The Language of Emoji in Social Media

Abstract

The very fast development of information technology which is characterized by an influx of industry 4.0 has changed the way of human and behavior in language. The grammar which is a phenomenon of interest to language is examined along with behavior change language in the internet world. A phenomenon in language online is the emergence of the use of visual language emoji in conducting conversations in social media. This paper aims to discuss the phenomenon of visual language emoji among internet users in social media (WhatsApp). The aspects that will be emphasized are language (grammar) of emoji. Research methods carried out is observation and descriptive. Method of data collection is the division of the questionnaire online, and communications in WA screenshot that uses emoji icons. The research result show that emoji is a language (grammar) used in communicating in social media. Emoji language has dominated the conversation or message written on the social media and emoji (WA) as a language (syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) is part of the sentence, punctuation, expression, expressing feelings and thoughts to the opponent talk. The language of emoji expression indicates that the emoji can represent the thoughts and feelings instead of using verbal language. Thus, emoji is composed of two directions, i.e. language and parole. The language of emoji is the social institution of emoji (grammar) in social media, and the individual is the parole act, an actualized manifestation of the function of the emoticons language in syntactic, semantic and pragmatic.