It may not be a word by the strictest definition, but the emoji commonly known as “face with tears of joy” has been named Word of the Year 2015 by Oxford Dictionaries.
A breakthrough year for the pictograms, first spread by texting teenagers, has been marked by the Oxford Dictionaries' recognition for a word or expression that “captures the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year”.
The body cited Hillary Clinton soliciting feedback in emojis and ongoing debates about the skin tone of smiley faces as evidence that “emojis have come to embody a core aspect of living in a digital world that is visually driven, emotionally expressive, and obsessively immediate.”
Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries, said: “You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st-century communication. It's not surprising that a pictographic script like the emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps - it's flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully. As a result, emojis are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication.”
Research by mobile technology business SwiftKey found that “face with tears of joy” was the most heavily used emoji globally in 2015.
Their statistics showed that the character comprised 20 per cent of all emojis used in the UK in 2015.
The Independent
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