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Jieun Kiaer, "Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
00:41:57
An interview with Jieun Kiaer
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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:34]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased to have with me today Dr. Ji Eun Kheir to tell us all about her book titled Emoji Communication and Behaviours on Social Media, published by Bloomsbury in 2023. This is a really fascinating book that talks about something I think probably a lot of people, certainly myself included, use very often emojis and not just in one place or one type of communication, but really the book looks at a global context, across cultures, within cultures, between generations. There's all sorts of things that the book investigates. So, Jeetan, thank you so much for being with us on the podcast to tell us all about it.
- [01:16]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
Thank you for having me today. I'm very pleased to be here and tell you about the book.
- [01:22]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Before you start telling us about the fascinating book though, would you mind introducing yourself a little bit and explaining sort of why you came to write this?
- [01:31]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
Sure. So my name is Jin Kao and I'm professor of Korean Linguistics at University of Oxford. So yeah, and my sort of background, I'm kind of more, I was interested in some more theoretical linguistics but then I also became interested in more its application and kind of the reason why I became interested emoji is because I talk about this in the book too. But my two daughter, I have two daughters now, 14, 11. But I was really fascinated the way how my younger one actually learned how to do emoji. I used the word emoji in this book as a noun, but also I coined as a verbal term. I haven't taught her at all how to do emoji. But as a baby she learned how to use emoji and she was able to communicate with her auntie in Korea well even if she didn't know how to write any word. So I thought it was really fascinating and that her sort of emoji behavior was the motivational writings of this book. And of course we know that it's not just her, but it's almost everyone. And more and more people actually speak emoji.
- [02:44]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
A great motivation. I often find fascinating books come from someone who's just sort of looking around and going, hang on, that's interesting, let me go poke at it. So that part of the kind of preface to the book made a lot of sense to me when I read it. But to be honest, I had not thought of this next piece, which is the difficulty of writing a book about emojis. Emojis seem so easy to use and I had never thought about, well, is there copyright for it? How do you put that in a book? So could you tell us a bit about the difficulties you ran into in this area and how you managed it?
- [03:21]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
This was really interesting because I didn't realized this was an issue. But then also this also maybe, you know, I should have written much more about this part in the book, but only happened when I finished my manuscript, so I couldn't really include that part. But so in this book, this book actually emoji speak. One of the things that I want to really bring up is that the diversity of it. So it's not. It's beyond the sort of yellow faced emoji and the way how people make emoji and. And I think in this book I also use emoji to include broadly the meme culture too. But the diversity was something that really fascinated me. The same emoji not interpreted globally by all population individually or we make different emoji, we interpret differently. And that is something that I found really interesting. So I collected so interesting emoji from all over the place. But I gave it to my publisher and they were really worried about the copyright. And I realized that in digital world, when we text or when we make memes and when we do everything digitally, it's okay, we can make memes or the ar. Augmented reality is basically using somebody else's images and you put another layers and so on. So actually in our digital lives we are so used to use this sort of emoji or use other people's image or text and then make our own, my own and interact. But in a physical world when it sort of comes, you know, moves to physical world. So I'm talking to the publisher and the copy of this book there were and the different laws. So copyright law basically, of course I can totally understand, you know, the artwork. You can't just use other people's artwork. Although this is kind of used by many people. But I had to about three or four Months, actually more struggle with the publisher and rightly so, I understand their concern. So I had to work, I had to ask different people, different lawyers, intellectual property, IP lawyers, and I had to talk with Google and different, I mean, it's not, you know what I'm using emoji. Sometimes I'm not even using their emoji, but I'm using some people who made the emoji using their platform. But I had to consult with every single person in this process because of this, you know, the copyright matters and some people, some companies like. So also I had to be in touch with WeChat and you know, Kakao and global companies. I thought that they would be quite chill. They would, I thought they would be happy to share because it's pure. I mean, I'm not making, writing this book to make money. It's in a fairly academic use. But then I received often the answer no, which surprised me so much. But in a way, what I realized through this process is that the way how we use information or work with images in a digital world is very different in the physical world. And the physical world law, copyright law, not necessarily translated into digital words and vice versa. So I found that really interesting and I'm kind of thinking these days to write a book on this. So it was very interesting, but I would say it took so long time and at the end of it, what I had to do is some of the images. I had a colleague who was a designer and so I had to work with her. And then some images actually I had to come up with myself and I had to make it so we had clear rules. It took a long time, but I learned that the lesson. And there's an interesting point of the digital physics word and physical world disparity. So it was after all very good. But I was very surprised of this copyrightish and interestingly, the IP lawyers, most of them didn't know what to do.
- [07:23]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, well, I'm glad you wrote about it in the book because I certainly had not thought that through and I think there's going to be a lot of people listening to this going, huh, yeah, you're right. So even that alone, I think is a really interesting point and contribution. But I'd love to pick up on something else you talk about in the book that you mentioned a little bit already. What counts as an emoji? How do we define it and how do we think about the words or of emoji speak as the title. Take us through these definitions.
- [07:54]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
Yeah, so emoji, you know, do you can imagine what emoji is like? And of course there are so many other terms like emojis, emoticon or you know, like memes and so on and so forth. And oed. Of course, you know, originally this word as we all know that is from Japanese word, kind of loan word from Japanese and you know, has sort of pictograph like meanings. But this is also really interesting because emoji, emoticon and you know, this sort of picture word picture pictograph. You know, more like I'm using this as almost overarching terms for universal term that actually competing with letter words. But in a way what this also I found interesting in my research that the way how the word emoji or emoji or memes in this world used is very different from, you know, culture by culture, language and region by region. So you know, so the exactly same thing we may call emoji, but in Japan they will call emoticon. And they have different words like oh, this is emoji, but this is not emoticon. And this was really fascinating. Even the terms is not really kind of, you know, agreed upon. And similarly, another project that I'm working on right now is metaverse. The word metaverse of course is coined in Snow Crash. But everybody uses differently. So I thought this is another interesting aspect. But then. But in my book I used emoji as a sort of more like the original pictograph. More non the word image based words almost like image word that can include to probably meme and different through image based words. And in contrast to letter words that we are most used to. And I'm kind of saying in this book as almost in final chapter that in a way we are so used to human, you know, our civilization so used to letter words. We do for example like academic or what do we do? We read the books, we write books mostly engage with letter words. And in a way this. You know what happened in the digital advancement. And asked to I say 10, 20 years made it enabled common people or all of us actually engage much more multimodal way communication. And so in a way emojispeak which is coined similarly from Joji West Newspeak. But I don't have sort of this more cynical nuances for the word. But emojispeak I use the term coin the term. And of course in the book I used emoji which as a noun and verb. But emojis pick is kind of more like the speak the communication that is liberated from more letter based communication. We most used to communicate with letter, the verbal communication. But in a way, what human communication? Much more human, more authentic, I think, is gesture, more like visual communication. And so I use the term emojispeak and the word emoji as a verb, more like as a word meaning multimodal speak that is kind of different from perhaps just verbal speak. So it can include all kinds of digital engagement as well as physical engagement that's beyond our very much like writing, speech based communication.
- [11:15]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Thank you for taking us through that. I think that's really important to understand kind of what it is that we're talking about, especially when we get into thinking about where these things come from and how people use them. So on the first half of that, can you take us through how new emojis are created and what you think this sort of method of creation, what impact this has on how emojis are then used.
- [11:42]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
So as we know, emoji, first of all, when you think about emoji, first of all, the thing that you kind of, I mean, even the COVID of my book is all filled with yellow faces, but you know, can you imagine like smiley yellow face? That is something that you may kind of think about. This is emoji. But in a way, you know, these emojis, the Apple, Google, all these big companies, and it's very closely related to the smartphone and the technological developments. Because of course in the past we had sort of emoji like things. And the history of emoji or emoticons is not so new. But the way how we actually are able to engage with emoji in our daily conversation all the time is because it's very much related, linked to the possession of a smartphone. And smartphone, when you do WhatsApp or other social media talk, you are given a particular emoji, a set of emojis. And of course we were able to pick up one or the other. But then as we become more used to this emojis, big and that because the technology allows us to make our own, we make emoji ourselves all the time. And even the smartphone or tablets allow us to have the app that makes our own emoji. In a way, it's really linked to our expressive desire. We are okay with given emojis, but the more we used to these emojis, we realize that's not enough or we want something more new, want to express our feelings better. And this kind of desire in a way leads us to make our own emojis. And of course one can say emojis Maybe in the past is for many young people, but now, as you know, and we all know that, you know, generational gap is less so. So whether you are, you know, young teens or in my age group or older groups, we all emoji. And it becomes very much like something that I think brings the generations together. And the way how emojis born, of course, you know, you can plan it, but very, very often is I think made very much accidentally. You know, some somehow I used it and then it becomes famous, becomes popular. So it becomes, you know, popular emoji and so on. But also I think the emoji, a particular emojis which I discuss in my book in chapter eight and nine and so on and four emoji, five emoji diversity. Actually, some of the emojis also coined the cultural importance or, you know, there's some sort of cultural connotation for different regions. So it somehow is representative of the cultural region. At the same time, it expresses, you know, more individual traits as well. So it has huge diversity that it's difficult for to, To. To generalize, think.
- [14:38]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
No, thank you. Thank you for taking us through that. Maybe you could tell us about sort of Unicode and the process of creating them. There's just to go a little bit further into that example.
- [14:50]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
So, yeah, Unicode, I mean, of course I think what I say this now about the emoji creation and the registration in Unicode, somehow I'm talking 2023 August. But technology all the time changes. So I don't know whether they will continue or the practice may change. But in a way, as we know, this kind of more like umbrella sort of organization, Unicode collects all this and creates my. Provides more like general platform, general array of emojis. And it also has application that, you know, for example, let's say the food. If you think about the food in your smartphone and you know, have some sort of emoji on food, then you can easily say, oh, in the past few years ago, like, whoa, there's no Asian food. What's the. You know, this diversity is very limited. And because of these problems, you know, Unicode also accepts more diverse food about diverse cultural emojis and get the application and approve it and then put it in the, you know, more general platform. However, no matter how they try hard, it's very difficult to represent the whole, you know, the culture without with very much actually, you know, objective way. So there's a kind of problem and it's inevitable problem to have some sort of universal platform. No matter how they work hard, it's Very difficult to have very sort of, you know, objective array of cultural symbols in a way that could satisfy everyone and the way how. And this is the reason why people go on to their own emoji or make their own VR and then put their own emojis over there. But in a way, also, if we kind of rely on this, almost this universal platform or some often the problem we find is that it will not actually reflect the cultural, in a way, the diverse, Able to capture the cultural diversity as we face. It could also bring some sort of injustice there. And it, I think could impact you. You asked me about impact. So it could bring some sort of negative impact as well because, oh, it's just like, just look the food emojis. And if the kids like my, my daughters look at this emoji and if they're used to that, they may not really realize that there's other than this, what they expose. They kind of, in a way it is good in one sense to be able to express and share, but then it's also possible that it can kind of limit or narrow down your cultural repertoire. So I think it's kind of important that we have more diverse voices that can bring our diverse needs and cultural representation.
- [17:51]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
But yeah, thank you for going a little bit further into that one. I'd love to pick up on what you just mentioned. The idea of kind of having a set list of emojis. Preset emojis can really have an impact on how people think. And you talk in the book that this impact is not just for children but also for adults. So could you tell us a bit more about what impact you think sort of a preset list of emojis can have on people's thinking.
- [18:18]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
I mean, you know, one sense is very handy if you kind of, you know, everybody's very busy and you want to use preset emoji. Because I say, I say okay. I mean, this is kind of example that which I have in the book. But maybe, you know, if we didn't have emoji before the pre emoji era, if somebody asks you something and you say okay, and first stop, they wouldn't cause any problems at all, like, okay, great, fine. But then nowadays in the emoji era, where we are living in, if you got some text message and someone asking you something and you just say okay, first off, the other person would have been very worried. It's really, really ok, okay, or what's wrong with that? So in a way, we are, no matter whether we want or not, not only Children, but we also kind of live within this sort of preset emoji and we kind of have to use in a way that's preset. But so what I'm trying to say is it's convenient in a way, but it also has created a lot of other problems that I just shared also in a way. Another aspect which I didn't discuss a lot in this book is no emoji can be handy. But in a way, in our this big data era, where we also live with AI somehow our expressive desire. This is kind of the question I had in the book too. Does emoji help us to express better? In one sense, yes. But if it can also make us to limit, it can limit our expression in general, we don't really know how to express our feelings and so on because we have emojis. So in a way it's kind of a, you know, difficult relation. It can be, it is helpful. But at the same time, if we are over dependent on emoji to express ourselves, that it may, you know, we may forget how to express, interact with other people. And this is something that, you know, how young people nowadays really don't want to have some kind of phone phobia. You know, they find it difficult to engage in real communication because they are so into this more digital emoji communication. So I think there's sort of pros and cons and we can't just say, you know, have provided black and white view, but this is something that we also should be aware of. That's where we are living in.
- [20:43]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Very much so. Speaking of what we are living in, I think this is something that I certainly read this and I was like, oh my God, you're so right. Because of course we do all, many of us use emojis. We don't really think about it, but we're making a lot of decisions when we're using emojis. And we tend to, you know, use them very differently if we're talking to our parents or our grandparents than if we're talking to work colleagues. Then if we're talking to friends. There's a lot of different things going into the decision about which emojis to use when. And you helpfully in the book pull a lot of these out and discuss them both conscious factors and unconscious factors. So could you help us understand what some of the things are that are going through our heads?
- [21:32]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
Yeah. So I mean, you know, sometimes, you know, and very, you know, simple mind, we may say emojis big is easier. You know, you can just choose whatever, you know, a smiley face and then easy. And you'll make your conversation very easy and it will become an oil of your communication. But what I found is it's not exactly the case. It's in a way it opens up the diversity and it could be very complex. Complex. There's a great depth of complexity in it. And for example, like what I discuss in this book a lot about intercontrol communication. Like we talk with of course, in the emoji in the social media and the digital communication. Our communication is not bound by the regional language. You can go cross culturally, cross generation and so on. So in a way we communicate with different people who sometimes we don't know the identity of that person. But then what I mean, you know, it's again like very individually different. So it's very difficult to generalize. And this is, I think one of the important things in emojispeak that you can't just say, you know, people speak this way, that way. Individual difference is huge. But found that for example, like, you know, in Asian context, the age or the hierarchy really mattered, just as in the verbal communication. Whereas in sort of Western context or you know, in European context, the hierarchy meant less. So that was one thing I found very interesting. Like in the, you know, like in Asia, even the emojis speak, you have to be really careful whether you, I mean, I was looking at the group chat of 20 plus people students, but their behavior totally changed whether they had a teacher in the group or not, things like that. So in a way there's great diversity, but also like seniority and so on. With many we have sort of Asian communication, whereas actually in Western communication, kudu, that sort of hierarchy meant less. And this is also reflected in language too. But then when the two groups are mixed together and intercultural communication, that's something that one has to be very careful and not to offend. And also even within the same European context, there were some difference and the regional difference and cultural difference. For example, like using how, you know, heart to the same gender person or not and what kind of color of the heart, Blue heart, red heart, what does it mean? And it could, you know, create some kind of misunderstanding too. So I talk about in the book of safe emoji and some unsafe emojis, but in a way, so it's to choose the right emoji is a complex matter. And in a way, even if you are communicating with sort of in your digital media where people cannot see you, you need to be kind of careful and it's kind of courtesy to and respect for the other person and their culture. But it's a complex matter. But what I found kind of, you know, the important factor within most important factor in this digital communication using emoji between Asia and non Asian context was the hierarchy, social hierarchy and the way how it played in emoji realization. Yeah. Get in the game with the college branded Venmo debit card. Wreck your team with every tap and earn up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash, a new new rewards program from Venmo. No monthly fee, no minimum balance, just school pride and spending power. Get in the game and sign up for the Venmo debit card@venmo.com collegecard the Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA Select Schools available Venmo stash terms and exclusions apply at Venmo Me stash terms max $100 cash back per month.
- [25:35]
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- [26:06]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
One obvious aspect of hierarchy is age. And this is a really fascinating one because I think in a lot of cultures there's already differences in communication between older people and younger people. And obviously emoji adds kind of a whole new aspect to it, especially if we're thinking about things like memes that rely on shared sort of cultural reference points. So what impact do you think the use of emojis has on intergenerational communication within like technically the same national culture, the same language, but really quite a lot of difference?
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Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
Yes. So I think actually emoji using memes also the responses I had was very, you know, it's mixed. So in a way, you know, some people I interviewed one person who was like sort of, he was a Korean man, mid-50s and he, he got really fascinated. He was so happy to receive the emoji, you know, kind from his junior person sending him emoji. He found it very much like, you know, happy and you know, he felt really, really excited about this. So, you know, he really liked it. But then on the other hand, so it was actually I interviewed my mom, but the case that she found she's in her mid-70s. She found it very kind of disturbing to receive emoji. And she was saying to me, how dare this person send her emoji where she could have just phoned her. So I thought response is whole different. And so it's again something that you can't really generalize even based on age. The responses are very different. But I think on the whole the emoji because of probably this smiley or cute character, this more accessibility, then maybe you could have sent other things, more letter oriented greetings and so on, it still it can bring more formality. Whereas if you kind of approach or you know, talk with someone who you don't know with emojis, I think in general people find it more accessible and it kind of lowers the barriers that exist between different generations. So I think it's on the whole positive. But still I think it's something that you have to really care for and to be respected, to respect the other person the way how, you know, for example, like some people, if the person doesn't like that culture at all, then you know, you have to, you have to be careful. You have to basically test to, you know, you have to basically find out what is a suitable method. But in general, I think because of the imaginass, you know, the approaching or communicating with images, emoji word or image word actually makes them to be more accessible. So I think it's positive for intergenerational communication.
- [29:10]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's encouraging. Thank you for sharing that. The book had so many fascinating examples within different cultures and especially across different cultures how as you said at the beginning, your.org can communicate with people using emoji even if they don't speak the same language. But one thing I was fascinated by, those sorts of examples imply that a smiley face means the same thing in different languages. Turns out in the book actually not so much. There were some really interesting examples of the same emoji meaning something different in different places, sometimes really quite different. So would you mind taking us through one or two examples of an instance where the meaning is quite different across places?
- [29:56]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
Yes. I mean, it was a shame that I had such good examples from WeChat. But then WeChat didn't want me to use the images that I couldn't use these images. But in a way, you know, like just even very, very simple, the smiley image, you know, emoji that we all know that in a way, you know, it's all, I thought it's all good, everybody happy. And you know, if you send it to Each other. It means that I'm good, you're good. That sort of image is kind of oil of the communication. That's what I thought before, but then throughout the project I realized that that's exactly not the case. I had a really interesting workshop on emoji speak last year and I had about 20 people who all sort of who participate and most of them in their 20s. And I realized that most of all, most of them, almost all of them, this emoji, you know, smile emoji doesn't mean, you know, happy everyone is, you know, every, everything is going well. But it's kind of rather considered, rather interpreted as something more sarcastic. But also what is important is that, you know, even if they kind of understood it in a more sarcastic meaning, it really depends on the context where they use. For example, like if they use it with me, that means probably non sarcastic. It's just like happy, happy emoji. But if they used it within the group, sending a smiley to each other, that means as a sarcastic. So in a way, same image, same emoji, same people. But the way how they interpret and use the meanings really differ based on who they use, which context, which means that register of variation is much huge, hugely different and complex than ever before. But I realized that, you know, like simply, if you ask people what do you think this means, what they really think in their mind is that, oh, this is all sarcastic. If they send it to each other, it means sarcastic, but if they send it to their parents, that's not really sarcastic. So in a way there's a lot of nuances that perhaps not known to everyone. So it also shows us the future of a language given that emoji and meme will be the important part of our language. So simply, how many times, when you think about all your text messages each day, how many times you use emojis is so huge if you think about that sort of number. It shows us that to realize how complex and neang style communication will be and in a way in the future, what you think about emojis easy. Well, actually may end up most difficult part of interpretation in our communication.
- [32:38]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, in fact, it's beginning to happen, right. As you said, we're using emojis so often that interpreting them in the real world is starting to become not just are you being sarcastic, but there's some really stark real world implications. For example, in legal cases. So would you mind telling us about this?
- [32:59]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
Yes, there's some, you know, examples that I talk about in this book about, you know, emoji so, you know, like there are some emoji, for example, like, you know, like guns or like some sort of kind of weapon emoji. And, you know, some emoji that I, you know, exist about, you know, kind of really sensitive or, you know, some are more to do with the sexual harassment. These emojis, I think it's very difficult to interpret this emoji or to think about the weight of this emoji emoji in general. You know, like, because of this almost like manga, like cartoon, like nature embedded people can easily say, well, this. I used its emoji for fun. And if you. I didn't mean it. I mean, I kind of think about this word business phrase. I didn't mean it. It was just emoji. You can always defend it in the way that, you know, it was just emoji. I didn't mean it. It was just a fun. And then you can kind of defend yourself. But then in few cases that I discuss in the book, actually it had a real legal implication and so was in effect. But in a way, there are so many cases that I'm sure that it will be more in the case in the court from now on, given that our communication mostly happens through the social media or digital realm. So we really need to find out the best way to interpret translate this emojis. But often emoji you can hide saying, oh, this was just fun or you know, this was just I didn't mean it and things like that. So in a way it's really important how we kind of weight the emoji or the memes, whether and how we interpret them and how we kind of weigh them or whether we kind of treat them same as Barbara was or not. And I think that's important to think that we will have to think about, you know, whether does it have its same impact as above our words or not, or if not, why and so on. So for the cases that are discussed was just like only a few exceptional cases. But I think there is no like in a way in anywhere in the world yet have some sort of more systematic legal view on emoji and so on. So I think this is urgently needed for our future. But in a way, in order to do that, we also need to understand the, the legal implication or the words of verbal and nonverbal actions in physical world, perhaps not directly translatable in digital world. So we need to really understand that the two are coexisting words, but perhaps not exactly the same. So I think that needs more Understanding and consensus between practitioners or legal professionals and also linguists.
- [35:50]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, any lawyers or theorists listening to this. There you go. That's something for you to work on from this. And because we've now brought in the kind of legal side the. Wait, hang on. This going to become even more of a thing in the future. I'd love to go back to something you mentioned at the beginning, Orwell's new speak, because of course emoji speak does sound a little bit like it. So in what ways do you find it effective to compare emoji speak to Newspeak, especially given what we've now discussed?
- [36:23]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
Yes, I mean, as you know, Newspeak in 1984, it's kind of combination of Newspeak, a simplified version of English language, and kind of supposed to become so reduced so conceptually that only allow positive discussion of authorities, ideologies and so on. But I don't have sort of much sinister undertone for this emojis speaking. But in a way it's also transformative speak and it's kind of abstract and simplified forms that would also be the dominant form of speak speech across the borders, across languages and regions. And it's something like sort of, how should I say it kind of, you know, it's born. Of course, we had it, as I said, for some time, but I think the impact or the prevalence that we face right now is much more than we expected. And it's almost to competing with the visual, I mean, competing with the letter words or the traditional orthodoxy ways of our communication or our letter based communication. So it's kind of in that way, I think it's kind of has some parallel with the Newspeak, that completely new way of communication, communication or speak. But that also impact almost the whole humanity in a way. But it also breaks our tradition of speak or communication before very much letter based verbal word space. But it kind of opens another multimodal speak and it breaks the boundaries too. But then we are entering into the unknown. So I think within the symbolic meanings, I think there's some parallel between the two.
- [38:10]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Exciting, lots of things to think about in the future. You've already given lawyers a whole bunch of things to do after listening to this. And I think anyone listening is probably going to think twice next time they find themselves using an emoji. So that leaves me only with my final question. Now that you've given us so much to think about. The book is obviously out now. It's off your desk. So is there anything you might be working on or thinking about? Next, whether or not it's a book, whether or not it's on this exact topic that you'd like to share with us.
- [38:41]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
I'm actually writing another book right now, actually finishing this manuscript on conversing in the metaverse. So it's kind of more or less emojispeak was it actually led me to think about the another communication within the metaverse. Emojis big happens more or less in a digital realm that shared platform shared by everyone that for example you have Twitter or WhatsApp or you go kind of social media that we share and then we communicate within that realm. But nowadays actually, and it's not new the way how we engage in augmented reality or virtual realities, but in a way this, this opens up very much new ways, new platform where completely decentralized and it is happening right now. So in a way in social media we are together in the same platform, more centralized platform, but now in a way we are complete in a solo space that we don't know where you are in. There's so many realities that actually non real but real to many people. So I'm kind of extending the themes that I discuss in the book book sort of into the another dimension. So this book I'm working on is about the communication patterns within the metaverse. So this also includes some discussion about emoji, but in a way I kind of talk about avatar and more like meme culture in the book.
- [40:14]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Intriguing. Well, best of luck finishing that off. And while you're working on it, of course listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Emoji Speak, Communication and Behaviors on Social Media, published by Bloomsbury. Jiyeon, thank you so much for being with us on the podcast.
- [40:30]
Dr. Ji Eun Kheir
Thank you for having me.