
New Books in Popular Culture Jieun Kiaer, "Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Mar 2, 2026
Jieun Kiaer, Professor of Korean linguistics at Oxford and author of Emoji Speak, studies how emojis shape online communication. She discusses how emojis are created and standardized, cultural and legal pitfalls in interpretation, generational differences in use, and how preset sets influence expression. The conversation highlights global diversity in emoji practices and why context matters for meaning.
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Emoji Copyright Reveals Digital Versus Physical Law Clash
- Copyright and IP for emojis are messy because digital remix culture clashes with physical-world publishing law.
- Kiaer had to redesign and recreate many images and consult lawyers and platform owners like Google, WeChat and Kakao to publish emoji images.
Emoji Speak As A New Multimodal Language
- Kiaer defines emoji broadly as image-based, multimodal 'image-words' that can function as nouns and verbs, and she coins "emoji speak" for this shift away from letter-based communication.
- Emoji speak is a multimodal communication form that rivals traditional written language and can include memes and other pictorial signs.
Smartphones Turn Icons Into Emergent Expressions
- Emojis spread because smartphones gave everyone easy access and users then create new emojis to satisfy expressive needs beyond default sets.
- Kiaer notes many popular emojis arise accidentally when users repurpose icons and those that resonate culturally become widely adopted.

