Face With Tears of Joy: A natural History of Emoji by Keith Houston review
As Keith Houston's fascinatingly geeky and witty history shows, emoji have always been political. Over the years, people have successfully lobbied the Unicode Consortium – the cabal of corporations that controls the character set, including Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple – to include different skin colours and same-sex couples. It was easy to agree to add the face with one eyebrow raised, the guide dog and the egg. But not every request is granted. One demand for a 'frowning poo emoji' elicited this splendid rant from an eminent Unicode contributor, Michael Everson: 'Will we have a crying pile of poo next? Pile of poo with tongue sticking out? Pile of poo with question marks for eyes? Pile of poo with karaoke mic? Will we have to encode a neutral faceless pile of poo?'
Contrary to popular belief, the word 'emoji' has nothing to do with emotions, but instead combines the Japanese terms for 'picture' and 'written character'. The origin of such sets of symbols has been determined by dogged tech researchers to stretch back much further than the first iPhone, or even the regular mobile phones and electronic PDAs that preceded them. A basic set of emoji could be found in the operating systems of some 1980s electronic typewriters and word processors from manufacturers such as Sharp and Toshiba.
Long before that, Houston notes, humans used pictographic characters such as hieroglyphs. Later, movable type saw an efflorescence of publishers' symbols such as the pilcrow (for a new paragraph) and the lamentably under-used manicule (a tiny pointing hand in the margin). And before emoji proper there was a craze for smileys, or emoticons, made out of regular alphanumeric characters, such as the excellent shrug, still sometimes encountered in the wild: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Indeed, Houston makes the intriguing argument that the age of the mechanical typewriter represented an unusual historical interlude of expressive poverty. Once humans were freed from the unnatural restrictions it imposed, there was bound to be a new flourishing of symbolic play.
Such considerations often lead the unwary to suppose that emoji might constitute a 'language', which they definitely don't. To demonstrate why, Houston recalls the Emoji Dick stunt of 2009, whereby developer Fred Benenson had thousands of people contribute to a crowd-sourced 'translation' of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick into emoji. If this were a bona fide language, it should be possible to translate Emoji Dick back into something close to the original with no knowledge of the source text. It isn't.
As Houston argues, then, emoji are possibly a 'script' (a method of writing), and a set of emoji might be a lexicon (a vocabulary), but you can't communicate anything complex in emoji. It is better, perhaps, to think of emoji as an expanded palette of expressive punctuation.
Where next, then, for these little yellow blobs of joy? Unicode has no intention of adding any more flags, the least used category of emoji. The second least popular kind, oddly, is mammals, a fact that has me determined to use more cat faces in future. At some point they will surely have to retire the floppy disk emoji, a picture of an obsolete storage format that millions of younger people have never even seen. Should we even be able, Houston wonders, to create our own custom emoji? As someone who is grateful he doesn't have to reinvent the full stop every time he reaches the end of a sentence, I doubt most people could be bothered.
Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji by Keith Houston is published by Norton (£14.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Metro
an hour ago
- Metro
Games Inbox: What will be the setting for GTA 7?
The Tuesday letters page isn't sure which PS5 game has the best graphics, as one reader explains his hatred for Donkey Kong 64. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@ The next city It's been said that GTA 7 won't be nearly as big a gap from GTA 6 as GTA 6 was from 5, since Rockstar won't need to invent so much new tech. That sounds good and all but what are they planning to do for the gameplay evolution? GTA 6 looks amazing in the trailers, but I don't get the impression that it plays or works all that different from the previous ones. For me, GTA 7 would be the chance to give the game a proper revamp, but I'd also like to see it break the cycle of just going round in circles with the settings. This time it's Vice City, that shouldn't mean that next time is going to be Liberty City again. Rockstar has made it plain that they won't set any of the games outside the US (although I don't know why they couldn't create a spin-off to get around that, especially given one of the 2D games was set in London), but there's plenty of other big cities in America. They try and pack in most terrain types into each of the games but a story that focused on you being something other than a gangster would be interesting. Maybe you could play a cop or a paramedic or something and get mixed up in shady stuff from that. I just want them to mix it up a bit before it gets stale. Chadha Looking for an excuse It's pretty obvious to me that Microsoft wants to just give up on Xbox. I think the problem is they can't figure out a way to back out without making themselves look really bad. There're probably not many companies that could afford or would want Activision Blizzard either. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Even though Call Of Duty is a money printing machine, it can't be easy organising all those developers and teams and I think you'd ever have to leave it completely alone to do it its thing, which big companies can never do, or be really good at organising game developers – which Microsoft certainly isn't. If the next gen doesn't work out though, or something goes wrong with the Call Of Duty production line, I think that will be it. Xbox must be on thin ice already and I think Microsoft is just waiting for the excuse. Trepslis Real-world examples I really don't think it matters how powerful someone says a console is or isn't. Even if you're being really technical and looking at the specs, I've heard it all before. Especially the PS5 Pro being four times as fast or whatever. That's such a vague statement, it really means nothing. We'll know how powerful the Switch 2 is when we get a game that stretches it or when it tries to do something and fails. Actual examples are the only thing that matters. I think that's why this generation has been so disappointing in general. Even now, five years later, I'm not sure what game I'd point to on the PlayStation 5, to say that couldn't be done on PlayStation 4. Spider-Man 2 looks good but it's not mind-blowing or anything. Horizon Forbidden West is probably better and yet that's a cross-gen game! Kosh Email your comments to: gamecentral@ Totally bananas I don't know what Donkey Kong Bananza is going to turn out like, but I can tell you just reading about Donkey Kong 64 coming to Nintendo Switch Online made my eye twitch. That game is the worst! I've always felt Rare were overrated in general, but this was the absolute worse example of a collectathon I have ever played. People complain about game prices now, but this must've been £50 when it came out and it was my birthday present and the only thing I got. I hated it within the first day and it's soured my opinion of Rare and Donkey Kong ever since. That doesn't mean I won't consider Bananza, because I'm assuming it's very different, but I'm not surprised Donkey Kong hasn't had a major game to himself since, because his last one sucked! Gordo Arcade conversion I wonder if Capcom would ever bring back Bionic Commando? They tried to turn it into a Spider-Man clone back on the Xbox 360, but I'd like to see something a little less try-hard and a bit more of the goofy charm of the original. Although I grew up playing the Amiga version, with its amazing soundtrack, which as I understand is much more like the arcade game (which I never saw) and most Americans and Japanese only really think of the NES version when they think of the game. I hear Capcom is thinking of bringing back Mega Man but I never saw the appeal of those games. I guess it's hard to get into some things if you haven't got any nostalgia for the original. Especially NES games, which don't exactly age that well. I'd just like to see Capcom, and companies in general, do more wacky and less series stuff from time to time. It doesn't all have to be The Last Of Us. Lamnent Boardroom battles The thing I don't get about Phil Spencer's continued reign at Xbox is that it's well known that Game Pass was his idea, he's proud of it! And yet, from a business point of view it's been a complete failure. They wanted that to have 100 million subscribers by 2030. They're lucky if they'll have a third of that. Although of course we'll never really know because they're too embarrassed to share the numbers now. And that's just one clear and verifiable failure! I don't see what it is that his bosses think he's done so well that he's kept his job for over a decade and always seems to get what he wants, since Activision Blizzard was his idea as well. Either this guy has got some dirt on a lot of people or… I don't know. I really can't imagine why he's kept his job given everything that's happened and not happened. Although whoever's in charge of organising developers is doing an even worse job. That's what's really undermined Xbox for so long and I'm not sure Phil Spencer has much to do with the day to day of get games greenlit and finished. I don't know what goes on the behind the scenes, I don't think anyone that isn't Xbox does, but it all smells like office politics getting in the way of doing any actual work. Phil Spencer and his mob don't care about Xbox or gaming or anything other than their company bonus. My evidence for this? The last 15 years of Xbox. Lofty GC: Matt Booty is head of Xbox Game Studios. Ugly choice I don't want to stop anyone's fun, but Final Fantasy 9 has got to have the ugliest art design in the series and really, some of the ugliest of all time. It's no wonder to me that the new artwork for the anniversary doesn't look anything like the actual game. I can think of half a dozen Final Fantasy games I'd rather see get a remake before 9, most obviously 6 and 8. I think Square Enix has faintly hinted at 6 being a good idea but I don't expect to see it. Especially not if they've ended up cancelling 9, which there's been rumours about for years now. Camphor Gotta buy 'em all I was watching a video by StrawHat Midas on YouTube on Saturday gone and one commentator in the section was flabbergasted at the fact that if a parent wanted to buy their two kids a Switch 2 each, and both versions of the same Pokémon game so they could trade, it would cost nearly £1,000! That's crazy! That total is about 10 times the amount when people were playing Gen 1 Pokémon on original Game Boys! Wouldn't it be better if Game Freak released just one version of the game with a load of pokémon to catch in the game, with the remaining pokémon sold as a DLC island pack? But then, which pokémon would be the exclusives in order to be sent to the island/sold as DLC? Hmmm… I haven't really thought this through. In reality, that idea would never happen, as the whole point of these games is to trade. Back to the drawing board for me then. LeighDappa GC: It's not 10 times. With inflation, two Game Boys and two Pokémon games would have cost the equivalent of £586 in the 90s. Although, by the time Pokémon Red and Blue came out in the UK the original Game Boy had been superseded by the Game Boy Color. Inbox also-ransMaybe we've got it wrong about Xbox and they have got rid of their execs in favour of AI. It would explain the constant dumb decisions and why Phil Spencer has stuck around for so long: he's just a hologram. Heathcliffe I like the look of Resident Evil Requiem so far, but I don't see any sign of co-op yet, which is a bit of an upset. Wasn't there some talk of Resident Evil Revelations 3? I'd be really up for that. Gannet GC: There were rumours of a third game but nothing substantial. More Trending Email your comments to: gamecentral@ The small print New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers' letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content. You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader's Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot. You can also leave your comments below and don't forget to follow us on Twitter. MORE: Games Inbox: What will be the first Mario Kart World DLC? MORE: Games Inbox: Are video games too expensive for young people? MORE: Games Inbox: Has Xbox become irrelevant this generation?
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Apple Watch series 10 reduced to its lowest-ever price in Amazon Prime Day sale
At long last, Amazon Prime Day 2025 has arrived, and the online giant is busy slashing prices on everything from tech to beauty, including all of Apple's gear. But while there are hefty discounts on AirPods and iPads, it's this deal on the Apple Watch series 10 that's caught my eye. Launched last September, Apple's flagship smartwatch has been slashed by an enormous £104 for Prime Day. I've been tracking the price of the Apple Watch series 10 since it launched, and this is the wearable's first-ever price cut, taking it down to almost £300 for the first time. The sale is exclusive to Prime members and, unlike previous years, it's lasting four days instead of two, so you've got plenty of time to shop. So far, I've spotted big savings on laptops, TVs, air fryers, vacuums and more, but if it's the Apple Watch deal you're here for, here's what you need to know. Apple's latest and greatest Apple Watch series 10 smartwatch is the company's best yet. Boasting an all-new design with a larger display, new health features, sleep apnoea detection and faster charging, it's been slashed to just £325 for Amazon Prime Day. Almost as large as the display on the Apple Watch Ultra, you can see and do more than on any Apple Watch that has come before it. 'While at first glance it looks similar to the series 9, the bigger display, thinner profile and handsome new colours make the Series 10 a lot more appealing,' tech critic David Phelan said in his review. 'The features that have defined the Apple Watch, from subtle notifications, brilliant mapping capabilities on your wrist and above all, great health features, are all at their best here,' he added.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
This Apple AirPods Pro 2 deal is one of the best I've seen this Amazon Prime Day
I've tested a lot of wireless earbuds, but the ones I keep coming back to are Apple's AirPods Pro 2, and right now, they've been slashed to one of their lowest-ever prices for Amazon Prime Day. If you've been looking to upgrade your headphones, you don't have long to grab the deal. Slashed in price by £50, the AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C are now down to £179 at Amazon – the lowest price I've seen in months, and only a few quid more than the mid-range AirPods 4. It's one of the best deals on Apple's flagship earbuds I've seen, especially given how rarely they go on sale. Apple discounts don't stick around for long, and this exclusive Prime Day deal is just for Prime members, with Amazon also cutting prices on everything from as and TVs to air fryers, vacuums and more. Keep reading to find out how to get the deal. Boasting fantastic active noise cancellation, adaptive transparency, personalised spatial audio and a host of gearing features, these are my everyday earbuds, and are constantly being updated with new features every year. Recently updated with tead tracking features, you can now nod and shake your head to answer or decline calls and reply to messages. Soon, you'll be able to hear translations in your ear in real-time, too. This is the cheapest I've seen Apple's flagship earbuds in a while – they were last reduced to this price in November. Praised by tech critic David Phelan, the audio and active noise cancellation is better than the AirPods 4. 'Unlike the AirPods 4, there are also touch controls on the buds themselves, so you can adjust the volume without having to take your phone out of your pocket, and there's a MagSafe case with a lanyard loop for easy charging and storage,' noted Phelan in his review. He also found that they feature some really neat adaptive audio features that react to your environment in real time. 'The case now includes Apple's U1 chip, which means you can use the Find My app on your iPhone to locate it when you've misplaced it,' he added. You can save £50 with this deal at Amazon.
