Because Language - a podcast about linguistics, the science of language.
Sep 3, 2026 · 1 hr 34 min · 12 segments
Emoji, once regarded as some kind of frivolous nonsense, have become an important way we communicate online. But how did these little pictures come to our devices? What is the Unicode Consortium, and…
Daniel MidgleyHost
Keith HoustonGuest
Ben AinslieHost
The level of linguistic sort of archaeology that's going to be necessary in the same way that we need to sort of walk kids, or geez, not just kids, walk adults through Shakespeare and Shakespearean language, where you go, listen, to understand this language, this couplet or this stanza, you need to understand that at the time this thing happened and, you know, everyone thought this.
Or perhaps actually maybe I could be dead wrong and maybe it will be far stickier because we're talking at least about the core set, right, of the most used ones.
You know, depending on when you are studying or from which period a tweet comes from, let's say, you know, is this before the aubergine became the standard emoji for penis or is it afterwards, right? So the meaning could vary substantially.
So it's a really good point and it's complicated of course because you are then expanding the set of emoji quite radically over the course of like five or ten years and so something that perhaps someone might have wanted to use wasn't available so they chose something which approximated it.
So perhaps you get higher resolution effectively in the language as emoji becomes richer.
Not all that often and not always in a significant way, but in order to know exactly what someone meant, you almost have to know not just when they sent it, which may let you understand something about the meaning of a particular emoji, but you may have to know which platform they sent it on.
You may have to have the actual physical pixels in front of you to know what they really meant by this.
As I said, there aren't that many examples where it really, really matters, but it does and has mattered at times.
If you look at this, he's wearing a suit and he's got a sort of a trilby hat on.
And I am positive that just about nobody... understands where this comes from this
is a brand new one for me i have never seen this emoji once before in my existence in all the many years i've wandered the earth this is fresh
The level of linguistic sort of archaeology that's going to be necessary in the same way that we need to sort of walk kids, or geez, not just kids, walk adults through Shakespeare and Shakespearean language, where you go, listen, to understand this language, this couplet or this stanza, you need to understand that at the time this thing happened and, you know, everyone thought this.
Or perhaps actually maybe I could be dead wrong and maybe it will be far stickier because we're talking at least about the core set, right, of the most used ones.
You know, depending on when you are studying or from which period a tweet comes from, let's say, you know, is this before the aubergine became the standard emoji for penis or is it afterwards, right? So the meaning could vary substantially.
So it's a really good point and it's complicated of course because you are then expanding the set of emoji quite radically over the course of like five or ten years and so something that perhaps someone might have wanted to use wasn't available so they chose something which approximated it.
So perhaps you get higher resolution effectively in the language as emoji becomes richer.
Not all that often and not always in a significant way, but in order to know exactly what someone meant, you almost have to know not just when they sent it, which may let you understand something about the meaning of a particular emoji, but you may have to know which platform they sent it on.
You may have to have the actual physical pixels in front of you to know what they really meant by this.
As I said, there aren't that many examples where it really, really matters, but it does and has mattered at times.
If you look at this, he's wearing a suit and he's got a sort of a trilby hat on.
And I am positive that just about nobody... understands where this comes from this
is a brand new one for me i have never seen this emoji once before in my existence in all the many years i've wandered the earth this is fresh
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