The Emoji Tongue

In 2015, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary went all-in on the still-novel phenomenon of emoji. That year, the guardians of the venerable OED named the FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY emoji (😂)—now, as then, the world’s most popular emoji—as Word of the Year, beating out such zingers as “ad blocker,” “Brexit,” “lumbersexual,” “on fleek,” and “sharing economy.” For emoji to be blessed in this way by the OED was remarkable enough, but it also invited a question: if 😂 was a word, did that make emoji a language?