Antony Funnell: It's often difficult to date the beginning of things.

Hello, Antony Funnell here, welcome to Future Tense. Today's show is about the astonishing growth in popularity of Emoji, those little weird faces and symbols people increasingly use when communicating on phones and online.

For the sake of brevity, if not complete accuracy, we reckon 1963 might be the year to pick if you're looking for a suitable rough starting date for the Emoji phenomenon. '63 was a big year; John F Kennedy was shot, there was the Profumo scandal in the UK, and The Beatles released their first album, as you can hear.

[Music: The Beatles]

But 1963 also saw the birth of the smiley face; black dots for eyes and an upturned mouth, set in a yellow circle. It was created by a US advertising type and it quickly became an icon of the '60s and '70s.

Fast-forward to 1982 and a computer scientist named Scott Fahlman took the smiley face idea and adapted it for use in the computer world, this time not so much as a universal feel-good symbol, but as a marker to put at the end of a message, so that somebody reading your post could tell when you were not being entirely serious, when you were having a joke. It was basic, but effective; a colon, followed by a dash, followed by parenthesis for the mouth. And so the smiley face became the emoticon.

Then (and here's the crucial bit) in the late 1990s a Japanese man named Shigetaka Kurita who worked for a phone company took the simple emoticon and made it really fancy, and since that time Emoji have grown in number, nature and complexity.

Niki Selken: My name is Niki Selken, and I am the co-founder of World Translation Foundation or Emoji Foundation. And I like the title Emoji Translator. I founded the site and the organisation with a friend and a collaborator of mine, Cara Rose DeFabio, who also does Emoji work.

Antony Funnell: Niki's World Translation Foundation website is basically a one-stop shop for information about everything to do with Emoji; articles, new research, Emoji-inspired art. You name it.

There are now hundreds and hundreds of official emoji available for use on Apple and Android-powered smart phones, the number is expected to top 1,000 later this year. And then there are lots of unofficial emoji as well, designed by enthusiasts like Niki…well, just for the fun of it.

Niki Selken: You know, I started collecting Japanese stationary when I was in college, with all of the characters, kind of obscure stuff too, not just Hello Kitty, and I really like this idea of how we can translate and mistranslate languages between particularly Japanese and English, and all of the wacky characters. And then when the Emoji were released for the iPhone I got very excited because I realised I could start texting or emailing in a way that felt…I don't know, it just feels more fun and accessible.

And then when I got into grad school I started looking more academically at Emoji and I realised that as the Emoji was rising, so was the amount of people texting and tweeting rather than emailing. And so the way language was shifting into these shorter, more digital communication styles, I think the Emoji became more popular because they could fill in that emotional blank that you were missing when you were just sending, you know, a short tweet or a short text. They actually hit the same part of the brain as a facial expression does, when you use the facial Emojis. So you are sending kind of a smile to a friend, literally. Our brains pick it up. And we might smile back when we see it, and to me that's really fascinating.

Antony Funnell: So they've been around for a while, but it's really this move towards mobile technology, the fact that mobile technology has really just taken off in such a massive way in the last couple of years, that has also fed an interest and a usage of Emoji.

Niki Selken: Yes, and it was particularly in 2010 when Apple and Google decided, hey, we want to partner with the Unicode foundation, who are the ones that decide what languages get encoded into the web, and they said we want to put Emoji on our platforms on our phones and we want to ratify them as a Unicode language, like a real language and decide which Emojis we accept.

Emojis, unlike emoticons, were invented in Japan, so they are originally Japanese characters that were designed by a Japanese designer. So some of them, we don't always know what they mean, as people not from Japan, we give them our own meanings. But the fact that two of the largest computer phone platform folks were like, hey, this is something we want to put on the phone, made it accessible to everyone. And that's when it changed I think.

Antony Funnell: And it's that subjective nature of the Emoji, that it's a depiction, it's a pictorial depiction, but it's open to interpretation, isn't it, as you said, it's that subjectivity that you particularly find fascinating, is it?

Niki Selken: Yes, and there's other projects online such as the NounProject which is where they have sort of a curated selection of icons and iconography that is in the same vein of this that designers use all the time when they are designing…you know, you think of bathrooms signs or other kind of road signs or things that describe really quickly what you are looking at. But now we have an entire language set of a ratified Emoji of I think it's 850-something characters that are cross-platform on almost everyone's mobile device that has a smart phone, and that's pretty amazing. Everyone is seeing this and so it has become a language.

Antony Funnell: So is it changing the way people communicate? Some people just use them I guess to enhance the messages that they send, but other people like yourself are using them quite intensively. If you are using them quite intensively, are you modifying the language that you use to meet the Emoji that are there?

Niki Selken: Almost it makes me more thoughtful. So I had a friend who came and visited me recently, went back to San Francisco, and when she left I thought for a while what can I say? Well, I can't say how I feel, I miss her very much, so I sent her like a little Emoji poem of my feelings, of her in New York with the New York Statue of Liberty Emoji, a heart and a plane and the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. I tried to create a visual poem of my feelings because I felt like that spoke more and meant more than me just saying 'I'll miss you', which everyone says.

I think that because it activates the right side of our brains, whereas words activate the left, that when we are looking at an Emoji we may be feeling something differently than when we read something, and feeling it in a different way because our brain is processing it differently. So I do think that Emojis…I don't know if it makes us more intimate, but I think it has the potential to make us close in a different way than if we are texting. And it also makes us more thoughtful because it's not innate yet, it's still a new language, so you have to really think about it when you are choosing your Emoji, what you're doing.

As people become more accustomed to them, and that's part of the Emoji Dictionary project, is helping people get more fluent, but I think for now any time you have to be thoughtful about something, it's more meaningful.

Fred Benenson: Hi, my name is Fred Benenson, I run the data team at Kickstarter, I'm based out of New York City. Emoji Dick was a project I made to translate Herman Melville's Moby Dick into Japanese emoticons named Emoji. At the time not a lot of people were using Emoji, they had just become available on the iPhone, and I found myself completely obsessed with them and wanted to do something interesting and weird.

So part of the idea was that the act of translating English, particularly well-written symbolic floral English, into Emoji is kind of difficult but also rewarding and challenging. And I realised if I really wanted to do this I could probably hire other people to do this. So I kind of came up with this idea of finding people on the web to translate it for me sentence by sentence basically. And instead of just having one person translate one sentence, I actually had multiple people translate the same sentence.

So Moby Dick has something like 10,000 sentences, I had people translate each sentence three or four times and that created these multiple versions of Emoji Dick. And then I had another set of people vote on which sentence was the most faithful to the English. So it was kind of like the crowd editing the crowd, trying to find the best quality in the dataset without having to do too much work for it. It was both successful and also difficult and challenging.

A lot of people ask me can Emoji replace normal language and can we just communicate if I just go all in Emoji, could that work as a new form of human communication? I think the jury is still out on that one. I'm optimistic that if we try hard we can convey a lot using symbols and representations. But there's a reason we have language, and I think that was part of the interesting and contentious part about the whole project, was that Melville and Moby Dick in particular is known for being this incredible work of literature, and boiling that all down to a symbol seemed wrong in some people's minds. And so I actually got a lot of negative press when I first announced the project. There were people who were telling me I shouldn't be doing this and it was wrong and every possible thing in between, that just made me want to do it more.

Antony Funnell: Fred Benenson. And for the record, his Emoji version of Moby Dick has been accepted by the Library of Congress in the United States.

Let's stay with that idea of Emoji becoming a language in itself, and here's leading American linguist Ben Zimmer:

Ben Zimmer: The fact that they've arrested in popularity so quickly suggests to me that there is a kind of a universal appeal that may be long-lasting. And we are in a very early stage with this. We've had emoticons, for instance, for much longer, since the emoticons could be typed out with just a regular keyboard, those date back to the 1980s and have been successful in online communication ever since. Because this is still so new for so many people, there's a lot of experimentation going on. And because there are no rules, people are sort of making up certain rules on the fly. When is it appropriate to use certain kinds of Emoji? When is it appropriate to combine them in certain ways?

And actually we have enough data now that we can start looking for those patterns that people are creating when they combine them, for instance. Certain Emoji go together well, and certain Emoji can only really follow a certain pattern. So, for instance, some of the patterns that we've seen emerging have to do with the Emoji that show a face with a particular emotion of some sort, like smiling or crying and so forth. Very often those show up first, and then other Emoji follow upon that one in the way the face sets a particular mood, and then there's an elaboration on that mood with another type of Emoji.

So people are sort of building kind of language-like system, with perhaps a kind of a grammar to it, but we shouldn't yet consider it an actual full-fledged language or some system that can work like a language. It's still rather rudimentary, although there have been some interesting experiments as well in creating kind of a language-like system out of symbols that are inspired by Emoji. So, for instance, there's something called iConji which was started back in 2010, with a particular lexicon of characters, but these characters can actually be inflected. So if you have a small symbol that means 'start', you can actually mark on it whether it's a noun or whether it's a verb. And if it's a verb, what tense it is.

So a system like that could actually lend itself to being more like a language, something that people use to communicate without requiring another linguistic system, and could possibly be used across different communities around the world. That's a kind of a goal that some people have for Emoji, that it could become a real universal system of communication. Whether that actually pans out, well, that remains to be seen. So people are experimenting with it, they are having fun with it, and we will just have to see how it develops and how it grows.

Antony Funnell: People are experimenting with it, they're having fun with it, as you say. There are other people who find Emoji…and they found this with emoticons…they find them unbelievably annoying. Why do people have such a strong set against the use of Emoji? Why does it matter to some people?

Ben Zimmer: Well, I think that seeing these little pictures pop up in communication immediately brings to mind for some people the idea that this is something very frivolous, that it's nothing more than something that children would do when they are drawing little pictures or doodling and that sort of thing. And so it has an immediate effect on some people as seeming as something that is not worthy of any type of serious communication. And it's true for the most part that playfulness is a really important aspect of it.

So people might think of it as a kind of dumbing-down of communication, that it seems to be that you use these pictures because you can't express what you want to say in written words. Now, I think that people who use Emoji are perfectly capable of expressing things using words, but Emoji represents a different kind of system with a different kind of repertoire, you could say, of what's possible and how that can be communicated. It can open up the possibilities beyond just what we can do with words. So we don't have to think of it as something that is going to simply replace written language, but it can always be something that will supplement it or complement it in a playful way. Or people may find more serious uses for it eventually. But for now it's an aspect of online communication that people can embrace without worrying too much about how serious the consequences of it might be.

Antony Funnell: Ben Zimmer, linguist and executive editor of the website Vocabulary.com. He's also a language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

Rebecca Lynch: My name is Rebecca Lynch, I am a designer and creative in London and California.

Antony Funnell: And Rebecca is of interest to us today because she's actually one of those trying to take Emoji beyond just its fun and playful persona. She's begun creating her own set of Emoji characters called Introjis, that is Emojis for introverts or people with introverted tendencies.

Rebecca Lynch: There are about 30 different symbols right now. They represent states for doing activities alone, like gaming or reading or listening to music. They also represent different social states that you might find yourself in, such as needing to recharge on a Friday night. My Introji project is more of an experiment than an exercise in good design. It's a way of saying can we use these tools that we have now to make communication a little bit easier for certain kinds of people.

I'm like a lot of introverts, I prefer texting to phone conversations. I think that Emoji can be really helpful in this context because they give you just a little bit of extra…I guess extra information, extra subtlety to a text message, which I think is important to a lot of people and a lot of introverts.

Emojis, as they exist now, don't really have that range of expression for activities that might be interesting to introverts, like reading, being alone, needing to recharge and have alone time. We've had about 8,000 likes on our Facebook page from all over the world. Introji have been featured in about seven different languages. We've got lots of people writing in to say they want to see this or that Introji. A lot of people have said I'd really like one for just me sitting alone with my cat, which is kind of funny, so I'm making that one.

So the feedback has been really helpful in terms of people saying 'we like these, we identify with these, we don't necessarily like those', and I'm really trying to respond to that, because for me it's not about telling people how they should or shouldn't feel or behave or respond, it's meant to be an inclusive project.

What I'm working on right now is the actual development of an app which will let people really easily just copy and paste these little images into their text messages and into their other communications. It is not quite at that stage yet, so it's little bit tricky, you have to go onto Facebook and then pick the image. People are doing it that way, but obviously the next step is to get it as a mobile app that can be used more easily.

Antony Funnell: Rebecca Lynch and the Introji Project. There's a link on our website.

You're listening to Future Tense and to the curious and fascinating world of neo-pictographic communication. I'm Antony Funnell.

Lisa Scharoun is a Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Canberra and when it comes to language and Emoji, she takes the long view.

Lisa Scharoun: The cave paintings in Lascaux were some of the most ancient of human communication models that we can find where they were painting bulls and people hunting. So humans have been communicating with pictures for as long as we've been aware of. There's quite a famous language learning tool that has come out that's called Chineasy which shows you how the Chinese characters all evolved from pictures. So Chinese language is quite close to the original picture meanings, whereas, like the Latin alphabet, we've really evolved away from what the original picture meanings were. But yes, original languages like cuneiform or hieroglyphics, they are all picture based languages, all of our written language is based on some sort of pictographic meaning at one point.

Antony Funnell: So if you take that historic context, it's not surprising then that Emojis are increasing in popularity as a form of communication.

Lisa Scharoun: Yes, and especially since social media opens up the forum to a global audience, and you don't often have time to translate what someone has said on Facebook or on Twitter, so you can quickly…like, I have friends on my Facebook from all over the world, and sometimes they'll write something and they are not in English where they are from, but if they put up a picture with an Emoji smiley face, I know they are happy. So now social media has opened up this forum where we want to communicate quickly, and sometimes we feel we can't communicate in English if we are from a different country, and you might be communicating to an English-speaking audience. So an Emoji is a way to show that emotional response quickly and you know that other people will be able to understand it and interpret it.

Antony Funnell: And according to Lisa, another factor in the rapid rise of Emoji usage around the world relates not just to the way we communicate, but to the sense of identity we express in our communication, picking up in a sense on what Rebecca Lynch was saying. And on that score, says Professor Scharoun, Emoji fit perfectly with the consumerist nature of modern society.

Lisa Scharoun: So we are highly influenced by brands and by the symbols that represent them. They have much more infused meaning, and so we trust them. We understand that yes, okay, this brand will make my teeth cleaner or it's better for me or it's more natural. So we rely on the visual symbols. Like, for instance, on Facebook I have a lot of friends and they just communicate in Emojis, and that says something about their personality as well, like they are relying on these symbols to represent them all the time. And I guess it relates back to branding, that you often use symbols to represent, you show how you feel to the world or the type of style that you represent to the world. So in that way, yes, Emojis can have that similar translation.

Antony Funnell: And you thought a smiley face was just a smiley face.

So Emoji are about reflecting a bit of ourselves in the messages we send to others. And as we heard way back at the beginning of the program, their usage is booming because they seem to have found their niche in the world of mobile media.

Our final guest today is linguist Tyler Schnoebelen who specialises in language and design. He's the founder and chief data analyst for a San Francisco-based start-up called Idibon.

Tyler Schnoebelen: The last time we calculated it, the number of words sent every three months in SMS messages around the globe equals all of the words ever published in any language in the history of mankind. And so what that means is that you really have this enormous use of these text messages and text formats that you haven't seen before. And these kinds of interpersonal relationships are a huge part of how we are as human beings. So you need to be able to find ways to express yourself better than just using standard spelling and standard grammar allows you to.

Antony Funnell: Those who might be sceptical about the use of Emoji and their value might say that they are a shortcut, that they allow people not to actually think about what they are writing and what they are communicating, to cheat in a sense. What would your response be to that?

Tyler Schnoebelen: I think that there are probably a lot of people who would say they have struggled hard and long about which smiley face they were going to include in a message. So I think that it's not a priori for sure that people are using them to get out of thinking about how to craft a message.

Part of what really happens when you're communicating with somebody is you are communicating a bunch of stuff in each linguistic gesture that you make, how you pronounce the words, the intonation that you choose, the speed that you talk at. And you are not really saying people are taking shortcuts by using those differently, and similarly you are not taking a shortcut by a putting in an Emoji. It's part of the package of I'm trying to convey a stance, some meaning, and this is part of what I'm doing to convey that.

It's true that you wouldn't put them in every instance. They are not really about absolute reference, they are really much more about this work of positioning. And in that they seem to do a very good job in that they also seem to have a real role to play to help people express what they are trying to express, and it's not a shortcut at all.

Antony Funnell: There is a comical facet to Emoji and emoticons. They are cartoonish, deliberately so. What does that do for our communication? Does that make them better for certain types of communication than others, and does it make it harder to communicate with Emoji on serious issues?

Tyler Schnoebelen: If you look at how people in social media use punctuation and emoticons, what you'll find is that they are going to use smiley faces and frowning faces with things like 'I love you' and 'I miss you', but obviously you don't put a smiley face or a frowny face with 'f*** you'. You also actually tend to do this thing nowadays where there…there was a hypothesis by a reporter at the New Republic, Ben Crair, and he thought that people were using final periods to say 'I'm pissed off'. And so what that translates to is actually you get a lot more final periods in messages that also include 'f*** you' in them.

And so it's true that when you are really full of rage and wrath you are not likely to include the angry face Emoji, that's a playful Emoji when you are pretending to be angry or you are not really deeply angry. It would be a weird thing to spew off a bunch of vitriol and then end with a bunch of Emoji. That doesn't make sense. Just as you wouldn't use other kinds of language when you are doing that.

And so it is true that the emotional universe of Emoji and emoticons is not the same as the full range of human experiences. And so no, it doesn't seem that Emoji are particularly well-suited for true wrath. They are probably not particularly well suited to real grief. So when you use crying Emoji you may well be missing someone but you're not grief stricken. And so they tend to be especially useful in light situations and making light of situations or politeness situations where you just want to make sure someone understands that you are saying this in a friendly way.

Antony Funnell: Does that then limit their usage, their applicability?

Tyler Schnoebelen: Well, it's just about knowing that there are different words and expressions that go with different kinds of states. It will take a few years before people start using these in a different way where they start using them when they are full of rage or when they are in deep sadness. That's probably just unlikely to happen anytime soon or maybe even ever. But that doesn't limit their utility. Just as the word 'awesome' or 'cool' or 'dude', those are useful words. They really do a lot of stuff. They don't do that stuff everywhere in all situations, but that's true of all words. No word is perfect for every context.

I think one of the things we are really seeing is they are spreading through a lot of new social networks. People who didn't use an Emoji at all last year now are. Partly that's because smart phones are more prevalent and so they are easier to use, partly it's because you kind of have to have somebody use one to you before you maybe become aware that they exist as an option that you could use as well, and then they are fun and they sort of take off.

It may well be that as we keep texting more, we are going to need these resources to help express ourselves. It may be that in the further future we have easier ways of communicating with each other through computers where there is more voice stuff going on, maybe there's an earbud in which case I hear your voice talking to me and I don't have to read anything at all, then obviously Emoji will go away. But text affords a whole bunch of conveniences, for synchronicity, for contemplation. So I think that the text revolution is going to continue and I think that as long as people are communicating with each other with texts, they are going to want to be able to ornament and elaborate on what it is they mean by what they are saying.

Antony Funnell: The curious world of the Emoji, they are among us in our phones and devices, in all their shapes and guises.

Tyler Schnoebelen was our final guest there, he's a linguist and also the co-founder and chief data analyst for the San Francisco-based start-up Idibon.

We also heard today from: Emoji enthusiast Niki Selken from the World Translation Foundation website; Fred Benenson, the brain behind Emoji Dick, an Emoji translation of Herman Melville's famous whale tale; UK-based Rebecca Lynch, a designer and the creator of Introjis, that's Emojis for introverts; Lisa Scharoun, Professor of Design at the University of Canberra; and finally Ben Zimmer, linguist, executive editor of Vocabulary.com and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.