This chapter describes the ways in which emoji and language synchronise to realise textual meaning in a social media post. It organises these as features of a system network that describes this sychronicity. A primary distinction is made between instances where emoji replace linguistic co-text (inset) and instances where emoji accompany the linguistic co-text (punctuate) in a manner similar to punctuation or discourse markers. In terms of language, the key discourse semantic systems involved are identification and periodicity, which are crucial in tracking participants and organising information flow in texts. In terms of the SFL model of textual meaning, emoji appear to occupy a wavelength between clauses and higher-level periodicity, while the unique affordances of emoji also provide new opportunities for creating meaning in texts.

This chapter introduces the framework for exploring emoji-text relations in social media that is used in this book. The chapter begins by explaining the discourse semantic systems that have been developed in Systemic Functional Linguistics for describing ideational, interpersonal, and textual meaning. This is in order to lay the foundation for exploring the linguistic meanings with which emoji coordinate in subsequent chapters. The chapter then introduces the concept of ‘intermodal convergence’ used in social semiotics to describe how semiotic modes such as language and images coordinate to make meaning. The chapter outlines the principles that we use for determining emoji-text convergence, including proximity, minimum mapping, and prosodic correspondence. It concludes with an overview of the system of emoji-text convergence, presenting the system network guiding the close textual analysis conducted on the social media corpora used in the book.

This chapter focuses on the technical aspects of emoji, including how emoji are encoded and rendered for use in digital communication. The chapter explains how emoji are developed by the Unicode Consortium as well as considering the social implications of this process. Unicode characters, and emoji codepoints, modifiers, and sequences are explained. The chapter also deals with emoji design and aesthetics, and explains how emoji are visually rendered as glyphs by different ‘vendors’ such as social media platforms. The chapter then examines the role of semiotic technologies in both enabling and constraining the ways they are used. It concludes by discussing the implications of emoji encoding and rendering on corpus construction, annotation, and concordancing.

This chapter explores how emoji can function as a resource operating in the service of ambient affiliation, which unlike the dialogic affiliation explored in the previous chapter, does not rely on direct interaction. The chapter analyses the role of emoji in finessing and promoting the social bonds that are tabled to ambient audiences in social media posts. It also investigates their role in calling together, or convoking, ambient communities to align around shared values or alternatively contest those values. A specialised corpus of tweets about the NSW state government’s COVID-19 pandemic response in Australia is used to show how emoji both interact with their co-text as well as support the tabling of bonds to potential audiences or interactants. The analysis reveals how emoji tended to both buttress and boost negative judgement by adding additional layers of negative assessment as well as to muster communities around the critical bonds which they had helped to enact.

This chapter explores the interpersonal function of emoji as they resonate with the linguistic attitude and negotiation of solidarity expressed in social media posts. We have introduced a system network for describing the ways in which this resonance can occur, making a distinction between emoji which imbue the co-text with interpersonal meaning (usually through attitudinally targeting particular ideation) and emoji which enmesh with the interpersonal meanings made in the co-text (usually through coordinating with linguistic attitude). We then explain the more delicate options in this resonance network where emoji can harmonise with the co-text by either echoing or coalescing interpersonal meaning, or can rebound from the co-text, either complicating, subverting or positioning interpersonal meaning. Following this traversal of the resonance network we considered two important dimensions of interpersonal meaning noted in the corpus: the role of emoji in modulating attendant interpersonal meanings in the co-text by upscaling graduation and emoji’s capacity to radiate interpersonal meaning through emblematic usage as bonding icons.

This chapter explores the role of emoji in the negotiation of meaning in exchanges in TikTok comment feeds. It draws on a model of affiliation, together with the emoji text relations of concurrence, resonance, and synchronicity developed in the three previous chapters, to undertake detailed analysis of the social bonds at stake in these exchanges. Affiliation is a framework developed within social semiotics for describing how language and other semiotic resources support both social connection and disconnection, and aid in the construction of social relations more generally. The corpus used for the analysis undertaken in the chapter is a specialised dataset of TikTok comment threads made on a video series reviewing the food delivered during hotel quarantine in New Zealand in 2021. The TikTok comment exchanges featured users negotiating social bonds about food, daily life, and the pandemic. Most exchanges involved convivial alignments around shared values, with the occasional heated discussion about whether quarantine was a justifiable approach to the pandemic.

This chapter summarises the model developed for exploring emoji-text convergence in this book. It reviews the system network for describing this convergence which was built up progressively throughout, covering textual synchronicity, ideational concurrence, and interpersonal resonance. The chapter also consolidates the book’s exploration of the role of emoji in negotiating and communing around social bonds through affiliation. The chapter works through a full analysis of an extract from a Twitter thread to show how the various kinds of analysis developed in the book might be deployed, drawing on the complete convergence network as well as the affiliation networks. The chapter concludes by underscoring the crucial role that linguists might play as emoji and other forms of digital paralanguage increase in cultural prominence

This chapter introduces the study of emoji as a form of social media paralanguage. It delves into the semiotic versatility of emoji as ‘picture characters’ enabling users to express a wide range of meanings through their use with language in social media communication. The book approaches emoji as a form of paralanguage due to their close dependency on the meanings conveyed in their written co-text and their social context. The chapter highlights the significance of the social semiotic perspective to emoji-text relationships adopted in the book with its focus on understanding how they converge with the meanings made in other semiotic modes. It concludes by introducing the structure of the book and the focus of the upcoming chapters on both emoji-text relations and social affiliation.

This chapter explores the ideational function of emoji as they concur with language to construe experience as items and activities in social media posts. The chapter details a system network for modelling ideational concurrence. This network defines two main kinds of relations: depiction and embellishment. Depiction is where emoji congruently illustrate their co-text or integrate themselves into the ideational structure of the post. Embellishment, on the other hand, is where emoji make less congruent meanings by either metaphorising through figurative meanings or emblematising through symbols that activate preconfigured meanings for particular communities. The chapter draws on the discourse semantic system of ideation introduced in Chapter 3 to understand the concurrence of emoji and linguistic sequences, figures, and elements.

This chapter focuses on the power of words and images. It introduces basic concepts that are pivotal in verbal, visual, and multimodal communication. First, it discusses writing in the digital age and explores the media linguistic mindset that is required in rapidly changing digital environments. Furthermore, a set of sixteen key practices of focused writing and writing-by-the way in the newsroom and beyond are presented. The second part of the chapter covers theoretical concepts of visual communication by addressing different approaches to reading images. One pivotal approach is social semiotics – a grand theory that can be applied to all kinds of semiotic material used for communication. This approach is complemented with concepts from other semiotic traditions as well as rhetorical and critical theories about images and their effects on the users. In addition, certain questions related to multimodal communication and related key concepts are discussed. The chapter concludes with the main message that all forms of human communication are multimodal.

This chapter explains the importance of a sustained study of the linguistic/semiotic landscape of global Korea not only in obvious ways for scholars of Korean studies but also to readers more generally interested in language and globalization even without a stated interest in Korea per se. Doing so comes with the related task of providing necessary background on Korea as a national imaginary with a particular focus on aspects of its ethnic national heritage that are relevant to its iterations across the linguistic/semiotic landscape of global Korea. In other words, this chapter describes what some of the generalizable characteristics of Korea are (for readers interested in the globalization of culture) while also describing what makes Korea “unique,” which is particularly important given the focus of the book, to explore the mechanics by which a given cultural entity can come to be semiotically salient (i.e., distinguishable) across global space. This chapter also serves as the space to provide some background to the study that informs this book, describing the various iterations it has taken since 2012.

This chapter considers the significance of viewing cultural entities not only directly but “obliquely” as well, especially as they are encountered in translingual contexts. In order to do so, it outlines the various theoretical advancements of translingualism with a particular emphasis on the importance of attending to spatial and temporal considerations within linguistic/semiotic landscape research. In addition, while translingualism has been presented as a linguistic theory critical to establishing and sustaining cosmopolitan relations across cultural difference, this chapter raises the question of what it means to conceive of another cultural entity as “different” if such differences are semiotically produced in ways that are tenuous if not arbitrary. The chapter thus asks readers to explore culture as it is produced and reproduced within contexts of semiotic precarity, when the presumed essence of an entity is unable to be taken for granted (whether by an “outsider” or even an “insider”) and therefore demands affirmation or reaffirmation via semiotic distinction (semiotic acts that distinguish it from another cultural entity).

This chapter considers the excess of signification, or the semiotic “traces” of global Korea. It first explores the question of the trace in relation to conspicuous municipal designations of Korean spaces in various Koreatowns, which are in turn juxtaposed with the Gwanghwamun in Seoul, a gate to the royal Gyeongbokgung Palace that has been destroyed, relocated, and restored over the years. The chapter then examines how cultural meaning emerges through semiotic traces that would normally be dismissed as having any significatory value, focusing on the case of European semiosis and the role it plays in signifying Koreanness. Finally, it turns to the unusual case of signage in bathrooms of restaurants and other establishments advising patrons to not flush paper down the toilet, reflective of a uniquely Korean preoccupation that can be traced to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. These examples collectively show that Korea can be encountered through semiotic traces that seem to have nothing to do with Korea at all. This in turn not only raises questions about what Korea is but also invites considerations of what to look for when trying to make sense of Korea or another cultural entity.

This chapter introduces a framework of translingual inversion, which facilitates our effort to make sense of the ways in which a given culture can be rendered visible across global space. “Translingual inversion” describes both a theoretical heuristic by which to inquire into what may be the core semiotic features of a given cultural imaginary, which distinguish it from another cultural imaginary, and also the phenomenon of recognizing such features, of locating culture. The application and understanding of translingual inversion are made possible by adopting a global locus, but also “obliquely.” Due to the fact that a given culture typically need not be expected to differentiate itself from other cultures on an everyday basis, translingual inversion is about making sense of the ways in which culture can be located across global space. This chapter also outlines some of the complexities inherent to semiotically representing a particular kind of culture, namely the national imaginary, and then briefly describe how translingual inversion can therefore be instrumental to the task of “locating” national imaginaries across global space.

This chapter attempts to inspire readers to pursue complementary inquiry into considerations of global Korea and analogous research into global iterations of other cultural imaginaries. This chapter also attempts to answer the broader question of why the interdisciplinary study of language remains important in today’s global era. On the one hand, contact across cultures and the realities of transculturation are increasingly the norm. However, more importantly, approaching language in this manner enables us to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of the complex dynamics by which cultures can be rendered distinguishable across global space. It further enables us to attend to the reality that questions of what it means to belong to a given cultural entity to begin with are undergoing radical and unprecedented permutations. Therefore, this chapter suggests that perhaps the question is not so much how today the study of language is more important than ever, but how we can continue to adapt it and be flexible enough so that we can continue to try and make sense of the role of language in relation to the ever-changing contours of cultural belonging today and into the future.

This chapter focuses on the phenomenon of representing the nation as a problem of scale but also as a contingency of scale. It approaches the idea of Korea as a discrete cultural entity as a question of scale, which I define as a discursive framing device that enables us to orient or reorient ourselves toward a given element of our social worlds that is otherwise difficult or impossible to make sense of. Korea, in this sense, is treated both in terms of being able to be scaled and perhaps only ever being subject to scale. The chapter first looks at the scaling of Korea via the color red, which emerged as synonymous with the nation following the 2002 FIFA World Cup, and how such a chromatic association, even if highly unstable, has been embraced since. It then looks to examples of scaling Korea via historical allusions to the ancient Koryo dynasty, a process which demands a strategic manipulation of historical fact. Finally, it analyzes the global allusiveness of a small series of islets whose ownership remains disputed between Korea and Japan, and unpacks the implications of the impossibility of representing the territory to scale.

This chapter focuses on locating the nation via language, in particular written language. It focuses on written language in part due to the fact that the script of the Korean language, known as Han-geul, is frequently referenced as a distinguishing aspect of Korean national identity. More generally, code choice on signage is perhaps the most obvious and simplest way to see cultural difference in the linguistic/semiotic landscape. However, this chapter is not merely an effort to enumerate or catalog instantiations of Koreanness via written language. Instead, it looks at moments of what can be described as “weird language,” or instances of translation, transliteration, and translingualization that are “unfamiliar,” which through their unfamiliarity render intelligible cultural distinctiveness. Examining “weird language” across spaces in Beijing, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Oakland, São Paulo, Shanghai, and Tokyo, the chapter explores what such encounters tell us about our assumptions about the familiar: the taken-for-granted aspects of culture that in a given moment may be expected to stand in for a culture and differentiate it from another.