You've probably seen how the Oxford Dictionaries named the "tears of joy" emoji as the "word" of the year. Of course, these dictionary word-of-the-year pronouncements are thinly-veiled attempts to get free publicity. But this year, that veil is thinner than ever. I suppose you can make the case that this symbol is being used for communication, so it is sort of like a word. But I have the feeling that this is the thin edge of the wedge, and a few years from now the word of the year will be the taste of cilantro.
BTW, this tablet's keyboard seems to be having a great deal of difficulty recognizing the word "dictionary." I think it could be jealous.
But who knows, maybe this is the beginning of emojis being accepted as words. I've seen the idea in science fiction that people in the future will only be able to "read" a set of universal symbols, like that you'd see in a multilingual instruction or warning label. Given that we've already standardized symbols for "pause" or "on/off" I wonder just how sophisticated symbols will become after a few decades of globalized technology.
Or, here's another way of blowing this out of proportion: perhaps this will lead to us creating a written language where each word gets its own symbol, like in Chinese. Centuries from now, the word "joy" might be written as a circle with teardrop shapes on either side of it.
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