Semantic journeys: quantifying change in emoji meaning from 2012-2018

Alexander Robertson; Farhana Ferdousi  Liza; Dong Nguyen; Barbara McGillivray; Scott Hale

doi:10.36190/2021.07

Semantic journeys: quantifying change in emoji meaning from 2012-2018

Alexander Robertson, Farhana Ferdousi Liza, Dong Nguyen, Barbara McGillivray, Scott Hale

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

The semantics of emoji has, to date, been considered from a static perspective. We offer the first longitudinal study of how emoji semantics changes over time, applying techniques from computational linguistics to six years of Twitter data.
We identify five patterns in emoji semantic development and find evidence that the less abstract an emoji is, the more likely it is to undergo semantic change. In addition, we analyse select emoji in more detail, examining the effect of seasonality and world events on emoji semantics. To aid future work on emoji and semantics, we make our data publicly available along with a web-based interface that anyone can use to explore semantic change in emoji.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Workshop Proceedings of the 15th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
Publisher	AAAI Press
Number of pages	10
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.36190/2021.07
Publication status	Published - Jun 2021

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2021_07Final published version, 2.02 MBLicence: Taverne

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title = "Semantic journeys: quantifying change in emoji meaning from 2012-2018",

abstract = "The semantics of emoji has, to date, been considered from a static perspective. We offer the first longitudinal study of how emoji semantics changes over time, applying techniques from computational linguistics to six years of Twitter data.We identify five patterns in emoji semantic development and find evidence that the less abstract an emoji is, the more likely it is to undergo semantic change. In addition, we analyse select emoji in more detail, examining the effect of seasonality and world events on emoji semantics. To aid future work on emoji and semantics, we make our data publicly available along with a web-based interface that anyone can use to explore semantic change in emoji.",

author = "Alexander Robertson and Liza, {Farhana Ferdousi} and Dong Nguyen and Barbara McGillivray and Scott Hale",

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AU - Robertson, Alexander

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AU - Nguyen, Dong

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AU - Hale, Scott

PY - 2021/6

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N2 - The semantics of emoji has, to date, been considered from a static perspective. We offer the first longitudinal study of how emoji semantics changes over time, applying techniques from computational linguistics to six years of Twitter data.We identify five patterns in emoji semantic development and find evidence that the less abstract an emoji is, the more likely it is to undergo semantic change. In addition, we analyse select emoji in more detail, examining the effect of seasonality and world events on emoji semantics. To aid future work on emoji and semantics, we make our data publicly available along with a web-based interface that anyone can use to explore semantic change in emoji.

AB - The semantics of emoji has, to date, been considered from a static perspective. We offer the first longitudinal study of how emoji semantics changes over time, applying techniques from computational linguistics to six years of Twitter data.We identify five patterns in emoji semantic development and find evidence that the less abstract an emoji is, the more likely it is to undergo semantic change. In addition, we analyse select emoji in more detail, examining the effect of seasonality and world events on emoji semantics. To aid future work on emoji and semantics, we make our data publicly available along with a web-based interface that anyone can use to explore semantic change in emoji.

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DO - 10.36190/2021.07

M3 - Conference contribution

BT - Workshop Proceedings of the 15th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media

PB - AAAI Press

ER -

Semantic journeys: quantifying change in emoji meaning from 2012-2018

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