Internet Language: Emoji, Memes, and New Forms of Communication

Digital Communication Creates New Genres

Every new medium creates new linguistic genres. The telegraph created brevity and “period” as the designation for the end. The telephone created norms for the “beginning” and “end” of a call. The Internet has created hundreds of new genres over 30 years: email, forum post, tweet, Instagram post, TikTok comment.

Each genre has its own norms: length, tone, degree of formality, permissible topics. Email is a hybrid of a letter and a conversation: more formal than a messenger, less formal than a business letter. A tweet is radically brief, public, performative.

David Crystal (“Language and the Internet”, 2001; “txtng: the gr8 db8”, 2008): the Internet and SMS do not destroy language (this fear repeats with every new medium). These are new genres with new norms—not degeneration, but diversification.

Emoji As a New Linguistic Layer

Emoji began as Japanese pictograms in mobile messages (1999). Today—3,600+ symbols, used in 10 billion messages daily. This is the first global “script”—though not a full-fledged language.

What do emoji do? They substitute for intonation and nonverbal communication, lost in written text. “I’ll be there at 5” is neutral. “I’ll be there at 5 😊” is friendly. “I’ll be there at 5 🙄” is sarcastic.

But emoji are not unequivocal: “🍆” in different contexts means very different things. Emoji are culturally specific: for an American, “🙏” means prayer; for a Japanese person—thank you. This is the “emoji gap”—an analogue of cultural misunderstanding.

Question for reflection: How do the norms of digital communication in your organization differ from the norms of “official” communication? Does this create problems with understanding—especially between generations?