5 - The Shaping Force of Digital Technology

Summary

looks at the impact digital technology is having on the way people communicate and how this has given rise to emoji culture. One of the key ways in which technology has an effect on language is in terms of what it does and doesn’t allow people to do. People adapt their language practices to the constraints imposed by the available technology, and, over time, these practices develop into linguistic conventions. Emoji are an archetypal product of the role technology plays in our life - they’re intimately tied to the devices we use to communicate. But they’re also a product of social media culture and of the way this technology has brought about a new informality in the way we write to each other. This chapter looks at how emoji fit within this larger context, as well as how features of human-computer interaction such as auto-predict are integrating these technologies ever more into the infrastructure of our daily lives.