The evolution of the emoji
It's easy to trace, the tracks of my tears of joy.
When the OED named the "face crying tears of joy" emoji as 2015's Word of the Year, it prompted an unsurprising debate about whether a pictograph could really be described as a word.
Susan Herring, is a professor of Information Science and Linguistics at Indiana University. She explores the evolution of the emoji, and its predecessor the emoticon.