the picture vehicle, or
the picture thing, see Pichler and Ubl 2014, 27): how we are able, for
instance, to see characters, objects, or scenes ‘in’ lines, shapes, and colors
on paper. In other words, any kind of ‘symbolic’ meaning is of secondary
concern to those debates. The term seeing-in was coined by Richard Wol-
leim (see 1998 for a concise summary). This fundamental base level of
pictorial comprehension was addressed as the “pre-iconographic level”
by Erwin Panofsky (1955, 26) and simply as “denotation” by Roland
Barthes (1977, 42), something they both took as given, since they saw it
as more or less universal to all humankind, implicit in human perception.
Göran Sonesson noted that
the reason why Barthes and Panofsky may really be talking about the
same thing here is, I believe, that the phenomenon in question is a
residue concept of both models, i.e. it is that about which the model
has nothing to say. That both models stop at this point is perhaps due
to the resistance being here at its greatest.
(Sonesson 1989, 124; original emphases)
Approaches derived from analytical philosophy and semiotics have

often been conceived of as being juxtaposed to those of perception theory
and phenomenology. In particular, the ‘first wave’ of picture theoretical
debates of the 1960s and 1970s was largely dominated by what Umberto
Eco later historicized as “the debate between iconists and iconoclast”
(Eco 2000, 339). Already in 1989, Sonesson considered both positions—
pictoriality being somehow ‘natural’ as well as being coded like any
other language—as “primary” and “secondary naivetés” (Sonesson
1989, 202–205). In his later writings, Eco radically reconsidered his prior
(‘iconoclast’) conception of iconicity, and in 2000 he asserted firmly that
the debate can be said to be resolved (see Eco 2000, 337–344). The reason
for this lies especially in the integration of cognitive sciences into theories
of communication, which resulted in semiotic theories that need not keep
their distance to perceptual accounts (see Sonesson 2014 for a survey).
Cognitive semiotics developed more or less independently from structur-
alism, giving special consideration to developments in the psychology
of perception (e.g., see Gibson 1979). I base the following examination
especially on Sonesson’s groundbreaking Pictorial Concepts (1989) and
on Umberto Eco’s comprising revision of his former accounts, Kant and
the Platypus (2000), as well as on Börries Blanke’s Vom Bild zum Sinn
(2003), an adaptation of Dan Sperber’s and Deirdre Wilson’s relevance
theory (1995) for pictorial communication (see also Forceville 2014).
A particularly suitable combination of these approaches is provided by
Schirra’s Foundations of Computational Visualistics (2005), in which the
author—a computer scientist as well as a philosopher—develops a bal-
anced and versatile image theory of the digital. For the subject area at
hand, this should prove extremely helpful.
Richard Wollheim’s approach (1998) is usually taken as a reasonable
point of departure: we are able to see something ‘in’ a picture. One con-
ceptual distinction that any picture theory will probably have to draw is
that between the pictorial content and its referent (see Ogden and Rich-
ards 1972, 9–12; or, with respect to pictoriality, Sachs-Hombach 2003,
173–187; Pichler and Ubl 2014, 43–50). A referent is typically thought of
as a distinct entity in time and space. Although the Unicode Consortium’s
qualifying criteria explicitly forbid emoji representing individual persons,
living or dead, as well as all kinds of particular deities (see Evans 2017,
28), like any other kind of signs emoji, too, can be employed to ‘stand in’
for anything we decide (see Christina M. Siever’s contribution within this
volume). When data engineer Fred Benenson compiled his by-now quite
famous Melville ‘adaptation’ Emoji Dick (Melville and Benenson 2010),
when visual designer Joe Hale translated Alice in Wonderland into a pic-
torial narrative of around 25,000 emoji (see Evans 2017, 17), they both
presupposed a (fictional) diegetic domain filled with characters, objects,
and events that could be referenced by means of yellow faces and little
icons. One highly conventionalized example for such a reference function
is discussed by Dale Andrews in the present volume, demonstrating that
the kaomoji （・ε・）is commonly employed by anime fans to depict
the fictional character of Mion (from the anime Higurashi no naku koro
ni), for no other reason than that Mion’s mouth is often drawn just like
the number 3. All these referential utilizations are highly contextual and
either dependent on surrounding linguistic signs (such as proper names
or ‘trademark expressions’ associated with specific anime characters), or
on strong pictorial conventions (as in the case of Mion): “[T]o say what
the picture is of, is to use the picture in a certain way” (Novitz 1977, 19;
original emphasis; see also Lopes 1996, 197–208)
There is another kind of referential relation less often discussed within
this framework. The picture that we see can be taken as a sign for a class
of objects that it exemplifies. Neil McDonell’s quite typical thesis on this
difference is: “The picture of a man on a restroom sign does not refer to
any particular man but to all men” (McDonell 1983, 85). In the words
of Schirra,
we can use a concrete object metonymically as an example case for

any concept that holds of that object in order to speak (symbolic
mode) about this concept, e.g., a certain horse in order to discuss
horses in general, a certain keyboard in order to debate keyboards
in the essence.
(Schirra 2005, 82f.)
This exemplified concept is usually addressed by means of linguistic labels

or predicates. It could be seen as the first referent of the picture, prior to
any particular (existing or fictitious) object. The risk of over- or under-
generalization—the choice of an unintended classification level—is never
excluded. Seeing a ‘pictorial apple’ also allows a (conceptual) classifica-
tion as a ‘fruit’ or as ‘food’, as well as a ‘physical object’ (see Figure 9.3).
For pictograms, this is quite important, since pictogrammatic cigarette
bans also include pipe smoking. A classification analogous to linguistic
basic-level categories usually appears to be most successful: basic-level
categories allow the most relevant and most commonly intended standard
categorizations. The larger the gap between ‘basic level categories’ and
Figure 9.3 The ‘red apple’ emoji (U+1F34E); Twitter version
the intended meaning, the more ideographic (instead of pictographic)

the sign becomes (for pictographic ‘interface metaphors’, see Honeywill
2000).
Before these two types of references (particular objects as well as exem-
plified classes) can be determined, however, we can see a pictorial object
on the material surface of the picture vehicle (or on the screen of our
phone or computer). This level of pictorial awareness is dependent on the
question of what kind of picture we have in front of us, whereas references
rely on what utilization is made of it. The verbal sign apple (printed here,
for instance) also has an encyclopedic ‘content’ (which is quite similar to
the respective Japanese term ringo), but in both of these cases, one would
need to be familiar with the respective vocabulary. In contrast, pictorial
signs seem not to rely on the availability of any code. Additionally, the
pictorial ‘content’ also seems not only to be represented but quite literally
to also be perceivable and thus present ‘before our very eyes’. With pic-
tures, it is even possible that “we can acquire recognitional skills through
looking at representations” (Wollheim 1998, 221), i.e., learn something
new by looking at pictorial representations. All of this is the reason why
phenomenological and perceptually oriented picture theories prefer the
term picture object over picture content to make the distinction between
pictorial and linguistic signs (whose content can only ever be mentally
present) more apparent (see Wiesing 2005, 37–80). The concept of the
picture objects was established by Edmund Husserl in his 1904/05 lectures
on ‘image consciousness’ (see Husserl 2005). Although his methodology
has often been treated as antithetical to analytical philosophy and struc-
turalism, more ambitious semioticians tried to at least rephrase Husserl’s
fundamental distinctions within sign-theoretical frameworks (see Stjern-
felt 2007; Bauer and Ernst 2010, 291–300). One of the first to do so was
Sonesson in 1989.
3. A Picture-Theoretical Conception of Iconic

Categorization
During the three decades since Sonesson published his foundational study,
cognitive semiotics have been able to explain very well, conceptually as
well as empirically, how the sensation of ‘experiencing picture objects’ can
be explained. Central to this is the assumption of perceptual or cognitive
types (see Eco 2000, 123–223; Blanke 2003, 49–76). They are understood
to be stored in memory and allow living organisms to categorize sense data
or stimuli within their lifeworld (see Sonesson 1989, 30–65), according
to certain principles of everyday relevance (see Blanke 2003, 77–103). To
Eco, a cognitive type may be conceptualized like a kind of multisensorial
model, as a “procedure for the construction of the conditions of recogniz-
ability and identification of an object” (Eco 2000, 193). A picture thus does
not ‘resemble’ any object, it more precisely conforms to a cognitive type
under which it can be categorized. Crucially, cognitive types are indepen-
dent of language: we are able to identify, distinguish, and even anticipate
physical things (persons, objects, or entire scenes) that have no linguistic
equivalent at all (think of police identikits or pictorial instruction manuals
that show us how to put on a tie). In these cases, we can communicate
pictorially what we have no linguistic predicates or terms for (see Eco
2000, 130–136; Krebs 2015). Our linguistic distinctions are not nearly
fine-grained enough to recognize, distinguish, and anticipate all the facial
expressions we can communicate via our group of core emoji. Although
emoji and pictograms are in many respects distinguished from typical
pictorial representations, with regard to facial expressions they fulfill the
most valued epistemic function of pictoriality: “We regularly use pictures,
when we want to inform others or ourselves about the appearances of
persons, objects or scenes, or about bodily movements [. . .]. In informing
about appearances, our propositionally individuated thoughts and expres-
sions turn out rather inaccurate” (Krebs 2015, 13; original emphases).
Phenomenologists have gone to great lengths to show that the emergence
of picture objects is fundamentally independent from linguistic categories.
Cognitive semiotics does not need to stress any contradiction here; on
the contrary, it can illustrate (conceptually as well as empirically) to what
extent the iconic categorization is, in fact, independent of individual lan-
guages, building instead on perceptual faculties.
Hence, if we understand pictures as “perceptoid signs”—signs close
to perception (Sachs-Hombach and Schirra 2007, 40)—we acknowledge
that seeing something ‘in’ a picture involves certain perceptual abilities
that are—to a certain degree—likewise employed in the interaction with
‘regular’ kinds of objects or scenes. This is, of course, what makes pic-
tograms so effective, especially in situations where language barriers are
to be expected (see Ōta 1987). Prototypical pictures can then be said to
provide surrogate stimuli of perception (see Eco 2000, 353–382). We
nevertheless usually do not mistake pictures for the ‘actual’ things we see
in them (see Novitz 1977, 26; Lopes 1996, 37–51), since we can primarily
categorize the material object in front of us as, say, a mobile phone—but
also, although to a lesser degree, as an (depicted) ‘apple’. Let this double
categorization be called iconic categorization (see Blanke 2003, 62–70).
The iconic categorization of surrogate stimuli allows three-dimensional
objects to be ‘seen in’ two-dimensional surfaces, although they are more
accurately projected.
No explicit knowledge of a code is needed when, and if, a certain
iconic threshold is sufficiently exceeded by the visual stimuli. This per-
ceptual situation is called “alpha mode” by Eco (2000, 382–386). It is
explicitly distinguished from “beta mode”, in which this threshold is not
sufficiently exceeded. All those ‘problem cases’ of early iconoclasts that
were brought up in order to prove that we need to know beforehand
what a picture ought to represent in order to see it accordingly are firmly
within beta mode, below that threshold. The droodle, a genre of ‘visual
riddles’, would be the obvious example (see Arnheim 1969, 92; Sonesson
1989, 220–223, 247–250; Eco 2000, 391–392). Here, we must indeed
be familiar with a kind of ‘code’ or have some contextual knowledge
about the sender’s intentions, since the question what we see ‘in’ it can
only be answered by asking what is apparently intended to be seen (see
Pichler and Ubl 2014, 82). In these cases, we have to decide for a cogni-
tive type from which we could construct a (highly selective) resemblance.
Cases of alpha can be regarded as “perceptual likeness” whereas beta
concerns “conceptual similarity” (Eco 2000, 386). Beta, below the iconic
threshold, would also be a fitting context to address the ‘pictoriality’ of
Japanese shōkei kanji, 象形漢字. For instance, the kanji for ‘tree’, 木,
could just as well be seen as the mast of a sailing boat, since not enough
relevant distinguishing features are provided to guarantee the identifica-
tion according to the cognitive type of a tree (see Stetter 2005; Árokay
2012). No such guessing at hypothetical intentions, however, is needed
within alpha mode, where “the impression of similarity precedes the sign
function” (Sonesson 1989, 250) and “in which, even before decoding,
we are confronted with the expression of a sign function, we perceive
through surrogate stimuli a given object or scene which we then elect as
the expression plane of the sign function” (Eco 2000, 383).
Of all the aspects that the empirical research and the conceptual reflec-
tion on cognitive types has made clear one thing is of particular impor-
tance: cognitive types are stored according to principles of everyday
relevance (for a species as a whole, within a specific historical or cultural
context, but even to an individual with all his or her past experiences;
see Blanke 2003, 31). Types that have a higher relevance in the lifeworld
will need fewer salient features to be recognizable as such: “There must
be [. . .] a Lifeworld hierarchy of most probable objects, beginning per-
haps with the human body itself, in particular the human face” (Sonesson
1989, 279). It has been empirically validated that even the simplest line
drawings of faces and ‘matchstick men’ can be recognized cross-culturally
and by very young infants (see Sütterlin 2013; Kümmerling-Meibauer and
Meibauer 2014). Although cognitive types must not be confused with
‘inner pictures’, certain genres of pictorial representations showing only
those features especially salient for the identification of one type (features
which distinguish it from other types the most) can be said to approach a
‘super-normal stimulus’ (see Schirra 2005, 73–87). The type of the human
face can thus be ‘activated’ with incredible ease.
A second peculiarity relevant for the impression of ‘pictorial presence’
is that—once a graphic inscription has crossed the iconic threshold—every
aspect of the inscription gets integrated into the depicted configuration as
a whole. Sonesson addressed this in great detail under the term “reseman-
ticization” (Sonesson 1989, 299–300). Once the iconic threshold has been
crossed, every aspect of an inscription will be semantically integrated—
‘top-down’—in the pictorial ‘meaning’, the picture object as a whole.
This can explain the aforementioned phenomenon of how we are able to
learn ‘new things’ just by looking at pictures. We need only be acquainted
with the cognitive type of a house in order to learn about the appear-
ances and spatial specifics of an infinite number of individually depicted
houses (Peirce called this the “exhibitive import of pictorial signs”, see
Sonesson 1989, 302–310). Every aspect of a pictorial configuration—and
even, or maybe especially, those areas where there are no inscriptions
at all—become resemanticized within the spatial configuration that we
see ‘in’ the lines, shapes, and colors. In the emoticon, kaomoji, or emoji
of a face, for instance, parts that are left blank (like ears that are not
depicted) “can be roughly localized in relation to the other parts of the
head” (Sonesson 1989, 303). Even those constituents that, by themselves,
would not conform to the cognitive type can thus be resemanticized in
a top-down fashion. Flint Schier wrote of “weak compositionality” if a
pictorial interpretation of an element, such as the number 3 ‘as’ Mion’s
mouth, can only be achieved from the whole of the structure: The indi-
vidual inscription, by itself, must be considered a “sub-iconic unit” (Schier
1986, 65; see Schirra 2005, 103). With respect to pictorial representations
of faces, this has been extensively discussed as Töpffer’s Law. The Swiss
cartoonist Rodolphe Töpffer, in his 1845 study Essai de physiognomie
(see Gombrich 1960, 288) stated that we are not only able to see faces in
drawings with incredible ease; we also cannot help but see particular faces
with particular facial expressions. The human ability to ‘read’ emotions
(see Damasio 1985) from drawn faces just as well as from ‘real’ ones—
although misunderstandings do occur (see Beall 2016)—is exactly what
makes communication with emoticons possible and efficient: “[I]t matters
not a jot whether your native tongue is English, Finnish or Japanese: the
smiley face means the same thing in every language” (Gaffey 2015, n.pag.;
see also Danesi 2017, 62–66; Evans 2017, 26).
How much does all of this explain with regard to our comprehension
of those ‘yellow creatures’? Let us look at an example that is pictorially
even more limited. Being familiar with Japanese kaomoji conventions, you
might easily recognize a laughing face ‘in’ the following configuration:
(≧▽≦)
Although what we ‘see’ corresponds to the ‘face’ schema to some degree,

it obviously looks nothing like a ‘real’ person. What, exactly, ‘is’ the
picture object in this case? It cannot include imaginary ‘additions’ and
‘subtractions’ based on experience and imagination, because the crite-
rion to differentiate verbal signs from pictorial ones was exactly that the
depicted object was not just mentally present but before our very eyes.
Then again, regular letters can be perceived as well. I think it is useful to
consider picture objects—those elusive specters between the material and
the imaginary—first and foremost as three-dimensional projections or
reconfigurations of two-dimensional inscriptions. As Sonesson put it in a
reading of Husserl: “The sole property of which the picture object cannot
be deprived is its three-dimensionality” (Sonesson 1989, 272). Otherwise,
it would be a material mark and nothing more. Everything else (that is
‘added’ or ‘subtracted’ to the three-dimensional reconfiguration) cannot
be part of the picture object because it only emerges from the imagination.
With respect to the appearance of the depicted entity, the representa-
tion above is purely diagrammatic: it exhibits a mere structural relation
(see Wilde 2019). There is just no epistemic ground on which we could
rationally argue what skin or hair colors or which facial features the
depicted person might have. Nevertheless, we assume that any face (in any
possible world) must have all these properties. The representation remains
vague in this respect, and this is even intentional—at least for emoji,
where more detailed depictions would be possible. The yellowness and
the roundness are purposefully chosen to ‘mask’ all personal identity and
render them “as culturally neutral as possible” (Danesi 2017, 13). Hence,
they can be used to represent just about anyone. The ‘face with tears of
joy’ is then not perceived as a decapitated head, because we can reseman-
ticize the ‘blanks’ with what we think we know about human beings and
‘omit’ elements that do not fit. This, however, cannot be part of what
we actually ‘see’, it must remain anyone’s imagination. In any case, the
perceived three-dimensionality, making all the difference to purely verbal
descriptions, is apparently derived from our imaginary anticipation of
what a face within a perceptual ‘lifeworld’ (or any possible world) might
look like. Husserl’s phenomenological tradition thus differentiates care-
fully between an (imagined) ‘picture subject’ and the more immediate
(perceivable) ‘picture object’. Sonesson, again, tried to account for the
same distinction: “The most interesting interpretation of the notion of pic-
ture subject [is this]: as the potential real-world equivalent of that which is
‘seen in’ the picture thing, that is, of the picture object” (Sonesson 1989,
278). We could find support for this assumption by referring to something
like Marie-Laure Ryan’s principle of minimal departure, stating that “the
imagination will consequently conceive fictional storyworlds on the model
of the real world, and it will import knowledge from the real world to fill
out incomplete descriptions” (Ryan 2014, 35)
4. A Typology of Perceptual Misunderstandings

Let us now have a look at the ways in which we can ‘misunderstand’ a dig-
ital pictogram even before any cultural codings or secondary connotations
come into play. Knowing very well that emoticons, kaomoji, and emoji
are only rarely used in isolation or without any linguistic context, the
following examples are deliberate simplifications. What I want to show
is merely how complex the question of ‘pictorial comprehension’ can
become even prior to their actual “‘utterance meaning’ [. . .] in the context
where the utterance occurs” (Danesi 2017, 11), before their employment
in multimodal environments to reinforce, expand, or annotate the mean-
ing of textual communication.
Case 1: we recognize digital characters, having no idea that they are
meant to bear any pictorial meaning whatsoever.
If a European smartphone user is completely unaware of Japanese kao-
moji, he or she might mistake the following configuration (taken from the
article of Matsuda Risa within this volume) for either random keystrokes
or some math equation:
(･ω･)b
What the configuration is meant to depict, however, is a face accompanied

by the ‘raising of one’s thumb’. All the elements must, by necessity, be
considered sub-iconic, as emoticons and kaomoji are entirely composed of
typeface characters. The configuration as a whole remains clearly below
the iconic threshold. With contextual cues, our hypothetical European
could infer that the brackets are meant to represent the shape of a head,
therefore relating his or her perception to the cognitive type of a human
face. Suddenly, every aspect could be resemanticized: the ω would then be
‘mapped’ (projected) on an imaginary depicted nose (within a sphere of
‘lifeworld picture subjects’), even the shape of the head would turn into
a particular one.
Case 2: we assume some kind of pictorial representation, still without
actually ‘seeing’ more than just keystrokes.
We are still below the iconic threshold. This time, however, we explicitly
recognize it as beta mode, trying to come up with a creative ‘perceptual
inference’ about what we could see. Note that the difference to Case 1 is
purely contextual. Most probably, we are not even able to simulate Case 1
in the example before, because in the context of the present study the
reader was already on the lookout for any kind of (pictorially represented)
object or scene. In contrast, the reader will probably be able to find plenty
of examples for the perceptual situation of Case 2 in Matsuda’s survey on
kaomoji. Just like Western emoticons, kaomoji are not preconstructed or
technically standardized, so they keep developing dynamically over time.
As in a droodle, it can remain a ‘perceptual riddle’ which cognitive type
the perception of sub-iconic units might conform to. Some contextual cues
might help to ‘adjust’ perception. Take the following example:
_l￣l○
As Marzena Karpinska, Paula Kurzawska, and Katarzyna Rozanska

elaborate in their chapter (in the present volume), this kaomoji does
surprisingly not depict a vertically oriented facial expression—as they
usually do—but a person on their knees, hands touching the ground and
the head facing downwards. The cultural coding in Japan would be ‘dis-
appointment or discouragement’. With this information, most readers
are probably able to see said person ‘in’ the five digital characters. They
thereby establish a correspondence to the cognitive type of the human
body instead of the human face.
Case 3: once again, still below the iconic threshold (within beta mode),
one might think they see something ‘in’ a pictorial configuration, but it
could be something different than the intended object or scene.
Consider the following kaomoji:
m(_ _)m
Applying your prior knowledge about kaomoji, you could again see (or
construct) some kind of depicted face, the lateral m characters forming its
eyes. What the kaomoji is meant to represent, however (and what, accord-
ing to Karpinska, Kurzawska, and Rozanska, most Japanese people easily
recognize), is a person performing a traditional kneeling on the floor,
touching the forehead to the ground to apologize for something (a dogeza,
土下座). In order to ‘see’ this, you have to ‘tilt’ your imagined perspective
to ‘ground level’: the m letters will turn into hands, the brackets into the
depicted culprit’s top of the head. Although cognitive types do not have to
be learned explicitly, their accessibility is shaped by culture. If you are
familiar with the cultural practice of dogeza, the respective picture object
will be more easily accessible and more salient. This does not only mean
that a pragmatic dimension of pictorial awareness must always be taken
into account, but it also explains why certain pictorial representations are
more easily recognized by people from different cultural origins (again,
before explicit connotations come into play). In a way, this is not unlike
Wittgenstein’s famous duck–rabbit problem, which contains two picture
objects within the same material surface (of what is called ‘Kippbilder’ in
German; see Wittgenstein 1980, §70); “a visual illusion that invites the
switching back-and-forth between two different, coherent percepts on the
basis of the same visual image” (Kukkonen 2017, 138). The duck–rabbit,
however, is thought of as a mutually exclusive multistability, an ambigu-
ity between two distinct picture objects. This, however, only applies to
depictions above the iconic threshold, since those below it are too vague
to afford a specific number of distinct options.
Case 4: what we see ‘in’ the inscription is actually meant to be inter-
preted as a pictogrammatic sign. This is a borderline case for the present
article’s interest since it does not concern the iconic categorization as such,
but its interpretation for a ‘diegetic’ situation. It nevertheless needs to be
distinguished from secondary cultural codings, since such pictogrammatic
signs only modify the primarily depicted physical situation. Consider the
following kaomoji, again from Matsuda’s contribution:
(^_^)／□☆□＼(^_^)
This kaomoji is meant to depict two people ‘chinking mugs’. Right in

the middle, we can see the shape of a star (which certainly ‘resembles’
no substitute stimuli at all). However, not only is the representation
highly conventional, but so is the ‘meaning’ of what is depicted: the sign
is used ‘metaphorically’ for the representation of a ‘forceful impact’, not
to denote any astrophysical object. This is where influences from manga
on contemporary digital pictograms are probably the most consequential.
Pictogrammatic signs are widely recognized as an important part of comic
and manga vocabulary. Varying terms such as comicana (see Walker
1980), bound morphemes (see Cohn 2013, 34; Cohn and Ehly 2016),
pictorial runes (see Forceville 2011), or simply multimodal metaphors (see
Eerden 2009; Shinohara and Matsunaka 2009) have been employed to
allude to them. Natsume Fusanosuke’s and Takekuma Kentarō’s concep-
tion of kei’yu, 形喩 (literally shape metaphors or metaphoric forms), and
man’pu, 漫符 (manga-specific signs), terms they proposed in 1995 and
refined again and again, attributes theoretical prominence to these signs.
Although it is not possible to go into much detail here, it seems clear
that the ‘pictoriality’ of kei’yu is relevant only insofar as it lets recipients
infer the appropriate diegetic proposition (that something is the case, for
instance). Some of these signs are highly culturally specific, such as snot
bubbles coming out of the nose, which, in manga—and nowadays in
emoji as well—represents the fact that the respective person is sleeping.
Following Natsume, it is not clear whether a little dust cloud in a manga
is meant to be taken as a “manga-like exaggeration” (Natsume 1995,
112; translation L.W.) of a physical, and thus visible, phenomenon (dust,
stirred up by the impact) or, rather, as a representation of an invisible
phenomenon (an impact that feels, to the character, ‘like an explosion’).
Often, to consider ‘pictures’ in comics as kei’yu or not, is understood as a
judgment about them being either literal or metaphorical. But many cases
are far more open to a scaled interpretation. Takekuma argued that if we
see a character with a teardrop in the corner of his or her eye, it does not
necessarily mean that, within a diegesis (the ‘lifeworld’ of the character),
there is a visible teardrop of that size—merely that the character is crying,
or maybe not even that: maybe it just represents that he or she feels like
crying (see Takekuma 1995, 78). The same would be true for respective
emoji (see Figure 9.4); although the representation of a drop within a
facial configuration probably conforms to a respective cognitive type, the
Figure 9.4 The ‘sad but relieved face’ emoji (U+1F625); Twitter version
referential meaning could be taken as modified and ‘blocked’ (just as with
the yellowness). It depicts a ‘sad face’ that we are free to imagine with
teardrops of whatever size we like.
Now, let us return to the alpha mode where the iconic threshold is crossed
and a sufficiently relevant amount of ‘surrogate stimuli’ are provided. Emoji
might rely on a schematic or stereotypical pictorial realization—close to
supernormal stimuli and heavily influenced by manga conventions—but
for most people worldwide, they are nevertheless easily recognizable as
specific picture objects (nevertheless, some emoji still remain close to the
iconic threshold. The cloud emoji could easily be taken to depict cotton
candy as well).
Case 5: since the resemanticization works both ways (from the visible
to the imaginary and vice versa), it can also cause ‘feedback loops’ and
interfere with what we actually think we ‘see in’ the material colors and
shapes. One much-discussed case of emoji misunderstandings is U+1F64F
(see Figure 9.5):
In the original Japanese context, these hands were intended to represent
the expression ‘please’ or ‘thank you’. In Western countries, this mean-
ing of the gesture is not readily available, so they are taken to denote a
‘prayer’. The culturally coded scripts vary accordingly (see Evans 2017,
98f.). Such ‘misunderstandings’ would fall within the realm of second-
level connotation, since both groups of recipients would first ‘see’ an
identical, depicted gesture, then looking for different cultural scripts by
Figure 9.5 The ‘folded hands’ emoji (U+1F64F); Twitter version

which it can be motivated. However, a third option for interpretation
exists: the same emoji is also used to depict a ‘high five’: two hands clap-
ping together!2 This is not only a difference in (secondary) cultural coding
but also directly influences what we apparently ‘see in’ the configuration.
If we choose to use it as a ‘high five’, the hands belong to two different
people standing at some distance to each other. If we decide to ‘see’ the
‘prayer/thank you’, the hands belong to the same person, presumed to be
standing in the ‘background’ of the emoji. The ‘pictorial cutout’ might be
approximately the same in both cases. But if you try to ‘switch’ between
these scripts, you cannot help but resemanticize the parts of the ‘complete’
picture differently, parts that are not visible (but mentally present): either
the hands extend to two different people standing left and right, or to one
standing behind them. Now, we are confronted with a mutually exclu-
sive pictorial ambiguity, a multistability. We cannot ‘see’ (construct) both
reconfigurations at the same time but only ‘tilt’ back and forth between
both, as with the duck-rabbit. In some way, the ‘clapping hands’ and the
‘praying hands’ are different hands, both available within the ‘touching
hands’ emoji, reminding us that the ‘picture object’ has been a cognitive
construct (derived from an imaginary picture subject) all along.
All these pictorial misunderstandings take place before distinct lan-
guages start to play a role in the process of understanding. The avail-
ability of linguistic categories might be an important factor to increase
the salience and accessibility of certain cognitive types and scripts. Would
we be able to ‘see’ the ‘high five’ as such, if only the practice, but not
the term, was established (see Raud 2016, 32–54)? Questions like these
can probably best be answered empirically. One theoretical conundrum,
however, remains: it has been argued that the distinct picture objects of
the ‘touching hands’ emoji—‘high five’ versus ‘prayer’—do not merely
shift between secondary connotations and cultural codings (as ‘prayer’
vs. ‘thank you’ does) but directly ‘tilt’ what we ‘see in’ the configuration:
the hands of two people standing outside the ‘picture frame’ facing each
other versus the hands of a single person standing elliptically ‘behind’
the visible configuration. We may not literally see two different picture
objects, but we have to imagine them in order to ‘see’ the hands in the
first place. If this is true, it raises some additional questions regarding our
group of core emoji, the yellow faces.
5. Back to Those ‘Yellow Creatures’

The British Netflix show Lovesick presents its audience with a humor-
ous case of an emoji misunderstanding in its second season (2016). The
protagonist, Dylan, gets into an argument with his lover, Liv, over a phone
chat, for reasons that remain entirely mysterious to him. Only his friend
Luke is able to sort out what went wrong: “Your last message to her was:
‘Did I do something wrong?’, laughing face!”, “What?! No no, that’s a
crying face! Those are tears!”, “Yeah, no, these are tears of joy, dude!”,
“So, when she said ‘My dog is sick’ . . .”, “You found it hysterical, yeah
. . . !” (S2E04, 22:30). For the sake of the argument, let us assume there
was a time when people were not familiar with the ‘face with tears of
joy’. Before its addition to the Oxford Dictionary, it might not yet have
been “understood in the same way across the global village” (Danesi
2017, 14). Could this then be considered a mutually exclusive duck–rabbit
problem as well, or might it just be a problem of different secondary
connotations? What did Dylan see ‘in’ the emoji in contrast to Liv? Both
certainly recognized a face, situated in time and space, whose features
somehow look skewed or contorted. In both cases, stylized manga-like
kei’yu tears are recognized as representations of liquid. But what did the
facial expressions of the represented being within its ‘lifeworld’ look like?
It seems hard to imagine any kind of ‘real’ face whose expression would
allow both emotions—laughter and crying—to be ‘read’ unequivocally,
at once. Dylan would need to ‘tilt’ his anticipated ‘picture subject’, his
imagined real-world equivalent of a crying person, to that of a laughing
person, in order to ‘see’ something different in the same emoji: a differ-
ently resemanticized picture object.
But is such a recourse to a “real-world equivalent” (Sonesson 1989,
278) indeed necessary or plausible? There is a readily available alternative:
Fictional and ‘generic’ worlds (accessible only through popular media)
could just as well serve as starting points for our imaginary departures
and ‘gap-filling’ activities. There would be no reason for us to be forced to
‘ignore’ the yellowness or the roundness in the first place, if we imagined
a fantastic world inhabited by anthropomorphic yellow creatures. They
would be perceivable just like emoji, only three-dimensional instead of
two-dimensional. They could succumb to emotions which could look just
like laughter and crying both at the same time—because they do not look
particularly different from the actual emoji on our phones. Maybe we
do not laugh at Leondis’s The Emoji Movie for its apparently outland-
ish premise but because it might be closer to our everyday imagination
than we can comfortably account for. Our imagination could be deeply
entangled in our daily emoji perception.
In 2016 a heated controversy took place online after the comedian
and MIT researcher Jonny Sun publicly pondered whether the ‘three-
wise-monkey’ emoji were three distinct monkeys adopting three different
poses or one monkey adopting three different poses (see Evans 2017,
99f.). A well-known Twitter user by the handle of “@real DonaldTrump”
had a very passionate opinion about this seemingly nonsensical problem
(“The monkeys are absolutely tree monkeys. If you think it’s one monkey
making three faces than you’re wrong and a LOOOOSER!”). Tens of
thousands of people participated in Sun’s poll (see Keating 2016) and
countless magazines ran articles with titles such as “The Monkey Emoji
Debate is Ruining our Lives”3 or “This very serious question [. . .] is
dividing the internet into two” (Willett 2016). If we can neglect the fact
that there is almost no epistemic ‘ground’ on which arguments can be
based here, then, more interestingly, we are able to observe that both
camps seem to presuppose the particular existence of at least one monkey.
It is almost as if all the users were “engaging in a game of make-believe”,
usually reserved for fictional media such as novels, films, or comic books,
“in which we pretend that there is a spatio-temporal domain in which
the Don [Quixote—L.W.] and his ‘world mates’ exist and act indepen-
dently of and prior to any narrative about them” (Margolin 2007, 71).
This seems to contradict our initial presumption that a distinct fictional
character (which an emoji can refer to) was a highly contingent entity,
dependent on a specific communicative employment (such as in Emoji
Dick). Thus, the distinctions between picture object and picture subject,
as well as between content and referent, seem to be far from clear-cut.
The imaginary might be always ahead of us. The emotional investment
surrounding the monkey debate indicates just that. Since much of what
has been said in this chapter is owed to semiotics and analytical philoso-
phy, it seems only fair to conclude with a statement of an art historian,
James Elkins:
[S]eeing is irrational, inconsistent, and undependable. It is immensely

troubled, cousin to blindness and sexuality, and caught up in the
threads of the unconscious [. . .]. No matter how hard we look, we
see very little of what we look at.
(Elkins 1996, 11)
This might not only be true for our greatest works of art but even more
so for the humblest of pictures we know of: those yellow creatures. It also
raises additional questions about cross-cultural differences: how do you
research the imaginary? Could popular, fictional films and TV shows (like
The Emoji Movie or Lovesick) contribute to answering these questions
by ‘transcribing’ alleged pictorial meanings from one medial context into
another (see Wilde 2018b)? Picture-theoretical considerations of emoti-
cons, kaomoji, and emoji are certainly still in their infancy. The elephant
is not going to leave the room any time soon.
Notes
1. See Emojipedia. “Dumpling.” Emojipedia. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://
emojipedia.org/dumpling.
2. See anonymous [Acclaim]. “Breaking: Praying Hands Emoji still not a High-
Five.” Acclaim. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://acclaimmag.com/culture/
breaking-praying-hands-emoji-still-high-five.
3. See anonymous [rmunson]. 2016. “This Monkey Emoji Debate is Ruining
our Lives.” Look, May 11. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.look.co.uk/news/
monkey-emoji-debate-221410.
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10 Construction of Iconicity
in Scenes of Kaomoji
Risa Matsuda
1. Introduction
In computer-mediated communication, various sorts of textual media
(like emails, chats, Short Messaging Service [SMS], or social network
communication) are operated by means of many kinds of symbols, char-
acters, and signs. Linguistic research describes ‘signs’ in digital and analog
forms of communication as shown in Figure 10.1.
Thus, the more communication is digitalized, the stronger the restric-
tions on written language (which can use only characters) become. Pic-
torial representational forms, such as emoticons, emoji, or kaomoji,
counteract such restrictions. They represent nonverbal forms of interac-
tion, such as facial expressions, gestures, or prosody. Kaomoji, 顔文字
(face characters), which are constructed out of a series of graphemes,
create facial expressions with digital signs. The sign elements used within
kaomoji lose their original meaning and gain a new one in the kaomoji
as a whole. Kaomoji are developing remarkably fast within our chang-
ing ecologies of communicational media. Surprisingly, the research on
kaomoji is, however, still in a dire state.
The purpose of this article is to classify specific types of kaomoji and thus
consider the development of their construction and function in a new light.
My discussion proceeds as follows: section 2 introduces a conceptual frame-
work for understanding kaomoji (in comparison to related forms, such as
Western emoticons). Section 3 then presents an analysis of the construction of
‘scenic kaomoji’ (and their functions) in contrast to earlier forms of kaomoji.
Finally, section 4 concludes the chapter with a summary of my argument.
digital analog
written text parole image gesture
Figure 10.1 Tree diagrams

See Verhaegen (2010, 76).
198 Risa Matsuda
2. A Conceptual Framework
2.1 Definitions
Kaomoji first appeared during the 1980s, but their development was (and
still is) remarkable and new forms are being created continuously.1 Their
earliest forms consist of a face line, eyes, and a mouth to represent a
very simple ‘facial expression’. Due to their increased use, it has become
possible to draw from a range of expressions. Thus, the whole range
of kaomoji symbols consists of different ‘graphemes’ of kaomoji, which
enable users to add many more variations of expression to the initially
very simple face. There is almost no limit to the range of creative varia-
tions that kaomoji representations allow. Moreover, some recent kaomoji
are not just representations of a face but also include body parts and
various items or props. We would like to address these latter variations as
‘wide kaomoji’ (in contrast to ‘simple kaomoji’, representing only a facial
expression). The rest of this paper will mainly focus on structures and
functions of wide kaomoji. It should be noted that ‘Western’ (horizontally
oriented) emoticons—such as :)—are not considered to be among the
variations of wide kaomoji.2
2.2 Differences Between Emoticons and Kaomoji

A series of digital letters, characters or other signs representing a facial
expression is usually called ‘emoticon’. They are defined as “[v]isual cues
formed from ordinary typographical symbols that, when read sideways,
represent feeling or emotions” (Rezabek and Cochenour 1998, 201). Con-
cerning their origin, David Crystal observed that
[r]elated to this is the way Netspeak lacks the facial expressions, ges-
tures, and conventions of body posture and distance (the kinesics and
proxemics) which are so critical in expressing personal opinions and
attitudes and in moderating social relationships. The limitation was
noted early in the development of Netspeak and led to the introduc-
tion of smileys or emoticons.
(Crystal 2001, 38–39)
The term emoticon (in the preceding definitions) therefore represents faces
horizontally oriented. In contrast, most Japanese kaomoji are oriented
vertically and can be seen as depictions of whole faces (indicated by brack-
ets of two parentheses) as for example in (^^) or (>_<). They are also
called ‘kaomoji’ in other languages nowadays.
In recourse to Peirce’s (1978) trichotomy of signs, kaomoji could be
categorized as ideographic symbols because, in one of the three Japa-
nese writing systems, kanji, Japanese letters are also partly ideographic.
Iconicity in Scenes of Kaomoji 199
Regular Japanese characters and the signs of kaomoji, however, are differ-
ent in important ways. For their understanding, everyday Japanese scripts
rely on a symbolic code, which must be shared between participants, but
kaomoji are more realistic. Moreover, there are two different aspects of
these signs one has to consider. The first is responsible for a kaomoji’s loss
of its original meaning, while the other is the reason why its constituting
graphemes become polysemic. A kaomoji such as (^^) shows a smiling
face: in this combination, the individual graphemes resemble the shape of
a face and two eyes. () and ^ have therefore lost their original meaning as
parentheses and as a caret. The second aspect concerns the various iconic
(and thus polysemic) meanings of the graphemes in combinations. Com-
paring the kaomoji (@^-^@) and (@_@), it becomes clear that the sign @
is not used to depict the same thing in both cases. While it is employed as
‘cheeks’ in the former instance, it depicts ‘eyes with glasses’ in the latter
one. Therefore, although kaomoji are created by a quite limited series of
individual graphemes, they can, and must, be interpreted in various ways.
2.3 The Function of Kaomoji in Written Discourse

Some observers of kaomoji have pointed out different pragmatic func-
tions. Takamoto (1993), for instance, mentions three overall kaomoji
utilities: (1) a function of contextualization, which orients higher-level
explicatures or implicatures; (2) a function to control and maintain the
writer’s ‘face’;3 and (3) a function to control and maintain the interlocu-
tor’s ‘face’.
Compare the written instances of
(1) 月曜日か火曜日に会おう (ô^)

(2) 月曜日か火曜日に会おう (>_<)
[Let’s meet on Monday or Tuesday!]
Although the textual content of (1) and (2) is exactly the same, the accom-
panying kaomoji adjusts the meaning differently. While (1) is uttered with
a ‘smiling face’ and therefore indicates a positive emotion, (2) in contrast,
is presented with ‘embarrassment’ and thus betrays a somewhat negative
emotion. In cyberspace, where our bodies are wholly absent, kaomoji thus
play an important role as a contextualization cue (see Gumperz 1982)
a kind of ‘stand-in’ for the speaker’s body. Kaomoji can therefore help
to avoid misunderstandings of sentences and their context-dependent
nuances.
Harada (2004) further elaborates on the previously mentioned func-
tions (2) and (3)—to control and maintain ‘face’—with respect to ‘polite-
ness strategies’ (see Brown and Levinson 1987). Kaomoji are used on the
assumption that a mutual understanding between writer and interlocutor
200 Risa Matsuda
exists (such as in a close friendship). Using kaomoji thereby aims to influ-
ence a writer’s positive ‘face’ and to express an affirmative politeness
toward the interlocutor. Kaomoji can not only be directed toward the
maintenance of the writer’s positive ‘face’ (2) but also work to avoid pos-
sible threats against the interlocutor’s negative ‘face’ (3).
(3) あんなお願いしちゃって～ (v_v)，ワルカッタね (;_;)

[I’m sorry to ask such favor]
(see Harada 2004, 221)
(4) 誘ってもらってうれしいけど，今，どこにも出かける気分になれ
ないの～
(-。-;)
[Thank you to your invitation, but I’m not in a mood to go anywhere
right now]
(221)
The sentence in (3) may harm the interlocutor’s ‘face’ by ‘asking a

favor’, but the kaomoji with downcast eyes or tears is sincerely worried
for the interlocutor. In sentence (4) the kaomoji is meant to protect the
writer’s ‘face’ from negative effects.
In previous research on emoticons it was noted that their functions
include “a potentially helpful but extremely crude way of capturing some
of the basic features of facial expression, but their semantic role is lim-
ited” (Crystal 2001, 39). They can therefore serve as “indicators of affec-
tive states, the purpose of which is to convey nonlinguistic information
that in face-to-face communication is conveyed through facial expression
and other bodily indicators” (Dresner and Herring 2010, 250). Emoti-
cons, however, are rather limited in form, which is why “an individual
smiley still allows a huge number of readings (happiness, joke, sympathy,
good mood, delight, amusement, etc.) which can only be disambiguated
by referring to the verbal context” (250). Dresner and Herring went on
to note that
[w]e have applied speech act theory to the communicative function

of emoticons in CMC, arguing that a general function common to
many emoticons is textual indication of illocutionary force. More
broadly, three functions of emoticons were identified: (a) emotion,
mapped directly onto facial expression (e.g. happy or sad), (b) non-
emotional meaning, mapped conventionally onto facial expression
(e.g. a wink as indicating joking intent; an anxious smile) and (c)
illocutionary force indicators that do not map conventionally onto
facial expression (e.g. a smile as downgrading a complaint to a
simple assertion).
(Dresner and Herring 2010, 263)
3. Analysis
3.1 The Construction of Wide Kaomoji

As has been established earlier, ‘wide kaomoji’ are kaomoji to which a
variety of characters are added as graphemes. In the following section,
we are going to take a closer look at specific morphemes (as components
of wide kaomoji) with recourse to two kaomoji databases.4 On these
websites kaomoji are classified and tagged by listings for specific emo-
tions/situations (for instance, ‘sleepy’, ‘surprised’, ‘smiling’, ‘crying’ etc.)
or utterances (for instance, ‘thank you’, ‘hello’, ‘bye-bye’, ‘congratulation’
etc.). These websites also serve as an open archive to which anyone who
creates original kaomoji can contribute, link, and reference. Based on
these websites, we can categorize three types of additional graphemes:
digital characters, letters, and emoji-like graphics.
3.2 Representing the Interlocutor’s Body, Objects, or Scenes

There is a type of wide kaomoji which includes other people, objects, or
props into the represented scene. In other words, the graphemes of such wide
kaomoji do not only represent the writer’s face as such but also body parts (of
one or the two participants) and even some objects. To give a few examples:
(-- 、)ヾ(^^ )
‘Cheer up!’
(´∀｀)σ)∀’)
Poking one’s cheek with a fingertip
(゜o゜)＼(-_-)
Knocking one’s head
(*^3(*ô^*)
Kissing
(*ô^) ／＼(^^*)
‘High-five’
(i_i) ＼(^_^)
‘Cheer up!’
(・∀・)人(・∀・)
Holding hands
(´ ｰ’)y-~~
Smoking a cigarette
. . . _〆(・∀・＠)
Taking notes
It has been mentioned before that simple kaomoji only act as indices for
certain emotions to convey the intended illocutionary force to the best of
202 Risa Matsuda
their abilities. The kaomoji’s respective face therefore only represents the
writer. In contrast, the faces of wide kaomoji shown earlier can repre-
sent both the writer and the interlocutor. By introducing the interlocutor
as another face, the writer recognizes the interlocutor and establishes
a ‘scene of communication’ within his utterance. The phrase ‘scene of
communication’ is meant here to hint at the actual ‘communicative act’
between writer and interlocutor.
The kaomoji of ‘smoking a cigarette’ and ‘taking notes’ do not introduce
the interlocutor but represent the writer’s actions on objects or props that
simple kaomoji could not depict. Even if wide kaomoji represent only the
writer, their overall function to depict the whole scene of communication
remains the same. As a result, some aspects of corporality and physical
interaction, usually lost within the digital age, can be compensated for by
means of wide kaomoji. Moreover, a certain tendency to add ‘emoji-like
graphics’ (actual digital images) to scenes featuring kaomoji can be observed:
(^_^) ／□☆□＼(^_^)
Clinking mugs
(@^ー^)／🍻＼(^ー^@)
Clinking mugs
Both of the preceding wide kaomoji depict similar situations: while the
first one shows squares and a star sign corresponding to the moment when
two beer mugs are clinking, the second one represents the same situation
more directly through a ‘realistic’ emoji-like graphic. To understand the
meaning of the first wide kaomoji, it is necessary to know what the purely
conventional symbol of the star (‘impact’), as well as the more ‘iconic’
representation of the mugs stand for. The ‘more iconic’ second representa-
tion makes the comprehension of the situation easier for the receivers.
3.3 Adding Text

In the second type of wide kaomoji, letters, and characters are not used
pictorially as part of the kaomoji but as ‘parole’ or sound. The text formed
by these letters can be categorized according to three subclasses: text (a),
which explains the pictorially represented situation of the surrounding
wide kaomoji; text (b), which acts as onomatopoeia (sound representa-
tion); or text (c), which represents the writer’s tone of voice.
(a) Verbal Descriptions of the Kaomoji Situation:

(〃’ω’)=oo=(‘ω’〃)ｱｸｼｭ♪
Shaking hands (akushu)
(; 。。)o＿フキフキ雑巾ガケ
Wiping the floor (fuki fuki zōkin-gake)
(b) Onomatopoeic Representations of Sounds Occurring within the
Kaomoji Situation:
(‘д‘⊂彡☆))Д´) ﾊﾟｰﾝ
Attacking a person (pān)
(･ω･)bｸﾞｯ
Raising one’s thumb (gu)
(* ﾟ▽ﾟﾉﾉﾞ☆ﾊﾟﾁﾊﾟﾁ
Clapping one’s hands (patchi patchi)
(˘ω˘)ｽﾔｧ
Sleeping (suyā)
(*∩∀∩*) ﾜｸﾜｸ♪
Covering the face with one’s hands (waku waku)
(c) Utterances Attributed to the Writers of the Kaomoji Situation:
(≧∇≦)b OK
Raising one’s thumb and exclaiming ‘ok’
(ρД-) ねむーい
Rubbing one’s eyes and exclaiming ‘I’m sleepy’
ﾊﾞｲﾊﾞｲ(ヾ(´・ω・｀)
Waving one’s hand and exclaiming ‘bye-bye’
All these examples of texts appearing within wide kaomoji help to make
the situation that they depict more detailed and easier to comprehend. In all
these cases, they play the role of a ‘supplementary’ explanation. However, it is
necessary, with all kinds of kaomoji (including simple ones), for the meaning
of the signs to create some kind of mutual understanding between sender and
receiver. Additional letters and words assist in this process by elaborating on
the scene (or some part of it) more directly. The examples in (a) earlier illus-
trate this function most clearly. In the (b) examples, the onomatopoeia and
the mimetic word help to render the situation more vivid. The wide kaomoji
in the (c) examples represent the writer’s face just like any simple kaomoji
would do, but in the former cases, the faces emit utterances comparable to a
manga speech bubble. In all these instances, however, the additional texts serve
the function of ‘determining’ the specific emotion or action of the wide kao-
moji. The impression arises that the sender and the receiver are both included
within the wide kaomoji scene. Their meaning changes accordingly from the
representation of facial expressions to the representation of ‘actual’ situations.
3.4 The Visualization of Movements or Invisible Phenomena

Following the argument of the preceding subsection, kaomoji symbols
can partially represent ‘real’ things, such as the writer or the interlocutor,
objects, or props. An additional subtype of this category might address
204 Risa Matsuda
symbols that represent invisible, fictional, or fantastic phenomena. This
technique aims at the depiction of things that are literally not perceptible,
so it might be described as a figurative form of expression.
(^_^)(^_)( ^)( )(^ )(_^ )(^_^)

A horizontal turning-movement
(ﾟロﾟ; 三 ;ﾟロﾟ)
A state of panic, shaking one’s head left and right
+ 。:.ﾟ۹(๑＞◡＜๑)۶:.｡+ﾟ
Raising one’s arms and spouting some sort of power
ε=ε=ε=ε=ε=┏(ﾟロﾟ;)┛ﾀﾞﾀﾞﾀﾞｯ!!
Running away
The wide kaomoji of the preceding subsection tried to ‘re-present’ (quite

literally) existing situations (such as real conversations). Since such series of
graphemes symbolize persons or objects that could exist, at least in theory,
they function similar to a photograph to show a small ‘slice of reality’. In
contrast, the wide kaomoji discussed here, depict movements quite explic-
itly, but they are in no way intended to be realistic. What these representa-
tions of movement show, then, are deliberate illusions. In the first example,
a consecutive line of multiple faces is meant to indicate a continuous turning
movement. The third example is not even a visible illusion anymore: the
kaomoji symbolizes a purely invisible phenomenon (some sort of ‘power’).
3.5 The Importance of the Wide Kaomoji Position Within

the Utterance
In the following section we are going to elaborate on the respective posi-
tions of wide kaomoji within the whole utterance, in some examples of
their usage.
(5) A: すみません、提出の書類、明日の朝出します(T_T)
[I’m sorry but I will submit the document tomorrow morning]
B: 了解、気にしないで！(--、)ヾ(^^ )
[Right, don’t worry!]
(6) 7時に集合してください！土曜日楽しみましょう(^_^)／□☆□＼(^_^)
[Please assemble at seven! Let’s have some fun on Saturday]
In sentence (5B) the utterance and the wide kaomoji both describe a
situation where speaker B cheers up speaker A for handing in a document
late. The left part (--、) represents a crying face and the right one (^^) is
smiling. Between them, the sign ヾ represents a hand of the person to the
right. Therefore, this wide kaomoji depicts a situation in which the person
to the right pats the other one on the head. Consequently, the respective
faces of the wide kaomoji in (5B) refer to A (on the left) and B (on the
right). However, the wide kaomoji in sentence (6), presumably sent to a
group of several people, do not represent just one sender or any specific
receiver. Judging from the ‘clinking mugs’ situation, we can infer that the
wide kaomoji represent an unspecified number of participants in a party,
so the faces do not represent a particular sender or receiver.
(7) 明日、一緒にランチしない？ŧ‹”ŧ‹”ŧ‹”ŧ‹”(๑´ㅂ’๑)ŧ‹”ŧ‹”ŧ‹”ŧ‹”
[Should we go to lunch together tomorrow?]
(8) 私そのDVD持ってるよ[壁]‥)ﾁﾗｯ
[I own that DVD which you mentioned]
(8’) 私そのDVD持ってるよ|дﾟ)
[I own that DVD which you mentioned]
As we have seen before, the text in the wide kaomoji can be placed
around the face. The position of the letters もぐもぐ (mogu-mogu, ono-
matope for chewing) in (7) means that the sound is literally surrounding
the face. Sentence (8) includes two components of letters, as mentioned
in 3.3: 壁 (kabe, a ‘wall’). It applies to (a) verbal explanation, while ﾁﾗｯ
(chira, an onomatopoeia for peeping) applies to (b). What this wide kao-
moji represents is the act of ‘peeping through a wall’, indicating ‘would
you like to communicate secretly?’ The additional text thus assists in
communicating the intended situation between writer and receiver more
precisely. Without the letters (which can be seen in 8’) the situation is less
easy to understand, although the intended meaning is the same.
(9) 今すごい暇～(^_^)( ^_)( ^)( )(^ )(_^ )(^_^)

[I have a lot of leisure time right now]
(10) 今会社出たよーーーっ＼＼\\└(‘ω’)┘//／／
[I’ve just finished work]
Sentences (9) and (10) apply to what has been mentioned in 3.4 earlier—
the visualization of movement. The wide kaomoji is placed behind the
verbal utterance in the same way as the simple kaomoji. Nevertheless,
the wide kaomoji represents the communicative situation as a whole, in
contrast to simple kaomoji that only modify the meaning of a sentence.
(11) A: 全然会ってないけど、仕事忙しい？
[We haven’t met in a long time, are you busy at work?]
B: そうだね(T_T) 最近土曜出勤が多くて . . .
[Yes, recently I have also been working on Saturdays]
The kaomoji (T_T) represents crying eyes and thus shows sadness due
to pressure at work. It modifies the meaning only in front of a sentence
206 Risa Matsuda
because the face must be attributed to the speaker. Wide kaomoji, how-
ever, do not only modify the sentence but also the whole communicational
situation. They can include backgrounds and settings just as in theatrical
scenes. In the case of wide kaomoji, both the sender and the receiver are
meant to assume the ‘point of view’. Thus, the wide kaomoji does not
only represent the private emotion of the sender, or his expression, but a
shared ‘site of communication’ between sender and receiver(s).
4. Conclusion
In my chapter, I have investigated the structural and functional evolution
of kaomoji as a salient emotional and affective form of expression within
computer-mediated communication. By the expansion and diversifica-
tion of kaomoji through various ‘graphemes’, they nowadays function as
‘stand-ins’ for different actors, acts, and actions. While simple kaomoji
focus on facial expressions alone to represent a writer’s emotion, wide
kaomoji, in contrast, can represent whole situations. As if the writer and
receiver were present in the same place, the actual communicative situation
becomes visible. If simple kaomoji are contextualization cues substitut-
ing the writer’s absent body, wide kaomoji do not evoke that body but
the entirety of the communicational situation. They can thus facilitate a
contextualization within a represented, three-dimensional space of com-
munication. Therefore, I suggest that wide kaomoji pose as the scenic
backdrop of a given utterance, and as such, they resemble the functions of
onomatopoeic expressions, which also reference scenes in a deictic fashion.
Notes
1. The first versions of emoticons were :-) and :-( invented by Scott Fahlman in
1982. The first Japanese kaomoji could later be found within the online com-
munication of ASCII Net in 1986 (see Suzuki 2007).
2. To discuss ‘Western’ emoticons within the following framework would not
be impossible. The technique of adding facial parts (such as glasses: 8-) ) or a
respective degree of feeling (like :))) has been around for a long time.
3. The term face is used as a sociological concept here, in the sense of Erving
Goffman (1967).
4. Kaomoji-ya 顔文字屋. Accessed 1 June 2019. http://kaomojiya.jp; Facemark
Party. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.facemark.jp/facemark.htm.
Works Cited
Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in
Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, David. 2001. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Dresner, Eli and Susan C. Herring. 2010. “Function of the Nonverbal in CMC:
Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face-to-Face Behavior. Garden
City: Doubleday.
Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Harada, Tomi. 2004. “The Role of ‘Face Marks’ in Promoting Smooth Commu-
nication and Expressing Consideration and Politeness in Japanese.” Language
and Culture: The Journal of the Institute for Language and Culture 8:
205–224.
Peirce, Charles S. 1978. Écrits sur le signe [Writings on the Sign]. Translated and
Edited by Gérard Deledalle. Paris: Seuil.
Rezabek, Landra and John Cochenour. 1998. “Visual Cues in Computer-Mediated
Communication: Supplementing Text with Emoticons.” Journal of Visual Liter-
acy 18 (2): 201–215.
Suzuki, Kōji [鈴木晃二]. 2007. “Kaomoji no rekishi ni tsuite [On the History of
Kaomoji].” Meikai nihongo [Meikai Japanese Language Journal] 12 (3): 91–96.
Takamoto, Jōji [高本條治]. 1993. “Pasokon tsūshin ni okeru ‘face mark’ no kinō
[The Functions of the ‘Face Mark’ within Computer Communication].” Nihon-
gogaku [Japanese Linguistics] 12 (13): 63–74.
Verhaegen, Philippe. 2010. Signe et communication [Sign and Communication].
Louvain-la-Neuve: De Boeck Université.
Part V
Material Mediations
11 Who Is Afraid of Mr. Yuk?
The Display of the Basic
Emotion of Disgust in an
‘Analogue Precursor’ to
Contemporary Emoji
Alexander Christian
“If you see a round green face scowling back at you, [d]o not eat or
drink or smell, ‘cause Mr. Yuk is warning you!”
(Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh 2015, n.pag.)1
The present case study focuses on the example of Mr. Yuk (see Figure
11.1), a character used primarily in the United States of America to edu-
cate children in the prevention of poisoning. First introduced in Pitts-
burgh in 1971, the registered trademark of Mr. Yuk chronologically falls
between Harvey Ball’s Smiley from the year 1963 and Scott E. Fahlman’s
first use of the emoticons :-) and :-( in a discussion forum at Carnegie Mel-
lon University in 1982 (in order to distinguish serious messages from jokes
and accordingly prevent misunderstandings; see Fahlman 1982, 2015).
It thus came into existence sometime before the official introduction of
emoji in Japan in the late 1990s by the Japanese telecommunications
company NTT DoCoMo. In its extreme stylistic simplification, Mr. Yuk
bears a strong resemblance to the underlying design principles of contem-
porary emoji, although he made his appearance as a material sticker prior
to them. Despite their plain structure, even the simplest character designs
seem to be able to display a specific emotion. However, Mr. Yuk was not
only meant to function as the personification of the basic emotion of dis-
gust; he additionally came to replace the common ‘skull and crossbones’
pictogram (see Figure 11.2) as a general poison warning, a much older
and internationally standardized warning sign.
This chapter sets out to explore the design considerations and their under-
lying assumptions for the alternative warning sign of Mr. Yuk—developed
with regard to the specific target group of toddlers and children—and
what objectives they tried to pursue. At the center of interest lies thus an
evaluation of the results of experiments dealing with the effectiveness of
Mr. Yuk. The present contribution finally tries to answer the question of
whether or not the addition of facial expressions can help to simplify the
interpretation of pictograms and thus increase their efficiency. Findings
of facial expression research, like, for example, the ‘Facial Action Coding
System’ developed by Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, are used to
clarify whether Mr. Yuk is a successful representation of the emotional
Figure 11.1 Mr. Yuk Sticker, a common figure from poisoning prevention in the
United States of America. The Mr. Yuk logo is a registered trademark
of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. Used with permission.
See also Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. 2002. “Mr. Yuk Educa-
tional Materials Online Store: Everyone’s Guide to Everyday Poisons
Brochure.” UPMC. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.upmc.com/Services/
poison-center/Pages/store.aspx2
Figure 11.2 Warning sign “Warning; Toxic material”, ISO 7010—W016 (see ISO
2011, 110)3
Who Is Afraid of Mr. Yuk? 213
facial expression of disgust and in how far it can be considered ‘uni-
versally’ comprehensible. Finally, this examination also touches on some
implications involved in the understanding of emoji.
1. A Short Profile of Mr. Yuk

In the prevention of poisoning, particularly in the United States, Mr. Yuk
is among the most prominent approaches up until today. The figure of
Mr. Yuk relies on a simplified representation of the emotional facial expres-
sion of disgust. Mr. Yuk was initially introduced as a replacement for the
traditional poison warning sign, the skull on top of two crossed bones
(see Figure 11.2). The main reason for this substitution lies in the by-now
dominant, mitigated, and therefore less deterring meaning of the pirate
flag ‘Jolly Roger’, which also features a skull on top of two crossbones.
Kenneth C. Schneider concludes that the sign has consequently largely lost
its significance as a deterrent and might even evoke positive connotations.
Some children even seem to believe that the once fearsome symbol nowa-
days stands for ‘pirate food’, a development that can be traced back to the
consumer culture of the 20th century (see Schneider 1977, 71).
Mr. Yuk’s deviation from the standardized warning sign already man-
ifests itself in the round shape and the green color of the sticker, since
warning signs are usually found as triangles on a yellow background.
Moreover, standardized pictograms on signs in public places or in work
spaces are regarded as official messages of institutions or public authori-
ties. They therefore tend to be neutral in tone, just like legislative texts.
Accordingly—in contrast to emoji for which the display of various emo-
tions is essential—facial expressions are usually omitted when designing
pictograms. Various instances for the gradual convergence of standardized
pictograms and ‘freer’ forms of graphic design could be named, however.4
The character of Mr. Yuk, whose design will be considered in more detail
below, is one of the best-known examples and also happens to be the object
of many scientific studies.5 The term character generally describes a graphi-
cally designed, mostly human or anthropomorphic figure. The use of such
characters—instead of internationally standardized pictograms—suggests
an important, but hitherto neglected connection between the graphic means
of information design, on one hand, and comics and manga, on the other.
Typical for the graphic design of such characters is a keen use of gestures
and facial expressions; characters sometimes function as creative supple-
ments to established systems of standardized pictograms:
Characters have long established themselves as fixed currency in the

global imagination, creative exchange and in our visual communica-
tion routines. They continue to be generated at a breathless, almost
limitless pace by a growing fan base that goes beyond the characters’
commercial purposes.
(Scherer and Stemmler 2009, 3)
214 Alexander Christian
The graphic design of Mr. Yuk is certainly reminiscent of emoticons (a port-
manteau word from emotion and icon, used to describe ASCII character
combinations) and emoji (a loanword from Japanese e for picture and moji
for character).6 They charge our everyday communication with emotional
content and can be used to consciously express individual emotional states or
moods. Within computer-mediated interaction between individuals or groups
of individuals, they are commonly used to achieve all sorts of disambigu-
ations (see Derks, Fischer, and Bos 2008, 777). Mr. Yuk, in contrast, is a
registered trademark of the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh at the Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Medical Center.7 Unlike other warning signs, it may
thus not be used or reproduced without prior authorization. Designed at the
Pittsburgh Poison Center and mainly employed in the United States, stickers
carrying Mr. Yuk’s face are meant to warn of poisonous substances, especially
in households with children who have not yet learned to read or write (see
Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh 2015, endnote 1). Adults are encouraged
to affix the label to household products with an inherent poisoning hazard.
The campaign around Mr. Yuk accordingly also encourages reflection about
the accessibility of such products for children, since secure barriers probably
remain the most effective method of poison prevention, after all.
The stickers, which are 3.175 centimeters in diameter, usually contain
the toll-free telephone number of an emergency call center (e.g., 1-800-
222-1222), in addition to the inscription “Poison Help!” or the name of
the nearest poison center in capital letters. The most salient features of Mr.
Yuk’s circular green face, usually placed right in the middle of the round
stickers, are his narrowed eyes and his outstretched tongue with the corners
of his mouth pointing sharply downward. His eyebrows are set at an angle
to the root of the nose, so that they almost form an acute angle with the
eyes (facing slantingly downwards). Mr. Yuk’s complexion can be described
as a sickly, noxious green. He is far from being the only sticker resembling
an emoji that has found its way into the everyday ‘analogue world’.8 The
licensing of the so-called smiley icon for all kinds of promotional activi-
ties has long turned into a global business. While emoticon and emoji are
generic terms, ‘smiley’ refers to an original brand name that has, indeed,
been trademarked. Although smileys feature a clearer ‘comic-style’, a fun-
damental resemblance to contemporary emoji is unmistakable. The ques-
tion arises then, whether stickers with such ‘funny faces’ can weaken the
effectiveness of Mr. Yuk by causing misunderstandings. If Mr. Yuk clearly
resembles these playful categories of signs, how does this relate to his essen-
tial function: to alert or even repel recipients of all ages at first glance?
2. The Message of the Mr. Yuk Sticker

The Washington Poison Center’s information booklet “Prevention &
Treatment Guide | Poisons” provides the following instructions for using
Mr. Yuk stickers: “The national toll-free Poison Center phone number,
1-800-222-1222, is on Mr. Yuk stickers. Put them on poisons to keep the
number handy in an emergency. Teach kids to ‘stay away’ if they see Mr.
Yuk”.9 The Washington Poison Center does not rely on children feeling
repelled by the face in a ‘natural’ way and thus emphasizes that children
need to be taught to ‘stay away’ first. The very name, too, displays a
similar tension between (linguistic) conventions and a more ‘immediate’
meaning. The term yuk (alternatively yuck) represents an exclamation of
disgust, which is onomatopoetically modeled after a spontaneous, gut-
tural sound. Therefore, the meaning of the name ‘Mr. Yuk’ is to be under-
stood in accordance with the expression of his ‘disgusted’ face. Charles
Darwin considers the expression of disgust primarily in the context of
ingestion and our sense of smell, highlighting the innate nature of guttural
sounds mentioned earlier:
With respect to the face, moderate disgust is exhibited in various

ways; by the mouth being widely opened, as if to let an offensive
morsel drop out; by spitting; by blowing out of the protruded lips; or
by a sound as of clearing the throat. Such guttural sounds are written
ach or ugh.
(Darwin 2009 [1872], 236)
Mr. Yuk’s bilious green facial color could be regarded as a symptom of

some toxic effect. At least metaphorically speaking, someone who is green
in the face is obviously not feeling well, as in the case of indigestion or
seasickness. The term bilious green calls to mind bile, which can also
cause disgust. Mr. Yuk’s name, countenance, and color then support
each other to create the intended negative or repulsive effect. While the
meaning of his facial expression and his coloring could be deduced from
inspection, Mr. Yuk’s name must be conveyed explicitly. Mr. Yuk’s ‘theme
song’, which was used in a commercial as part of a poisoning prevention
campaign, delivers his message in a nutshell. It is child-oriented and, as
such, accompanied by a ‘catchy’ melody (see Children’s Hospital of Pitts-
burgh 2015, endnote 1). The lyrics contain the usual cautionary notes of
a warning, express the kind of danger that is involved here, and provide
directives on what to do or what not to do in order to prevent the danger
of imminent injury:
When you see him stop and think,

Do not smell, do not drink,
Do not touch, do not eat
Or you will be sick!10
It is all the more astonishing that the word poison, which the preven-
tion of poisoning is first and foremost about, does not appear within the
song once. Instead, toxins are paraphrased as “bad things”, “things that
children shouldn’t touch”, “things marked Yuk make you sick”, or simply
as a “danger” (Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh 2015, endnote 1).
3. Mr. Yuk and the Representation of the Basic Emotion

of Disgust
In order to be able to make a more precise statement about the specific strate-
gies behind the development of Mr. Yuk, it must first be clarified whether
Mr. Yuk expresses the basic emotion of disgust ‘correctly’. The Facial Action
Coding System (FACS), developed by Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, is
used to describe facial expressions (see Ekman 1988, 181–224). Observable
changes in facial expressions can be measured and described objectively
using FACS. Its basis is a coded, systematic division of the movements of
the facial muscles into anatomically derived minimal units of movement,
so-called action units, which are related to the facial expressions (see Ekman
2001, 125). According to Ekman, a single muscle excitation is enough to
clearly determine the emotional facial expression of disgust:
Only one muscle is needed to signal disgust clearly (levator labii supe-
rioris, alquae nasi [sic],11 which raises the nares, pulls up the infra-
orbital triangle, and wrinkles the sides of the nose), and that muscle
action does not occur systematically in any other emotion.
(Ekman 1992, 551)
Along with this, disgust could be seen in the raised upper lip and the wrin-
kled nose. The Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi cannot only wrinkle
the nose and lift the nostrils as well as the upper lip but can also pull down
the inside of the eyebrows when the muscle is strongly stimulated. For
Ekman, this eyebrow movement is not a characteristic sign of disgust, but
a kind of accompanying muscular circumstance involving the orbicularis
oculi or the depressor glabellae (see Ekman 1988, 84–85, 87). Occasion-
ally, this is misunderstood as a sign of anger, but the upper eyelids are not
raised in disgust and the eyebrows are not pulled together. The decisive
factors are the changes in the nose, mouth, and cheeks, not those of the
eyes (see Ekman 2007, 184). The horseshoe shape resulting mainly from
the recessed nasolabial folds (which run laterally from the nose to the cor-
ners of the mouth) is found in attenuated form in the downturned corners
of Mr. Yuk’s mouth. Having omitted the clearer characteristics of disgust
in Mr. Yuk’s design completely, makes misunderstandings more likely.
In conclusion, it should be noted that Mr. Yuk is not a particularly apt
representation of the facial expression for the emotion of disgust. Accord-
ing to the FACS, the emotion of disgust is not clearly represented due to
the missing nose and the corresponding wrinkles, from which changes in
the facial expression could be read off reliably. The outstretched tongue is
only a secondary indicator. However, as a depiction of an instrumental act
(of pushing out the contents of his mouth with his tongue, or as an act that
produces an emotional impulse), Mr. Yuk could still be associated with
disgust relatively reliably. His facial expression is ‘frozen’ at the climax of
the event, as evidenced by his outstretched tongue, which turns the whole
representation into a kind of emblem. Ekman defines emblems as gestures
with fixed meanings that are known to at least all adults within a culture
(see Ekman 2001, 101–104). However, the tongue has a rather unnatural
position as it adjoins directly to the upper lip, whereby the lips are not
graphically highlighted. In order to eject the contents from the inside
of the mouth, it logically requires a space in between, as e.g. the ‘face
vomiting’ emoji proves (see Figure 11.6).
Indications that emotions reveal themselves to varying degrees in the
face—including in subsequent actions, such as choking or vomiting—can
also be found in their linguistic descriptions. The terms disgust, aversion,
loathing, revulsion, repulsion, repugnance, distaste, and so on can be
used to classify the degree of disgust, just to give a vague idea here of how
nuanced this state of feeling can be described. Mr. Yuk, in contrast, always
looks the same, meaning he may be hard-pressed to match the nuances of
human facial expressions or language.
4. Emoji in the Footsteps of Mr. Yuk

How do emoji represent disgust? Since Mr. Yuk is very similar to the emo-
tional facial expressions of contemporary emoticons or emoji, an excursus
to these digital counterparts of pictograms appearing on graphical user
interfaces should provide a helpful overview of their respective designs.
While Mr. Yuk does not clearly exhibit the basic emotion of disgust
according to FACS, his similarity to the pulled down corners of the mouth
of the schematic ‘frowning face with open mouth’ emoji (see Figure 11.3)
Figure 11.3 The ‘frowning face with open mouth’ emoji (U+1F626); Graphic
‘Symbola’ by George Douros. Used with permission
at least points to the expression of a negative emotion. The emoji is listed
under the category ‘face-negative’ in the “Full Emoji List, v11.0”.12 This
analogy is problematic, however, because among the emoji listed in the
Unicode Standard there is another, more recent emoji, with greater simi-
larity to Mr. Yuk. The emoji ‘face with stuck-out tongue and tightly closed
eyes’ carries the rather harmless meaning of ‘kidding, not serious’.13 In the
“Full Emoji List, v11.0”, it is listed as ‘squinting face with tongue’ in the
category ‘smileys & people’, subcategory ‘face-neutral’.
A comparison between different versions of the ‘kidding, not seri-
ous’ emoji U+1F61D (see Figure 11.4) shows a relevant change in its
design.14 The corners of the mouth have moved from a straight position
to markedly raised corners of the mouth. Consequently, it seems to be
much more friendly nowadays, because its mouth now resembles the
‘grinning face’ emoji (U+1F600). The Unicode Consortium has, how-
ever, now introduced two emoji resembling Mr. Yuk much closer: ‘nau-
seated face’ (U+1F922; see Figure 11.5) and ‘face vomiting’ (U+1F92E;
see Figure 11.6), the latter being more explicit than Mr. Yuk in showing
the act itself. Again, the ‘nauseated face’ cannot stay completely true
to the representation of disgust because it is missing a nose and thus
the respective wrinkles. A certain degree of fear seems to be blended
in when comparing it with the emoji ‘frowning face with open mouth’
(see Figure 11.3).
Figure 11.4 The ‘kidding, not serious’ emoji (U+1F61D); Graphic ‘Symbola’ by
George Douros. Used with permission
Figure 11.5 The ‘nauseated face’ emoji (U+1F922); OpenMoji version. See HfG
Schwäbisch Gmünd (Design University). Accessed 30 June 2019.
https://openmoji.org
Figure 11.6 The ‘face vomiting’ emoji (U+1F92E); OpenMoji version. See HfG
Schwäbisch Gmünd (Design University). Accessed 30 June 2019.
https://openmoji.org
The ‘nauseated face’ emoji was added to the Unicode Standard in 2016.
Emojipedia describes the emoji as follows:15 “A green face, shown with
pursed lips as though it may be about to vomit. Used literally for sickness,
or as a display of disgust”.16 The emoji ‘face vomiting’ is defined as “[a]
smiley shown to be so throwing up green vomit. May be metaphorically;
to emphasise disgust at a person or situation; or in a literal sense. Nause-
ated Face offers a similar sentiment, with less intensity”.17 It was added
to the Unicode Standard in 2017.
Emoji overcome language barriers and enable communication, but even
these playful symbols are not free from misunderstandings. Emoji are
encoded in the Unicode standard, which assigns a fixed meaning to each
emoji. The development of emoji usually takes place independently of its
actual users, who are, of course, free to make any suggestions and can
influence the meanings of emoji in the way they actually use them. For an
internationally ‘uniform’ understanding, however, emoji would have to be
taught and learned. As a rule, however, we do not systematically study the
meanings defined by the Unicode Consortium but, rather, attribute meaning
on the basis of our experiences. The understanding of emoji is thus strongly
dependent on the respective context of use and can bring about rapid
changes in meaning. As a consequence, emoji are not a ‘visual Esperanto
in pictures’ generally understandable to everyone. Some emoji are compre-
hended in different ways due to their visual nature and that leaves room for
interpretation (see Miller et al. 2016). When messaging across platforms,
the same emoji can, additionally, be rendered very incoherently by different
vendors, whose graphic design follows their respective corporate design:
“[T]he Unicode Consortium provides a code and name (e.g., U+1F600 for
‘grinning face’) but not the actual graphic” (Miller et al. 2016, 1). This, in
turn, provides a wide scope for the graphic rendering of a given emoji and
thus its interpretation, which the users are often not even aware of. After all,
we seldomly learn the meaning of emoji systematically by heart. While this
range is based on graphic differences in the design of the emoji, even sup-
posedly ‘fixed meanings’ can suffer from individual interpretations. Hence,
the creative use of emoji and of emoji combinations resembles a language
that the respective community is constantly transforming by simply using
it. We experience special shifts in meaning, for example, in the language of
youth, which often puzzles adults.
Emoji will certainly continue to permeate our digital life in the fore-
seeable future. Even if we do not use them ourselves, we are confronted
with their existence, not only on smartphones and computer screens but
increasingly also in public spaces as on the advertising posters of ALDI’s
(a German discount supermarket chain) latest campaign. The campaign
constructs emoji out of food products, just like Giuseppe Arcimboldo did
in the Renaissance. We may not be supposed to play with food, but we
can definitely play with emoji. It is fun and attracts attention after all, at
least according to the intentions of the company.
Within the campaign, ALDI makes reference to the ‘face screaming in
fear’-emoji (U+1F631) that is itself inspired by Edvard Munch’s iconic
painting The Scream from 1893. Originally, The Scream reflected a feeling
of horror and helplessness in the face of an undefined threat. ALDI rein-
terprets the expression of this feeling into a positive statement: “Shock-
ingly low prices! (Schockierend gute Preise!)” (see Figure 11.7).
In a completely different context, Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt has investi-
gated how an originally naturally negative meaning can be turned into its
opposite. The metaphorical use of gestures and facial expressions among
the Eipo in New Guinea is a peculiar example of this (see Eibl-Eibesfeldt
1989, 471–472, 480). With hands on the side of one’s head—quite similar
to the Munch painting and the ALDI campaign—members of the Eipo
express that they are very happy or very sad or that something tastes very
good. At first glance, this gesture seems strange and is reminiscent of a
protective movement. Indeed, at least in the position in front of the ears,
the examples show a strong resemblance to Munch’s The Scream. Accord-
ing to Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, however, the deeper meaning developed
out of the phrase “it’s so good, it scares the shit out of you” (original
German: “es ist so gut, dass es einem Angst und Bange wird”), which is
Figure 11.7 ALDI Campaign by Oliver Voss, which started at the end of February
2018; retrieved from Gründel, Verena. 2018. “OoH-Kampagne:
Aldi lässt Emojis sprechen [OoH-Campaign: Aldi Speaks through
Emoji].” WUV, February 23. Accessed 1 June 2019. www.wuv.de/
marketing/ooh_kampagne_aldi_laesst_emojis_sprechen; used with
permission
connected with the use of the English word terrific. The fascinating evi-
dence of this connection between gestures and facial expressions, one
the one hand, and linguistic idioms, on the other, draws attention to the
meanings of even ‘natural’ and apparently unambiguous facial expres-
sions as not internationally uniform or even unchanging.
5. Conclusion: About the Effectiveness of the

Mr. Yuk Sticker
It is astonishing how diverse the possibilities for the application of even
basic emoji are and which difficulties of understanding can thereby arise.
Although some basic emotions may be regarded as universally compre-
hensible, in the case of emoji or similar graphic representations of emo-
tions, we are not dealing with immediately perceptible expressions in
the face of a counterpart (as in interpersonal communication) but with a
symbolic use of signs that can be interpreted quite differently. Ultimately,
emoji mean more than is consciously expressed, in a way that is difficult
for the user to control. To what extent, then, can the interpretation of
pictograms be simplified, and their effectiveness be enhanced, by the addi-
tion of features of nonverbal communication, such as gestures and facial
expressions? The answer to these questions suggested by Mr. Yuk would
be neither a simplified understanding nor necessarily a higher degree of
efficiency. Both seem rather predominantly based on accompanying edu-
cational campaigns (see Krenzelok and Garber 1981, 751–752). David M.
Fergusson emphasizes that the investigation of Krenzelok and Garber falls
short confirming the actual effectiveness of poisoning prevention through
this kind of educational campaign. Only significant changes in the chil-
dren’s language behavior could be proved, including their understanding
of the meaning of Mr. Yuk as well as the term poison and its appearance
(see Fergusson 1982, 1013). The sticker thus raises awareness of poison
centers and emergency numbers, as Gary M. Oderda and Wendy Klein-
Schwartz have pointed out concerning the more indirect benefit of Mr.
Yuk (see Oderda and Klein-Schwartz 1985, 281–282).
Undeniably, emotional facial expressions have a major impact on
human behavior and can influence our decisions regarding risk behavior.
Although the emotional facial expressions for basic emotions, such as
disgust, are considered to be universal in shape and therefore generally
understandable, perception and interpretation may vary depending on
conventional representation rules. Mr. Yuk’s graphic design limits his
generalizability. Above all, important features according to FACS are
missing for an unambiguous expression of the basic emotion disgust,
which makes misunderstandings likely. Mr. Yuk is supposed to show a
disgust reaction after all, but he is not disgusting himself. Mr. Yuk may
hence be associated with disgust only when he is interpreted as a repre-
sentation of an instrumental act or as an emblem.
With regard to the discussion of emoji ‘universality’, it is unlikely that
even Mr. Yuk clearly and exclusively evokes negative connotations. The
examination of emoji has also shown their strong contextual dependence
and many rapid changes in their meaning, as the example from the ALDI
campaign suggests. Even if negative connotations could be ensured, it
would not be guaranteed that they also affected their context—such as
the containers and their contents, which Mr. Yuk is supposed to label as
‘toxic’. Rather, it is to be feared that Mr. Yuk, on the contrary, even draws
attention to himself, especially for toddlers, which would make him not
deterring, but even inviting, or which could challenge them to a playful
violation of the rule (see Vernberg, Culver-Dickinson, and Spyker 1984,
1020). For toddlers, packages marked with Mr. Yuk’s face may become
more attractive, because toddlers are, in general, used to anthropomor-
phized toys. Mr. Yuk is a registered trademark and a character who,
as personified disgust, addresses children with his own song in televi-
sion commercials. Not only does his design deviate in shape, color, and
presence of facial expressions from the ISO warning sign category, but
his application is also quite unusual. In different contexts, pictograms
with emotional facial expressions have nevertheless been attributed an
increased signal character and greater efficiency, due to a supposedly
higher motivation for the recipients to follow the instructions of the signs.
One example is when it comes to making motorists slow down in areas
with children, another when it is about convincing dog owners not to
take their dogs with them into a shop (see Christian 2017, 365–367). The
deviation from international standards thus follows the motto of prodesse
et delectare, to ‘instruct and to delight’, or to instruct by being delightful.
However, a clear and unambiguous understanding of the message always
remains at stake.
Notes
1. Excerpt from Mr. Yuk’s Song, transcribed by the author. While the Chil-
dren’s Hospital of Pittsburgh offers a complete audio version, the promotional
video available on YouTube includes a shorter version of the song, see anony-
mous [Greenie007]. 2006. “Mr. Yuk Commercial.” YouTube, February 20.
Accessed 1 June 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLsONa3gKIQ.
2. See also Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. 2015. “Mr. Yuk.” UPMC.
Accessed 1 June 2019. www.chp.edu/injury-prevention/teachers-and-parents/
poison-center/mr-yuk.
3. See also Wikimedia Commons. 2013. “ISO 7010.” Wikipedia Commons.
Accessed 1 June 2019. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ISO_7010_
W016.svg.
4. In this chapter, the term pictogram refers to pictograms in public spaces like
the set of ‘public information symbols’ or ‘safety signs’ of the International
Organization for Standardization (see ISO 2007, 2011; Christian 2017,
40–44).
5. See Krenzelok and Garber (1981), Fergusson (1982), Fergusson et al. (1982).
Krenzelok (1982). Vernberg, Culver-Dickinson, and Spyker (1984), Oderda
and Klein-Schwartz (1985), Broadhead (1986), McCarrick and Ziaukas
(2009), Duncan and Dempsey (2010), and Pooley and Fiddick (2010).
6. The Unicode Consortium also introduced so-called emoticons in version 10.0
of The Unicode Standard under the category “Emoji & Pictographs”. This
makes them technically a subcategory of ‘emoji’ as opposed to ‘emoticons’
(which are made up of ASCII character combinations). In order not to confuse
the two meanings of emoticons, I stick to the general term emoji here.
7. See UPMC. “About Mr. Yuk™.” UPMC: Life Changing Medicine. Accessed
1 June 2019. www.upmc.com/Services/poison-center/Pages/about-yuk.aspx. A
vivid description of the history of Mr. Yuk’s creation is given by Christopher
McCarrick and Tim Ziaukas (2009, 29).
8. According to The Original Smiley Brand, Franklin Loufrani created and
trademarked the Smiley in 1972, see Smiley. “Our Story.” Smiley. Accessed 1
June 2019. www.smiley.com/emoticons/dictionary.
9. See Washington Poison Center. 2017. “Poison Prevention & Treatment
Guide.” Washington Poison Center. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://www.
wapc.org/wp-content/uploads/poison_brochure_2017.pdf. See also the web-
site of the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, endnote 2.
10. See endnote 1.
11. The correct Latin name for the lifter of the upper lip and the nasal wing is
Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi.
12. See Unicode Consortium. 2018. “Full Emoji List, v11.0.” Unicode.org,
December 12. Accessed 1 June 2019. http://www.unicode.org/emoji/
charts-11.0/emoji-list.html.
13. See Unicode Consortium. 1991–2014. “Emoticons.” Unicode.org. Accessed
1 June 2019. www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F600.pdf.
14. See endnote 11–12.
15. Emojipedia is an online platform that collects all emoji from their different
versions of the Unicode Standard and their renderings on various mobile
platforms in order to make them available in a clearly arranged way; see
Emojipedia. Accessed 1 June 2019. https://emojipedia.org.
16. See Emojipedia. 2018. “Nauseated Face.” Emojipedia. Accessed 1 June 2019.
https://emojipedia.org/nauseated-face.
17. See Emojipedia. 2018. “Face Vomiting.” Emojipedia. Accessed 1 June 2019.
https://emojipedia.org/face-with-open-mouth-vomiting.
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Children 138 (11): 1018–1020.
12 From Digital to Analog
Kaomoji on the Votive Tablets
of an Anime Pilgrimage
Dale K. Andrews
Introduction
In Japan, anime (animated films or series) increasingly adopt real-life
scenery into their background imagery. Fans of such productions make a
collective effort to identify the actual locations. The more zealous tran-
scend the normal parameters of fan activity by electing to travel to such
places intent on making an emotional connection with the productions
that have captivated them. They commonly refer to this activity as seichi
junrei, 聖地巡礼 (‘sacred-site pilgrimages’), or more specifically as an
‘anime pilgrimage’. Ultimately, fans make this journey to search for a
three-dimensional manifestation of a two-dimensional world. A curious
fusion between contemporary Japanese popular culture and traditional,
religious practice is occurring within the context of these ‘pilgrimages’.
At Shinto shrines throughout Japan, people inscribe prayers on small,
wooden votive tablets. Fans, too, have taken to dedicating votive tab-
lets as a by-product of their performing these ritual treks. In contrast to
ordinary shrinegoers, however, fans adorn the tablets with cartoon-like
illustrations and argotic language that derives from both anime and online
culture.
The fans, who are well-versed in computer-mediated communication
(CMC), attempt to further traverse the boundary between the digital
and analog by injecting elements of CMC into their pilgrimages. Sakai
Noboru says that “[w]hen the writing practices pertaining to a particu-
lar medium are quite familiar for its users, they begin to apply those
conventions on other occasions as well, sometimes in situations where
that type of language practice is not appropriate” (Sakai 2013, 150).
Bearing this in mind, I examine the creative use of pictorial symbols
that bear a close resemblance to emoticons, kaomoji, or emoji. While
one might question whether these terms and their conceptual distinc-
tions can be applied to ‘offline sites’ in a straightforward manner, it
seems clear that the pictorial symbols cannot be accounted for without
recourse to writing traditions that developed in message boards, on
mobile phones, and so forth.
228 Dale K. Andrews
A Progressive Research Posture
Even though I had early on identified the use of kaomoji on the tab-
lets, at first, I failed to consider their significance. Initially, my research
questioned whether fans inscribed ‘actual’ prayers on the votive tablets:
fundamentally a text-focused approach. Eventually, I realized the need
to additionally examine fan artwork on the tablets as well, because the
artworks ‘animate’ the pilgrimage sites in the minds of fans (see Andrews
2014, 2015). Despite the fact that an ever-increasing number of research-
ers are investigating anime pilgrimages and the related tablets, the rela-
tionship with CMC has yet to be addressed in detail. Hence, this chapter
is foremost an attempt to foster an awareness of this hitherto unexplored
phenomenon. Echoing the words of Eli Dresner and Susan C. Herring, we
must ask, “[A]re there other functions of emoticons that have so far been
missed by researchers?” (Dresner and Herring 2010, 263).
The Anime Production and the Pilgrimage

In 2002, the Japanese dōjin, 同人 (peer production), circle “07th Expan-
sion” released a visual novel-type PC game titled Higurashi no naku koro
ni, ひぐらしのなく頃に (hereafter: Higurashi, Engl. When They Cry). The
story centers on a rural town plagued by a series of mysterious deaths. An
anime version was first broadcast on Japanese television in spring 2006.
Its popularity spawned the release of manga, novels, a live-action film,
and successive anime. After the initial television broadcast, fans began
their pilgrimage en masse. Anime pilgrims usually converge on the places
on which an anime is modeled. But for many fans, an anime pilgrimage
begins and ends online. Fans obtain information about the pilgrimage site
from other fans through social-networking sites and blogs. Setting out on a
pilgrimage, they search for the real-world places that appear in the anime.
In the case of Higurashi, fans travel to the village of Shirakawagō in Gifu
prefecture, a UNESCO World Heritage site. After finishing their pilgrim-
age, fans go back online to add their own account. However, the connec-
tion between the online world and the pilgrimage does not end there.
A Shinto shrine is an integral part of the religious fabric of Japan. Visi-
tors to a shrine walk under an arch toward the building enshrining the
deity. There they will throw coins into an offertory box, shake a rope to
ring a bell, bow, and, with hands placed together, say a silent prayer. Just
like many other anime, Higurashi’s narrative features one such shrine.
Pilgrimaging Higurashi fans make it a point to visit the Shirakawagō
Hachiman Shrine. Arriving at the shrine, they will view, without excep-
tion, the rack where votive tablets are displayed (see Figure 12.1). For
fans, the rack is essentially an analog equivalent to CMC. Similar to how
users add messages to an online comment section or discussion board
thread, fans interact with each other through the tablets on the rack (see
From Digital to Analog 229
Figure 12.1 Votive tablet rack at Shirakawagō Hachiman Shrine; photograph D.A.
Satō 2009, 81; Andrews 2014, 220–221). The non-face-to-face nature of

CMC is thus carried over to the pilgrimage site, where fans stand side by
side viewing tablets (left by other fans) on the rack without feeling the
need to communicate directly, person to person. From Lynne S. McNeill’s
(2009, 84) perceptive analysis, we learn that online interaction, by means
of texting and chatting, and non-online interaction, for example by means
of the tablets, are equally ‘real’ forms of face-to-face communication to
‘digital natives’ such as the Higurashi fans.
Method and Material

On November 23, 2007, I conducted a survey of all the votive tablets
dedicated at the Shirakawagō Hachiman Shrine. Each votive tablet was
photographed using a digital camera. Afterward, the content of prayers,
messages, and artworks was gleaned from each tablet for analysis. Fans
often write the date of their visit on the tablets. While the oldest fan tablet
dated back to 2005, most were dedicated in 2007. Out of the 577 votive
tablets on display at the shrine, 511 had textual or illustrational references
to anime and online culture, indicative of fans on pilgrimage, whereas 66
230 Dale K. Andrews
had no discernable connection. Out of these 511 tablets, 469 specifically
referenced Higurashi through text or artwork. Pertinent to our discussion,
however, kaomoji were drawn on 63 tablets. Despite the risk of oversim-
plification, I propose three categories for subsequent discussion: kaomoji
accompanying written messages, decorative kaomoji, and kaomoji within
other illustrations.
A Kaomoji Accompanying Written Messages

In total, 26 tablets containing 35 occurrences of kaomoji accompanying
written messages have been identified. What follows is a selection chosen
to draw attention to the variety of kaomoji usage.1 In standard Japanese,
text is written either horizontally (left to right) or vertically (right to left);
however, most examples cited below are of horizontal text with horizon-
tally ‘drawn’, vertically oriented kaomoji.2 The kaomoji on votive tablets
include a variety of script, all coinciding with CMC in Japan (see Sakai
2013, 150): Hiragana and katakana (Japanese syllabaries), kanji (Chinese
characters), rōmaji (Western alphabet), and Arabic numerals. Punctuation,
from both Japanese and Western script, and other symbols are transcribed
to exemplify fan aesthetics. For the sake of brevity, I primarily transcribe
written text used in conjunction with the kaomoji, although fans may have
written more. Additionally, when fans have broken sentences to fit on the
tablets, I have followed suit during the process of transcription. As a caveat,
the transcribed kaomoji are not carbon copies of the hand-drawn originals.
1
受験ktkr orz
合格祈願　
助けてにーにー！／(ô^)＼
[The entrance examination, has finally arrived (= ktkr), to my disap-
pointment (= orz).
Prayer for passing the examination.
Older brother help! ／(ô^)＼]
This tablet contains two illustrations as well as messages and prayers

written by a group of seven people. As deduced from the handwriting,
one member wrote all three lines of this message. The first line reads
‘juken, 受験’, (entrance examination) followed by ‘ktkr’ and then ‘orz’.
The ‘ktkr’ is an internet slang abbreviation for ‘kita, kore, 来た、これ’,
which expresses the feeling experienced when something that has been
much awaited finally arrives (see Kindaichi 2009, 20). It is followed by the
internet kaomoji ‘orz’ that depicts the whole body rather than just a facial
expression. Such kaomoji are uncommon, but ‘orz’ is the most widely
used among them (see Arakawa 2015, 128). As seen from the side, ‘orz’
is a person face down on hands and knees in a position known as dogeza,
土下座. The o is the head, the r forms the back with arms extending to
the ground, and the z resembles the buttocks and kneeling legs. It com-
municates a sense of disappointment or of low spirits (see Kindaichi 2009,
18). The second line reads ‘gōkaku-kigan, 合格祈願’ (prayer for passing/
success). In the third line, ‘nii-nii にーにー’ is a corruption of onii-san,
お兄さん (older brother) and is derived from the characteristic speech of
a Higurashi character. The kaomoji (ô^) projects a sense of happiness,
but—between two inward pointing arms ／(ô^)＼—seemingly hints at
a sense of anxiety that corresponds to the content of the prayer. In the
text, the only punctuation is a single exclamation point placed before the
kaomoji, which concludes the text.
2
[fan’s name] (・ω・)/
（・∀・）スンス－ン
[[fan’s name] (・ω・)/
（・∀・） zoom, zoom]
On this votive tablet the fan wrote a lengthy prayer to the deity in Higu-
rashi, Oyashirosama, to grant the fan’s wish for a Mazda automobile.
Two kaomoji are at the bottom. One decorative kaomoji (discussed later)
comes after the fan’s signature: a smiling face with a waving arm. Drawn
to accompany the text, the other is lettered with the phrase ‘sunsūn, スン
ス－ン’, which is a reference to the lyrics ‘zoom-zoom’ from a song used
in a Mazda commercial.
3
ついにきてしまった . . .
ごめんなさい . . .
ごめんなさい　
ひぐらしの世界ではぅーに
なりまくった（╹ºωº╹）
またきてやひょ!!!!
何かお持ち帰りぃー♡♡♡
[Finally arrived . . .
I’m sorry . . .
I’m sorry
I have become part of this Higurashi world（╹ºωº╹）
I’ll come again!!!!
I want to take something home♡♡♡]
Here, the fan rendered a drawing of the Higurashi character Rena on the
left and wrote a block of text on the right. The twice repeated ‘I’m sorry’
232 Dale K. Andrews
is a set phrase used by Higurashi characters and does not require a literal
interpretation. Rather, fan jargon such as this enriches the atmosphere
surrounding the fan tablets at the shrine where fans work to materialize
the Higurashi world (see Andrews 2014). The use of interpunct. . . . after
the first and second line marks a moment of silence and may further
indicate “hesitation, disappointment, humbleness and so forth” (Sakai
2013, 152). The fourth line is contextually connected to the fifth line, and
the message is textured with ‘hau はう’, which Rena has a habit of say-
ing when troubled. While interpretations may vary, the lines can roughly
be read as ‘I have become part of the Higurashi world’. This statement,
which is conceivably the fan’s main message, is followed by the only
kaomoji on this tablet. The kaomoji, which ends the sentence, displays
a typical mouth, eyes, and eyebrows composition and may be function-
ing as a “hedging device” (Kavanagh 2010, 75) to soften the enigmatic
nature of the fan’s claim. The fan conveyed through the text that this is
a place where the digital/online and analog/non-online worlds merge, a
theme frequently voiced in fan messages. The successive sentences are
accented with exclamation points and heart symbols. The heart symbols
may be used here as an alternative to exclamation points providing a
feeling of excitement but with an added sense of endearment. The final
phrase ‘I want to take something home’ is another of Rena’s pet sayings.
The phrase bespeaks of the fans’ emotional engagement with the pilgrim-
age site and their desire to make Higurashi material.
4
台湾人です♥
来参訪古手八幡神社♥
祈求「合格祈願」
以上。
ーー
P.S. 木板好難畫 (丌 ▽丌 )
魅音萌え[kaomoji like drawing]
[I’m Taiwanese♥
I’ve come to visit Furute Hachiman Shrine
Prayer ‘To pass the examination’
That’s all.
ーー
P.S. It is difficult to write on this tablet (丌 ▽丌 )
(I) love Mion (kaomoji-like drawing)]
Central to this tablet are two Higurashi character depictions: a larger

illustration of Rika and a smaller one of Mion. In the text, the fan wrote
the Higurashi shrine’s name, Furute, and then (crossing it out) wrote in
the proper name, Hachiman Shrine. This is one way by which fans play-
fully blur the boundaries between the Higurashi world and Shirakawagō.
In the postscript, the fan penned two kaomoji-like drawings to express a
smiling face shedding tears (the second one being more complex cannot
be reproduced here). Significantly, the fan’s announcement of being from
overseas speaks to the universality of kaomoji.
5
全ての皆様に
御幸せがあらん事を
拝み奉るトト゜∀トト
[I pray that everyone finds happiness トト゜∀トト]
There is no illustration, only three lines delivering a prayer worded

in a formal, ceremonial style. The smiling kaomoji shows a face with
a mouth and one eye. To effect a side view framed by long, straight
hair (resembling female Higurashi characters), the fan added a pair of
ㇳ-katakana syllables, which also creates a head turn-like movement
similar to how extra parentheses alongside the face form sweeping lines
to generate movement as in manga (see Cohn 2010, 192). At first glance,
the kaomoji appears to be mismatched with the ceremonious language,
but on closer Consideration the prayer itself is imaginably a character
derived wish for everyone’s happiness.
6
空気がきれいで、とても良い所でした。また巡礼におとずれたい
∧ ∧
です。なのですよ ☆ ニパー（^ｖ^）
[The air is clean, what a great place. I would like to visit again on
∧ ∧
a pilgrimage. Na no desu yo ☆nipā （^ｖ^）]
This tablet consists of several references to Higurashi and an illustra-

tion of an unidentified character. The fan talked about their pilgrimage to
Shirakawagō and how they hoped to come again. And as if to underscore
their satisfaction, they added two of Rika’s characteristic utterances. The
first, ‘Na no desu yo’, concludes the preceding comments as a statement
of certainty. The second, ‘nipā’, is simply Rika’s nonsense word. These
utterances, connected by a star mark, are further complemented by a
smiling kaomoji with cat ears, possibly personifying Rika.
7
雛見沢最高です（＊・ω・＊）. ＊+♭　
ひぐらしの聖地に出会え♡♡
どぶろく。どぶどぶ―‼
[Hinamizawa is the greatest（＊・ω・＊）．＊+♭
I have encountered the sacred place of Higurashi ♡♡
The sake. Oh, the sake !!]
234 Dale K. Andrews
A large illustration borders this message referring to Hinamizawa (the
fictional town of Higurashi). The message ends with a smiling kaomoji
embellished with asterisks, which represent blushing cheeks, and a musi-
cal symbol, ♭. The last line references a locally crafted type of sake (alco-
holic beverage). After each line, a decorative symbol appears: a kaomoji
to signify happiness, heart symbols to denote emotional attachment, and
exclamation points to indicate a sense of excitement.
8
無事に卒業できます（・ε・）プエーように . . .
あぅあぅｗｗｗｗｗ
ひなみざわ良い所なのです
にぱー☆
[(I pray)（・ε・）puē to graduate without incident
Au-au wwwww
Hinamizawa is a nice place
nipā ☆]
The fan left no illustrations, only this message. The ‘（・ε・）puē’

represents an online duckface comic illustration that is unrelated to
Higurashi, but, within the context of the pilgrimage, likely it dually
represents the character Mion, who may have her mouth drawn as 3
or reversed as ε. On the third line, the fan jotted an ‘au-au’ (the Higu-
rashi character Hanyū’s characteristic speech element) followed by five
w’s symbolizing laughter. The w derives from net usage and commonly
sits at the end of a sentence. The kanji 笑 (meaning ‘laughter’) reads
warai when transcribed into the Roman alphabet and is often abbrevi-
ated as w.3 Multiple w’s express the comparative degree of humor (see
Kindaichi 2009, 65). The tablet concludes with Rika’s characteristic
utterance ‘nipā, にぱ～’ coupled with a star symbol. The vocalization
‘nipā’ has again no meaning but is commonly transliterated by fans as
‘2%’ (ni-pāsento). The star symbol can be observed in combination
with nipā whether nipā stands alone or in conjunction with other text.
The decorative use of star symbols on the tablets enhances the level
of kawai-sa (cuteness), kawai-sa being an important aesthetic value in
contemporary Japanese society.
9
聖地巡礼記念パピコ（＊′ ∀‵）～♪
悟史くんと詩いが幸せになれますように . . .
オヤシロ様お願いなのです＞＜
悟史きゃん
失敗してごめんね（′
;ω;‵）
みんなも幸せになーれ（∧ω∧）!　
K も魅ぃもレナも沙都子も梨花ちゃまも三四さんもトミーもイリ
ーもクラウドも . . .
みんな大好きだけど(・3・) !
[In commemoration of the pilgrimage Papiko（＊′ ∀‵）～♪
May Satoshi and Shi find happiness . . . Please, I ask Oyashirosama
na no desu＞＜
Satoshi, I’m sorry I messed up （′;ω;‵）
May everyone be happy（∧ω∧）!
K, Mi, Rena, Satoko, Rika, Miyo, Tomi, Iri, and Kuraudo, I love
everyone (・3・) !]
Surrounding two centrally placed illustrations of the characters Satoshi

and Rika are numerous heart and star symbols drawn about the tablet in a
decorative manner. A comparison of the handwriting confirms that all lines
of the text were written by the same person. The tablet contains the most
kaomoji found on any single tablet in the survey. Each of the five kaomoji
conclude separate messages. The first message at the top of the tablet reads
‘In commemoration of the pilgrimage Papiko’. Generally, ‘Papiko’ refers to
a popular Popsicle-like food sold throughout Japan. The concluding kao-
moji （＊′ ∀‵）～♪ has an asterisk representing a blushing cheek that adds
a degree of cuteness and a musical note to indicate humming or singing. In
the next two lines, the fan offered a prayer to Oyashirosama for the happi-
ness of two Higurashi characters. They finished with a closed or squinting
eyes kaomoji ＞＜ that may suggest dissatisfaction, or, coinciding with the
preceding prayer, the closed eyes may symbolize the act of making a wish.
The next kaomoji （′ ;ｗ;‵） follows an apology concerning the poor quality
of the illustration of Satoshi. The kaomoji has semicolon eyes with falling
tears and apostrophe eyebrows. On the next line, ending with a jovial smil-
ing face （∧ｗ∧） and an exclamation point, the fan offered a prayer for
the happiness of ‘everyone’, although the ‘everyone’ seems to be directed at
the eight characters named in the next line, which concludes with a kaomoji
representing the character Mion (・3・) coupled with an exclamation point.
10
（・∀・）ニヤニヤまたくるぜ！
[（・∀・）smiles, I’ll come again! ]
Among a mixture of argotic messages and drawings is the single exam-

ple of a kaomoji with an onomatopoeia. Although researchers have shown
that, when kaomoji and onomatopoeia are combined, the emotional senti-
ment of kaomoji does not necessarily correspond to the meaning of the
onomatopoeia (see Takishita and Okumura 2015, 256), in this case a
grinning face （・∀・） is coupled with the onomatopoeia ‘niya-niya, ニ
ヤニヤ’ , meaning ‘to grin’ or ‘to smirk’.
236 Dale K. Andrews
11
＜・＞＜・＞
Do you know Oyashirosama?
In addition to a multitude of short textual references to Higurashi writ-

ten in Japanese, the preceding text was written in English. This stock
phrase used by fans can be seen on other tablets. However, the fan wrote
this directly below a kaomoji ＜・＞＜・＞centered at the top of the tab-
let. Knowing how some fans illustrate the demon-goddess Hanyū (Oyas-
hirosama’s embodiment in Higurashi) with a stern gaze, this kaomoji
likely represents Hanyū or Oyashirosama.
12
おやしろ様!! スロットギャンバル金運上げて下さい。
２％でいいです。でも祟らないで（´ﾟДﾟ｀）　
（ﾟДﾟ;）あ . . . 足音が一つ余計に聞こえてくるお . . . （;＾ｗ＾）
[Dear Master Oyashiro!! Give me luck with slots, gambling, money.
2% is good. But don’t curse me（´ﾟДﾟ｀）　
（ﾟДﾟ;）Oh . . . I can hear an extra set of footsteps . . . （;＾ｗ＾）]
The fan penned only this message, no illustrations. Starting with a prayer
for luck with ‘gambling’ and playing the ‘slots’, they then crossed these out to
add the more general ‘money’ followed by Rika’s pet saying, ‘2% nipā’. As if
fearing the wrath of the fictional deity Oyashirosama, the fan asked not to be
cursed. To accompany this plea, the fan sketched a face （´ﾟДﾟ｀） exhibit-
ing ‘angst’. The fan both began and ended the second sentence with kaomoji
picturing nervous perspiration rolling down the face, which accentuates the
text that ominously suggests Oyashirosama is close at hand.
13
ひぐらし、
やってませんが、
何か？
ｍう(＾Д＾)ぴギャー
[Higurashi,
I’m not doing it but,
Something of it?
ｍう (＾Д＾) pigyā]
Along with an illustration of Rika, the fan scrawled a single sentence

in three lines culminating with a kaomoji. Pictured on another tablet was
a variant of this kaomoji featuring Mion’s face （・з・）, framed by
the hiragana う and ひ to create う（・з・）ひ. But here, in this example,
to the left of the face (＾Д＾) a hand is shaped from an m (fisted fingers)
placed next to an elongated う (pointing index finger). To the right, the
ひ (hi) is written ぴ (pi) to produce a corrupted vocalization of the CMC
‘pugyā’, which in combination with the preceding text delivers the mean-
ing of ‘You didn’t know that?’ or ‘Nobody told you?’
14
人生＼（＾o＾）／オワタ
ひぐらし人生　＼（＾o＾）／ハジマタ
ナンテ　／（＾o＾）＼コッタイ
[My life ＼（＾o＾）／has finished
My Higurashi life＼（＾o＾）／has begun
What ／（＾o＾）＼the hell]
Inside each of the three lines on this tablet, the fan succinctly wrote
just two or three words. Uncharacteristic of standard written Japanese,
the endings are written in katakana and without punctuation to close the
sentences. Each line has a single kaomoji centered in the middle of the
text. The kaomoji consists of a face with raised arms. The eyes and mouth
are identical for all of them, with only the angling of the arms exhibiting
a slight variation in the third line. The three kaomoji are essentially the
same: a person putting his or her hands up in the air. The text can be read
in alternative ways depending on how the kaomoji are deciphered. If we
read the smiling face with hands in the air as exuberance, then the first
line ‘my life is over’ breathes a positive sentiment. In the third line, the
kaomoji with hands on the head implies a sense of ‘What have I done?’
These three kaomoji can also complement the text by exuding a sense of
resignation as if to say, ‘Who cares?’ or ‘Does it matter?’
In the above examples of kaomoji accompanying written messages, the
position of kaomoji is eye-catching. Whereas in the case of ordinary Japa-
nese CMC where “emoticons are mostly used as sentence closure devices”
(Sakai 2013, 149), the kaomoji on the tablets, although often used to close
sentences, are also positioned in the middle of or even preceding the text.
This may indicate that they serve a purpose beyond just assisting in the
interpretation of the written messages.
B Decorative Kaomoji
As we have seen, kaomoji often accompany written messages; however,
they also adorn the tablets in what might best be described as a decorative
manner. I have identified 32 instances on 31 tablets where the kaomoji
contextually and spatially stand apart from the messages and prayers,
exhibiting no direct influence as to how the text should be interpreted.
Three examples of tablets with decorative kaomoji follow:
238 Dale K. Andrews
15
新潟へ帰れ‼┌(⌒ω⌒)┐
[Go back to Nīgata!! ┌(⌒ω⌒)┐]
There are three kaomoji on this tablet (see Figure 12.2), two of them being
placed in a decorative fashion separated from the text and drawn as (・3・)
and (・ε・) to represent Mion. Although the reasoning behind the message is
unclear, it was likely stated jokingly. With hands raised as if to cover the ears,
the kaomoji that follows the text appears to reinforce the humorous feeling.
16
同志多杉ｗｗｗ
自重汁ｗｗｗｗｗ
η（・ω・η）＜はう～♪
[Too many like-minded people www
Control yourselves wwwww
η（・ω・η）＜haū♪]
Figure 12.2 Tablet with kaomoji accompanying text, decorative kaomoji, and
kaomoji illustrations; photograph D.A.
There is neither illustration nor signature or date, only three lines
of text on this tablet (see Figure 12.3). In the first line, the term dōshi,
同志 (people of the same persuasion), refers to other Higurashi fans
or, in a larger context, to members of the otaku culture.4 The second
part consists of ‘ōsugi, 多杉’, a stand-in for the word ōsugiru, 多すぎ
る (too many). This internet slang term is often written as 大杉 (a large
cedar), a pair of kanji that obscures the meaning and consequently
limits decipherment to digital natives. The second line has three kanji
that read as ‘jichō-shiro, 自重汁’. The last character normally reads as
shiru and means ‘juice’, ‘sap’, or (more commonly) ‘soup’. However,
the phonetic similarity allows for a substitution with the imperative
form of the verb to do (shiro) to mean ‘Do control yourselves!’ A series
of w’s appear on the first and second lines after the text, while the third
line, separated from the first two, begins with a kaomoji using two η
to function as hands. This kaomoji seemingly represents Rena when
coupled with her catchphrase ‘haū’. Finally, a musical note ♪ closes the
sentence providing a melodious accent to this expression, attributed
to Rena.
Figure 12.3 Decorative kaomoji representing Rena; photograph D.A.

240 Dale K. Andrews
17
にぱー＼(＞▽＜)／―☆
絵馬売り切ん！？と思いきや、
神主さんが売って下さいました。ありがとうござい
ます。来てよかった聖地巡礼
[nipā ＼(＞▽＜)／―☆
Thinking the votive tablets might be sold out!?
The shrine’s priest sold one to me. Thank
you. Glad I came on the pilgrimage]
The fan sandwiched this text in between three illustrations of Higurashi

characters. Situated at the top of the tablet, Rika’s ‘nipā’ followed by a
kaomoji with tightly closed eyes occupies the first line. It exudes an air of
joyous excitement. We might surmise that the kaomoji serves to represent
Rika, although no other fans duplicated it. We have already seen that the
character Mion has been represented by a kaomoji used in conjunction
with written messages (Tablets 8 and 9). Yet of the 32 identified decorative
kaomoji, 25 represent anime characters (seven are generic kaomoji). There
are one each for Rena, Rika, and Hanyū (explained later) and another 21
represent Mion,5 drawn as （・з・） or （・ε・）. Although the bulk of
decorative kaomoji represent Higurashi characters, one kaomoji ＼(=w=.)／
appears to represent Izumi Konata, a popular character from the anime series
Lucky☆Star (see Imai 2009, 91).6 Ostensibly, this confirms that the fan
practice of converting anime images into kaomoji is not limited to Higurashi.
As previously noted, decorative kaomoji stand apart from the text.
That said, a number have been paired with a fan’s name (three examples),
Mion’s name (one example), or with a character’s pet expression (15
examples). Regarding pet expressions, in 11 instances we find Mion’s pet
word aruē paired with her kaomoji as in （・３・）アルェー. Not only
do pet expressions like this assist in identifying the character represented
by the kaomoji, but they also give a voice to those kaomoji characters
further enriching the decorative aspect of the kaomoji themselves.
C Kaomoji Within Illustrations

Apart from the decorative kaomoji, there were 15 kaomoji incorporated into
illustrations of Higurashi characters. A careful look at the illustrations of
anime characters depicted on the tablets reveals that the features of the face,
especially the eyes and mouth, were drawn using script and punctuation
characteristic of kaomoji. A prime example contains six Higurashi charac-
ters (see Figure 12.4). The two large, centrally placed characters are Hanyū
(left) and Rika (right). Conforming to anime and manga artistic conventions,
the eyes are exceptionally detailed (see Lamarre 2009, 277). Smaller figures
with less detail frame the central two. Farthest to the right is Mion with her
defining ε for a mouth. Two other characters, Satoko (bottom) and another
Figure 12.4 Multiple kaomoji illustrations; photograph D.A.
image of Hanyū (far upper left) share the same kaomoji ´∀｀ for both their
mouth and eyes with hairstyle and ornamentation differentiating them.
Discussion and Conclusion

In this chapter, I have attempted to shed light on a particular ‘non-online
context’ for kaomoji, the votive tablets of an anime pilgrimage in Japan, to
cultivate a deeper understanding of their dynamic use. Specifically, I have
focused on kaomoji found among the prayers, messages, and artworks of
Higurashi fans. To this end, I have introduced and offered for consider-
ation three categories by which to digest this fan-made smorgasbord of
creativity: kaomoji accompanying written messages, decorative kaomoji,
and kaomoji within illustrations. I now delve into the problematics that
arise with this categorization. The accumulated CMC literature is invalu-
able when it comes to getting a handle on the role of kaomoji that accom-
pany written messages on the tablets. The initial purpose of emoticons
was to elucidate meaning in written digital communication (see Kavanagh
2010, 68). Because nonverbal communication, such as facial expression,
is lacking in CMC, the use of emoticons makes it easier to communicate
emotional sentiment (see Katō et al. 2006, 32; Jibril and Abdullah 2013,
202). By examining workplace emails it was found that people attach
242 Dale K. Andrews
emoticons to “provide information about how an utterance is supposed
to be interpreted” (Skovholt, Gronning, and Kankaanranta 2014, 780).
Reflecting on the particularized examples of kaomoji accompanying mes-
sages, these arguments appear to have validity.
As seen, however, fans additionally augment their use of kaomoji to
include those that are contextually and spatially separated from the text,
not influencing its reading. Decorative emoticons that have been tagged
by researchers are identified as being a part of dialog interactions (see
Markman and Oshima 2007, 9; Provine, Spencer, and Mandell 2007, 302;
Dresner and Herring 2010, 259).7 This differs from the decorative kaomoji
on the tablets, which are detached from the messages and prayers. As I have
aimed to show, fans also apply kaomoji elements to their illustrations of
anime characters. If we consider the kaomoji that personify certain Higu-
rashi characters bridging all three categories, for example, that of Mion, are
then the kaomoji in these three categories truly disparate and disconnected?
It might help to consider the evolution of character-specific kaomoji. A
question worth asking is, Where do Higurashi fans get the inspiration to
insert kaomoji into the character illustrations? The simple answer is that
when Higurashi characters display certain reactions they are pictured in
the anime with what Neil Cohn (2010, 192) refers to as a “hypercartoony”
quality that conveniently transfers to kaomoji. Again, the popularity of
Mion’s kaomoji is unrivaled. But truth be told, the eyes and mouth that
form her characteristic kaomoji are a mirror image of the eyes and mouth
of her ‘hypercartoonish’ duckface counterpart within the anime itself. This
is not to say that the anime has divested fans of creative authority. On the
contrary, the hypercartoonish renderings of Higurashi characters likely serve
as the muse that engenders the making of Higurashi kaomoji. After all, “[a]
drawing is a translation” (Berger 2002, 51). In other words, it is the fan’s
interpretation. In one instance (see Figure 12.5) a fan composed A´・ω・‵A
as a kaomoji for Hanyū. The fan drew what resembles two A letters curved
on the inside, like how parentheses are used to form the side of the face. The
inside crossbar extends downward to help create the horns protruding down
from either side of Hanyū’s head. As stated earlier, the anime pilgrimage
begins and ends online. Consequently, fans are also busy online designing
kaomoji that they envision will become a “tie sign” (Walther and D’Addario
2001, 343), further connecting members of the Higurashi fan community.8
Whether they are drawing illustrations or kaomoji, fans have artistic liberty
to do as they please. To be sure, regarding layout and design, the medium
of the tablet allows more latitude than CMC. Although fan communication
on the tablets mimics CMC, in the hands of the fan the votive tablet is more
akin to a painter’s canvas than to a computer screen.
Despite the fact that emoticons are considered to be “fleeting, requir-
ing little effort” when compared to the composition of a written mes-
sage (Walther and D’Addario 2001, 342), the presence of kaomoji, even
standing alone, imaginably has significance. One tablet (see Figure 12.6)
Figure 12.5 Kaomoji representing Hanyū; photograph D.A.
Figure 12.6 Large Mion kaomoji; photograph D.A.

244 Dale K. Andrews
exemplifies the anomalous aspects inherent to fan-drawn kaomoji. The
focal point is one, large kaomoji representing Mion. On the bottom and
in comparatively small script, the fan wrote the date, a commonly shared
fan meme, and Mion’s idiosyncratic catchphrase. Undoubtedly, the fan
meant for the kaomoji to grab the viewer’s attention. A character-specific
kaomoji may act as an artistic substitute for an illustration, but going one
step further, we might postulate that the kaomoji could, in essence, serve
as an avatar for the character as well. In this way, fans have taken visual
cues from Higurashi to create kaomoji that become transferable icons
flowing between both the digital and the analog world.
Amy Ip (2002, 1) pointed out that emoticons used in instant messaging
allow people to further enhance the ‘social meaning’ attached to their
communication. Whether accompanying a message, standing alone, or
drawn into an illustration, kaomoji amplify the mood, stirring excite-
ment and thus promoting deeper engagement on the part of fans. I would
argue that fans employ kaomoji on the tablets to further drive home the
point that they, as digital natives, are fully engaged in the mediation of
the digital and analog world.
Notes
1. Tablets are listed in the order in which they were photographed.
2. Only one example of a horizontally ‘drawn’, vertically oriented kaomoji added
to the bottom of a line of vertically written text was recorded.
3. Thus, w is similar to ‘LOL’.
4. In its broadest sense, otaku refers to ardent hobbyists. In a narrow definition,
otaku are particularly enthusiasts of anime, manga, games, and their related
culture.
5. In comparison, the most popular Higurashi character to illustrate is Rika.
6. Illustrations from other anime and manga frequently appear on the tablets.
7. Provine, Spencer, and Mandell refer to decorative emoticons as “naked emoti-
cons” (2007, 301).
8. In a September 9, 2007, blog entry, a writer named ‘Rinka’ listed the kaomoji
that she created (during school) for eight Higurashi characters. She wrote that
she enjoys creating them; see anonymous [rinka]. 2007. “Higurashi irusuto &
kaomoji (wara).” Yahoo! Japan Burogu, September 9. Accessed 1 June 2019.
https//blogs.yahoo.co.jp/iksmsk1016/2502706.html.
Works Cited
Andrews, Dale. 2014. “Genesis at the Shrine: The Votive Art of an Anime Pilgrim-
age.” Mechademia: Origins 9: 217–233.
Andrews, Dale. 2015. “An Animated Adoration: The Folk Art of Japanese Gam-
ers.” Akademisk Kvarter/Academic Quarter 10: 118–132.
Arakawa, Ayumi [荒川歩]. 2015. “‘Kaoteki na hyōgen’ no shiyō: Kaomoji kenkyū
kara mita ‘kao’ [The Uses of ‘Face-Like Expressions’: From the Perspective of
Emoticon Research].” The Japanese Journal of Psychonomic Science 34 (1):
127–133.
Berger, John. 2002. “The Ambiguity of the Photograph.” In The Anthropology of
Media: A Reader, edited by Kelly Askew and Richard R. Wilk, 47–55. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers.
Cohn, Neil. 2010. “Japanese Visual Language: The Structure of Manga.” In
Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Toni
Johnson-Woods, 187–203. New York: Continuum International Publishing.
Dresner, Eli and Susan C. Herring. 2010. “Functions of the Nonverbal in CMC:
Imai, Nobuharu [今井信治]. 2009. “Anime ‘seichi junrei’ jissensha no kōdō ni
miru dentōteki junrei to kankō katsudō no kakyō kanōsei: Saitama-ken Washi-
nomiya jinja hōnō ema bunseki o chūshin ni [The Traditional ‘Pilgrimage’ and
the Connective Potential of Tourist Activities as Seen in the Actions of Anime
Pilgrimage Participants: A Focus on the Analysis of Votive Tablets Dedicated at
the Washinomiya Shrine in Saitama Prefecture].” In Media Contents and Tour-
ism: An Experience of Washimiya Town and Neon Genesis of Tourism, edited
by CATS, Hokkaido University, 85–111. Sapporo: Hokkaido University.
Ip, Amy. 2002. “The Impact of Emoticons on Affect Interpretation in Instant
Messaging.” Amy Smile, December. Accessed 1 June 2019. http://amysmile.
com/doc/emoticon_paper.pdf.
Jibril, Ahmed T. and Mardziah H. Abdullah. 2013. “Relevance of Emoticons in
Computer-Mediated Communication Contexts: An Overview.” Asian Social
Science 9 (4): 201–207.
Katō, Shōgo [加藤尚吾], Yūki Katō [加藤由樹], Mayu Kobayashi [小林まゆ], and
Masayoshi Yanagisawa [柳沢昌義]. 2006. “Denshi mēru de shiyō sareru kao-
moji kara kaishaku sareru kanjō no shurui ni kansuru bunseki [Analysis of the
Kinds of Emotions Interpreted from the Emoticons Used in E-Mail].” Kyōiku
Jōhō Kenkyū [Research in Educational Information] 22 (4): 31–39.
Non-Verbal Online Communication: The Use of Emoticons in Weblogs.” Inter-
cultural Communication Studies 19 (3): 65–80.
Kindaichi, Otsuhiko [金田一「乙」彦]. 2009. Otakugo jiten 1 [Encyclopedia of
Otaku Terms 1]. Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha.
Lamarre, Thomas. 2009. The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
McNeill, Lynne S. 2009. “The End of the Internet: A Folk Response to the Provi-
sion of Infinite Choice.” In Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in
a Digital World, edited by Trevor J. Blank, 80–97. Logan: Utah State University
Press.
Provine, Robert R., Robert J. Spencer, and Darcy L. Mandell. 2007. “Emotional
Expression Online: Emoticons Punctuate Website Text Messages.” Journal of
Language and Social Psychology 26 (3): 299–307.
Sakai, Noboru. 2013. “The Role of Sentence Closing as an Emotional Marker: A
Case of Japanese Mobile Phone E-Mail.” Discourse, Context and Media 2:
149–155.
246 Dale K. Andrews
Satō, Yoshiyuki [佐藤善之]. 2009. “Ika ni shite jinja wa seichi to natta ka:
Kōkyōsei to hinichijōsei ga umidasu seichi no hatten [How Did a Shrine Become
a Sacred Site: The Public and Extraordinary Give Birth to the Development of
a Sacred Site].” In Media Contents and Tourism: An Experience of Washimiya
Town and Neon Genesis of Tourism, edited by CATS, Hokkaido University,
71–84. Sapporo: Hokkaido University.
Skovholt, Karianne, Anette Gronning, and Anne Kankaanranta. 2014. “The
Communicative Functions of Emoticons in Workplace E-Mails: :-).” Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication 19 (4): 780–797.
Takishita, Shō [瀧下祥] and Noriyuki Okumura [奥村紀之]. 2015.“Kaomoji to
onomatope ni motozuku bunshō kara no kanjō chūshutsu [Extractiong Emotions
from Documents, Based on Kaomoji and Onomatope].” Information Processing
Society of Japan 77th National Conference (1): 255–256.
ence Computer Review 19 (3): 324–347.
Index
2-chan 6, 31, 55 cellphone novels 56

characters (fictional protagonists) 3,
actor 7–14, 16, 206 17–18, 35, 39–40, 49, 60, 160–162,
Actor-Network-Theory 9–10 174, 178, 187, 191, 211–213, 223,
aesthetics 12, 37, 53–54 231–235, 240–244
agency 8–14 cognitive semiotics 17, 177–181
allographs 141–143 cognitive types 177–181
analytical philosophy 176–177, 180 collaborative writing 56
anime 39, 44, 53, 56–58, 74, 178, comics see manga
227–229, 240–242, 244; pilgrimage communication: digital 3–6, 10, 12,
227–228, 241 16–17, 68, 85, 104, 127–129, 136,
animoji 25, 38 134, 153, 197, 241; global 45–49,
Apple 2, 4, 8, 11, 26–27, 33, 50–52, 62; nonverbal 3, 44, 85, 93, 222,
57, 60, 135–136, 171 241; visual 38, 177, 213; written 1,
Arntz, G. 27, 32 4, 26, 50, 152, 184
ASCII 3, 31, 50, 104, 206, 224; art 6, communication strategies 89–90,
31, 49, 55, 143; characters 3, 104, 105–106, 154, 199
214; emoticons 127–129, 143 communicative style 94, 99
assemblage 8–9, 13 computer-mediated interaction (CMC)
Awazu, K. 28 7, 67–68, 88, 104, 107, 148–149,
197, 206, 214, 227–228
Ball, H. 3, 17, 211 Cool Japan 53–54
Barthes, R. 14, 45–55, 58, 62, crossdresser 15, 88–93, 96–99;
176–177 see also dansō
BBS see bulletin board system (BBS) cultural: codings 2, 17, 171, 173–177,
Benenson, F. 35, 56–57, 178 184–189; connotations 171,
Berard, B. 2, 10 175 ; differences 15, 57, 106,
Bible Emoji: Scripture 4 Millennials 191; knowledge 4, 44, 134, 139,
46, 57 175; literacy 14, 45–53, 55, 62;
Bliss, C. 14, 26, 28–29 translation 54
Blissymbolics 26, 28 cute 16, 25, 36, 54, 68, 73, 76,
blog posts 15, 88, 90, 92–95, 98–99, 152–154, 165, 234–235; culture 68,
148, 155–158, 161, 164 153; see also kawaii
body language 15, 67, 69, 78–80, 85 cute-ification 27
Book from the Ground (Bing) 6, 35
bulletin board system (BBS) 31 Danesi, M. 2, 128, 171–174
Butler, J. 15, 87, 100 dansō see crossdresser
248 Index
depiction 15, 17, 74, 151, 156, 165, Google 2, 5, 8, 33–4, 41, 44, 50–1,
171–175, 178, 181–189, 198–199, 54, 60, 71, 136
202–205, 216, 230, 232, 240 graphemes 197–9, 201, 204, 206
digital: age 1, 6–7, 9, 11–12, 17,
49, 55, 62, 67, 153, 176, 202; hangeul character 69, 75–9
communication 1, 3–6, 16–17, hedging 105, 118–19, 232; see also
67, 128–129, 136, 143, 198, 241; modal function
ideolects 18; media 10, 39, 47, 56, hentai shōjo moji (‘distorted girlish
94, 152; natives 18, 86, 229, 239, letters’) 153, 165
244 Herring, S.C. 7, 86, 105, 115, 128,
digitalization 11, 129 149, 154, 200, 228
DoCoMo (‘Do Communications Over hieroglyphics 26, 29
the Mobile Network’) see NTT hiragana 69, 116–7, 150, 153, 230,
DoCoMo 236
dogeza (traditional kneeling on the Hirsch, E.D. Jr. 14, 47
floor) 72–73, 78–79, 186, 231 Hitori, Nakano 5–6, 55
Dresner E. 7, 86, 105, 115, 128, 154,
200, 228 icon (digital symbol) 17, 32, 40, 44,
Duck-rabbit-problem 186, 189–190 51–2, 54, 58, 178, 214
icon (semiotic class) 5, 26–7, 35–6,
Ekman, P. 18, 211, 216–217 42, 129, 134, 142, 145, 155, 157,
ema see votive (prayer) tablets 163–4, 173–7, 181, 199, 202
emoji: feminism 5; keitai 3, 151, 153; iconicity 17, 173–7
literacy 49 iconic threshold 176, 181–8
Emoji Dick (Benenson) 35–36, 46, 56, iconographetic communication 16,
178, 191 127–45
Emoji Movie, The (Leondis) 6, 38, 51, identity 7, 13, 15, 87–99, 183
174, 190–191 ideogram 2, 4, 179
Emojipedia 46, 220, 224 i-mode (NTT DoCoMo) 3, 11, 27, 38,
emotional labour 5, 15, 85, 87–90, 50, 56
92, 97, 99–100 Instagram 16, 44, 127, 136, 142
Empire of Signs (Barthes) 14, 45, instant messaging (IM) 3, 8, 67, 70,
47–48, 55, 58, 62 106, 244
International Organization for
Facebook 2, 15–16, 69–70, 104–119, Standardization (ISO) 29, 223
136, 138, 143, 171 ISOTYPE 14, 27–32
face characters see kaomoji
face marks 105, 110, 148; see also Japanese: aesthetics 39, 48–9, 53–6,
kaomoji 62; culture 10, 31–4, 39, 44–62, 68,
Facial Action Coding System 18, 211, 72–5, 78–9, 87, 91, 136, 153, 188,
216 227; society 11, 33, 40, 48, 51–3,
Fahlman, S. 3, 17, 68, 104, 150–3, 234
206, 211 Jenkins, H. 9, 12, 46
frame 12, 16, 139–40, 143
Friesen, W. 18, 211, 216–217 kakko tsuki moji (character within
brackets) 115
Galapagos Syndrome 51, 54 kanji (character) 49, 52, 69, 72, 92,
gender 15, 72, 87–98; differences 15, 95, 115–18, 150–2, 171, 181, 198,
32, 79; identity 15, 87–90, 97–9; 230, 234, 239
performativity 15, 87, 97–100; kaomoji 1–10, 15–18, 31, 50–1,
stereotypes 54, 87 68–80, 93–5, 98, 104–119, 148–59,
geurim mal 15, 68–80 164–5, 178, 183–6, 197–206, 228,
globalization 29, 44–7, 50–6, 62 230–244
Index 249
katakana 69, 150, 153, 158, 230, NTT DoCoMo 3–4, 11, 27, 32–34,
233, 237 50, 85, 151, 211
kawaii 54, 68, 152–4, 165
keigo (polite speech) 159 OMG Shakespeare (Wright) Series
keitai (mobile phone) 3, 56, 151–3 46, 57
kigō see non-linguistic symbols onomatopoeia 17, 92, 95, 158, 161,
Korea(n) 15, 68–80, 106 202–6
operating system 2, 50, 136, 152
Latour, B. 9–10, 13 Ōta, Y. 14, 26–33, 49, 181
lexical replacements 16, 156, 164 otaku 56, 239, 244
LINE 15, 62, 70, 90, 95–6, 98–9
literature 1, 14, 26, 34–6, 39, 45–6, pager 32–3, 40, 50, 68, 105
48–9, 55, 57–8, 62 participatory culture 46
LoCoS (Lover’s Communication Peirce, C.S. 134, 155, 173, 182, 198
System) 14, 26, 28–9, 41 phatic function 137
logographic script (kanji) 150–1 phenomenology 17, 175–7, 180, 184
phonetics 15, 29, 78, 158, 164–5, 239
manga 5, 39, 45, 54, 56, 68, 110, pictograms 2, 4, 16, 25–33, 41,
134, 151–3, 156, 158, 160, 165, 49–51, 128, 145, 178–81, 186,
186–8, 203, 213, 228, 233, 240, 211–13, 217, 222–3
244 pictographic novel 35
marumoji (‘round writing’) 152–4 pictoriality 17, 171–84, 187
McLuhan, M. 7, 34 picture theory 17, 175–84
media: archaeology 11; convergence Pocket Bell 32, 49
9; ecology 4, 11, 40, 197; history 6, pokeberu see pager; Pocket Bell
11, 34; mix 9, 53; theory 7–13 politeness 1, 50, 106, 118–19, 148,
mediality 9, 11, 17 154–9, 199–200
mediation 7–18, 34, 244 popular culture 39, 44–9, 53–7, 62,
Meyrowitz, J. 7 227
misunderstanding 2, 14–15, 17, 34, pragmatics (linguistic) 16, 105, 148,
45–8, 51, 62, 69, 113, 134, 171, 156, 163–5, 171, 186, 199
183–9, 199, 211, 214, 216, 220–2 punctuation 69, 86, 93, 127, 237
Mitchell, W.J.T. 9–11, 176 punctuation marks 3, 49, 69, 105,
mixi 107 143, 152, 230–1, 240
modal function 16, 137–8, 143;
see also hedging reader-directed prompts (RDPs)
Mr. Yuk 18, 211–18, 222–3 155–7
multiculturalism 28, 45, 52–4, 62 rebus 25–6, 35–8, 128–31
multimodality 6, 12, 129, 143, 172, reference (referential function)16–17,
184–6 130–3, 137–8, 140–4, 178–9, 188,
206, 229–30, 233
narrative 6, 14, 16, 37–8, 45–6, remediation 38, 40
55–62, 98, 148, 153–9, 162, 165, resemanticization 182, 188
178, 191, 228; -enhancing devices roman alphabet (rōmaji) 116–8,
(NEDs) 156–9, 163 150–1, 230, 234
nekoji (‘kitten writing’) 152
Neurath, O. 14, 27–9, 32–3, 41 Satō, Y. 32, 40
Ni-channeru see 2-chan Schlobinski, P. 114–15, 127, 137
non-linguistic symbols see kigō semasiographic signs 148, 165
non-verbal communication 3, 44, 85, semiotics 6–14, 16–17, 45–7, 52, 60,
93, 222, 241 128, 134–45, 155, 171–84
non-verbal cues 67, 80, 85–6, 105, sexual identity 87, 98
148–9, 154 Shift-JIS-characters 3, 33
250 Index
Shigetaka, K. 3, 27, 50, 151 Unicode 2, 4–5, 8, 10, 17, 28, 31–8,
shinto shrines 18, 227–8 40–1, 44–7, 52–4, 57, 62, 128–9,
signage 26–8, 33–5, 41 135, 139, 145, 152, 218, 220;
skin tone modifier 2, 5, 34, 128 Consortium 4–5, 8, 13, 44, 134–5,
smartphone 1, 3–4, 11, 51, 53, 62, 177, 218, 220, 224
85, 151, 175, 184, 220 universal language 2, 6–7, 10, 14–18,
smiley 3, 17, 67–8, 104, 137, 142, 26–41, 52, 79, 134, 171–7, 213,
173–5, 183, 200, 211, 214, 220 222–3, 233
SMS (Short Messaging Service) 50,
55, 115, 127, 197 verbal context 106, 113, 200
social media 1, 15, 44, 50, 67–71, virtual interaction 58–6, 99
88–99, 104–19, 136 visual: culture studies 176; tone-
sticker (digital) 62–63, 95–8, 119 markers (VTMs) 156–9, 162–3
Stöckl, H. 129 votive (prayer) tablets 18, 227–44
storytelling 16, 45, 53–6, 60
sumaho (smartphone) 4, 51 Wakabayashi Y. 31, 68
sumāto fōn see sumaho warning sign 211–14, 223
(smartphone) Watanabe, M. 115, 127, 137
weblogs see blog posts
text message 3, 8, 44, 50, 55–63, 154 Western emoticons 71, 77, 85, 104–5,
Tokyo Olympics 26, 33, 49, 51 107, 128, 138
Töpffer, R. 183 WhatsApp 2, 16, 50, 127, 136–8,
Train Man (Nakano) 6, 55–6 140, 143
transcription 13–14, 33–4, 78 Wittgenstein, L. 186
translation 14, 31, 34–6, 39, 46–9, World Emoji Day 45
53–63, 79, 242
ttyl (Myracle) 55–6 Xu, B. 6, 35–36, 41, 55
Twitter 2, 15–16, 45–6, 52, 69, 71,
85, 89–95, 98–9, 127, 142–3, 190 Ziem, A. 139

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Emoticons, Kaomoji, and Emoji

This collection offers a comprehensive treatment of emoticons, kaomoji,

Elena Giannoulis is Junior Professor for Japanese Literature at the

Lukas R.A. Wilde is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of

The Role of Language in the Climate Change Debate

Multimodality, Poetry and Poetics

The Language of Money

The Pragmatics of Text Messaging

Multiliteracies, Emerging Media, and College Writing Instruction

Emoticons, Kaomoji, and Emoji

Edited by Elena Giannoulis

List of Contributors vii

1 Emoticons, Kaomoji, and Emoji: The Transformation

2 Not Everyone 💩s: Or, the Question of Emoji as

3 Cultural Literacy in the Empire of Emoji Signs: Who Is 😂? 44

4 Emoticons: Digital Lingua Franca or a Culture-Specific

5 ‘Impact taisetsu da!’: The Use of Emoji and Kaomoji in

7 ‘Iconographetic Communication’ in Digital Media:

8 A Cultural Exploration of the Use of Kaomoji, Emoji,

9 The Elephant in the Room of Emoji Research: Or,

10 Construction of Iconicity in Scenes of Kaomoji 197

11 Who Is Afraid of Mr. Yuk? The Display of the Basic

12 From Digital to Analog: Kaomoji on the Votive Tablets of

Jonathan E. Abel Prof. Dr. Jonathan E. Abel is an Associate Professor of

Emoji, emoticons, and kaomoji play an important role in everyday com-

An emoji, like emoticons or kaomoji, straddles the conceptual line

emoji characters both embody and represent the tension between

Mediation(s) Between the Semiotic, the Technological,

[a]gency as a capacity to act and to give meaning to action can nei-

this conceptualization of media as an environment for the living dif-

This has been regarded as an important shift toward a ‘material turn’

Historically, the thresholds of communication have been shifted by

That certain social groups are clearly underrepresented in emoji—that

An Overview of the Present Volume

A Prehistory of Emoji as a ‘Universal Language’

Tsurumi’s appeal to the global reach of a pictographic script cites the

a. to enforce on trustee powers the obligation to implement a pro-

It is in this context that the exploitation of visual aids offers the

Emoji Are Not Universal

Literary Usage and the Question of Universal Grammar

(Chicchikichī, endnote 11)

In just four pages, we are nearly given a complete narrative of a sexual

(Chicchikichī, endnote 11)

Clearly, there is a woman. But is she at a hospital, receiving a shot to get

(Chicchikichī, endnote 11)

A Genealogy of the ‘Poop’ Emoji

Introducing Emoji Theory

I am not lovingly gazing toward an Oriental essence—to me the Ori-

Culture of Emoji Literacy

Empire of Emoji Signs

I’m interested in the phenomenon of how our language, communi-

Perhaps unintentionally, Benenson measured the limits of emoji literacy

of Natsume Sōseki’s Wagahai wa neko de aru (Engl. I Am a Cat, 1971

I have a five-hours-old analogy for this! My 17-year-old brother

Emoji stories are to me as Paradise Lost is to my brother . . . Phrasing

Age (all) Age–Japanese Age–Korean

Figure 4.1 Age of participants

Table 4.2 Korean Geurim Mal

geurim mal Meaning

Table 4.3 Japanese Kaomoji

m(_ _)m apologizing

3.1 Japanese Kaomoji

3.2 Korean Geurim Mal

Setting and Methodology

5. おしるこだああああ（^Q^）　[post 781, W30]

6. おはようございます＼(^o^)／　[post 747, M60]

14. 今度は、ご馳走して下さいなm(__)mがんばれ　[comment 436, M60]