New Books Network

Jieun Kiaer, "Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Mar 2, 2026
Dr. Jieun (Ji-yeon) Kiaer, Professor of Korean linguistics at Oxford and author of Emoji Speak, explores emoji as a global, image-based form of communication. She discusses how emojis are created and standardized, cultural and generational misunderstandings, legal questions around interpretation, and what emoji-driven interaction might mean for future digital worlds.
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ANECDOTE

Daughter Learned To Communicate With Emoji

  • Jieun Kiaer watched her young daughter learn to communicate using emoji before she could write words.
  • The daughter used emoji to communicate with a Korean aunt, inspiring Kiaer's research into 'emoji speak' as a real communicative system.
INSIGHT

Digital Emoji Use Collides With Print Copyright

  • Copyright law complicates using emoji images in print even when those images circulate freely online.
  • Kiaer spent months consulting IP lawyers and companies, then redesigned many images with a colleague to avoid infringement for her book.
INSIGHT

Emoji Speak As A New Multimodal Language

  • Kiaer coins 'emoji speak' to describe multimodal, image-based communication that competes with letter-based language.
  • She treats emoji as both noun and verb and includes memes and image-words as part of this broader multimodal speak.
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