Ah but that is a "majority" by a dictionary/type count. Due to Zipf's Law, in language matters we should always distinguish dictionary counts from actual usage. E.g. Twitter is very popular in Japan, and I think we'll all agree that the top used kanji are predominantly modal: http://emojitracker.com/
Thomas Dimson's great distributional analysis for Instagram gives us hashtags that are equivalent to emoji; again, I think it's clear that their primary use is for modality. http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/117889701472/emojineering-part-1-machine-learning-for-emoji . What's more, a lot of emoji which seem to have no "clear emotional referent" is appropriated for modal purposes. For example, this thread's 🔫 🔪 💣 are graphical depictions of objects, but I think you'll all agree that the girl was expressing a mood; she wasn't saying "gun, knife, bomb". I'm told that U+1F481, INFORMATION DESK PERSON 💁, was taken to be "sassy girl" or "hair flick", and from that it became a modality indicator for sassiness, sarcasm, fabulousness etc. (I suspect that another major use of emoji, besides modality, is deictic: "I'm at Tokyo Tower" + Tokyo Tower emoji, "Merry Christmas" + Christmas-related emoji. Emotional mood still seems to be to be clearly the dominant use.) 2016-02-29 21:25 GMT-03:00 Garth Wallace <gwa...@gmail.com>: > Some are used to express emotions but many are not: food items, > animals, landmarks, activities, etc. I think the majority do not have > clear emotional referents. The original set introduced in Unicode 6.0 > included things like ROASTED SWEET POTATO and TOKYO TOWER. > > On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 4:04 PM, Philippe Verdy <verd...@wanadoo.fr> > wrote: > > Today's Japanese emojis are (for most of them) recent inventions; may be > > there are some earlier tracks in Japanese comics, but you may as well > find > > them in comics of America or Europe since the about the 1940's. > > > > All these icons were *later* renamed emojis in English and Unicode, but > > there's a long history of using icons for such emotions Look at the > little > > heart drawn near the signature on an handwritten letter or discrete > > messages, or similar symbols carved by lovers on walls and trees. Or long > > before as a sign of recognition such as the fish for the first > Christians in > > the Roman Empire, or even before in some hieroglyphic inscriptions in > antic > > Egyptian, Mayan, and Chinese civilizations since Bronze Age or before. > > > > In fact you could also add all the symbols (not necessarily with > religious > > meaning) found on graves for expressing that the remaining family of > friend > > is missing the defunct. > > You could also add the similar symbols on jewelry for showing we love > > someone, or warrior paintings on faces. > > > > The modern Japanese Emojis were not the first pictograpic signs to > express > > emotions (even if now they have been extended to many other things and > they > > are now widespreading the rest of the world with these extensions). Still > > their main usage remains for emotions ; starting in the 1970's these were > > ASCII art symbols such as the famous :-) > > > > > > > > 2016-02-29 23:24 GMT+01:00 Asmus Freytag (t) <asmus-...@ix.netcom.com>: > >> > >> On 2/29/2016 1:55 PM, Philippe Verdy wrote: > >> > >> . Well emojis were initially designed to track amotions and form a sort > of > >> new language, > >> > >> > >> E-moji means "picture-character" in Japanese, has nothing to do (at > first) > >> with emotions. > >> > >> A./ > > > > >