Emoticons, Kaomoji, and Emoji: The Transformation of Communication in the Digital Age

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.