For first time ever, an emoji is crowned Oxford Dictionaries’
Word of the Year
A picture is worth a thousand words, as the
old saying goes. But in today’s fast-paced world, there is less patience for an
entire, fully-developed image. Facebook, Twitter, your smartphone et al. demand
something pithier.
Something
not much bigger in size than a letter of the alphabet, but imbued
with far more meaning.
Something
that transcends language — emotion, even — as we know it.
In 1999,
Japanese mobile designer Shigetaka Kurita gave the world a gift it continues to
reap in small, easily-digestible packages. He is, in short, the father of the emoji.
Kurita
designed the very first emoji
for cellphones, a package of 180 diverse
pixelated symbols, in just one month. Since then, emoji use has risen steadily,
becoming a bedrock of text conversations and,
more generally, of most online interfaces. Nowadays, it’s difficult to imagine a scintillating
digital exchange that lacks a “heart” or innuendo-laden “eggplant.”
Oxford
Dictionaries has recognized the influential and complex function of emoji by
giving one of the symbols its highest honor. For the first time in Oxford’s
history, the Word of the Year is a pictograph.
Officially, 2015’s linguistic champion is
known as the “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji. Oxford Dictionaries announced in a statement Monday: “There were other strong
contenders from a range of fields…but [Face with Tears of Joy] was chosen as
the ‘word’ that best reflected the ethos, mood and
preoccupations of 2015.”
Oxford
noted that 2015 has
seen a sizable increase in the use of the word “emoji,” and statistics on
frequency and usage from mobile technology business SwiftKey found that Face
with Tears of Joy was the most popular emoji across the world.
According
to SwiftKey, Face with Tears of Joy comprised 17 percent of the emoji used in
the U.S. in 2015 and 20 percent of those in the U.K. — a significant
rise from 9 percent and 4 percent, respectively, last year. Oxford data also
found that usage of the word “emoji” more than tripled in 2015compared to 2014.
“Emojis
are no longer the preserve of texting teens,” the
statement said. “Instead, they have been embraced
as a nuanced form of expression, and one which can cross
language barriers.”
Indeed, your choice of emoji can speak volumes
about the country you come from and the language you speak, not to
mention your emotional state.
But even
emoji aren’t immune from misunderstandings. As The Post’s Fred Barbash noted, the myriad interpretations that
people have tacked onto emoji have long strayed from their original intended
meanings — many of which were tied to Japanese cultural cues.
“Are we
indeed using emoji wrong?” he asks. “Or is it that there is no right or wrong
when it comes to emoji because it’s all in the context and the culture?”
Among the
words that made Oxford’s short list for Word of the Year were “on fleek”
(meaning: Extremely good, attractive or stylish), “lumbersexual” (meaning: A
young urban man who cultivates an appearance and style of dress — typified by a
beard and check shirt — suggestive of a rugged outdoor lifestyle) and “Brexit”
(meaning: A term for the potential or hypothetical departure of the United
Kingdom from the European Union, from British +exit).
Another
contender was “refugee”: “A person who has been forced to leave their country
in order to escape war, persecution or natural disaster.”
Structure of the lead:
WHO- not given
WHEN- on Monday
WHAT- For
the first time in Oxford’s history, the Word of the Year is a pictograph.
WHY- Oxford
noted that 2015 has seen a sizable increase in the use of the word “emoji,” and
statistics on frequency and usage from mobile technology business SwiftKey
found that Face with Tears of Joy was the most popular emoji across the world.
WHERE- not given
HOW- Emojis
are no longer the preserve of texting teens
Keywords:
1. imbued
使充滿
2. transcend
超越;優於
3. diverse
不同的;變化多的
4. scintillating
閃爍的
5. ethos
民族精神
6. significant
重要的
7. preserve
保存
8. embrace
擁抱
9. nuanced
具有細微差別的;微妙的
10. barrier
障礙
