How to Do Things without Words: Modeling Semantic Drift of Emoji

TL;DR

This paper models and analyzes how emoji meanings change over time, exploring the factors contributing to their semantic drift in informal communication.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for modeling emoji semantic drift and identifies features influencing this evolution, some unique to emoji and others more general.

Findings

Emoji meanings evolve over time due to various factors.

Certain features contribute significantly to semantic drift.

The study provides insights into the dynamics of emoji interpretation.

Abstract

Emoji have become a significant part of our informal textual communication. Previous work addressing the societal and linguistic functions of emoji overlook the evolving meaning of the symbol. This evolution could be addressed through the framework of semantic drifts. In this paper we model and analyze the semantic drift of emoji and discuss the features that may be contributing to the drift, some are unique to emoji and some are more general.