New draft emoji include 3 proposals I co-wrote!

superlinguo:

A draft list of proposed emoji were recently passed through Unicode. This set included three emoji that I co-wrote proposals for: Palm Up Hand, Palm Down Hand and Face With Peeking Eye. These three proposals were written with Gretchen McCulloch and Jennifer Daniel.
These proposals came directly out of the work I did with Gretchen looking at the way emoji act as digital gestures. A palm up gesture means you’ll be able to offer someone cake, a palm down means you’ll finally get a mic drop. And a peeking eye offers an interpersonal meta-commentary we felt was missing from the current set.
You can see details on the full set of 35 recommended emoji and the proposals in this PDF document (Unicode do a lot in PDF rather than on websites!).
For each of the proposals we wrote, you can see the PDF here:
Palm Down Hand/Palm Up Hand (submitted as a single proposal)
Face With Peeking Eye
From here these emoji will be added to the draft candidate list on the Unicode website, and if they pass muster they will be on devices as part of Unicode 14.0 in 2022. Things don’t move fast when you’re implementing permanent standards!
I’m also looking forward to seeing the hands heart, as well as the heart fingers/money gesture, and the pointing at you emoji. I also feel like I’m going to get a lot of use out of melty face and flat battery.
See also:
Lingthusiasm Episode 34: Emoji are Gesture Because Internet
New Publication: Emoji as Digital Gestures in Language@Internet [Open Access]
BECAUSE INTERNET (Gretchen’s book, which features this work)
Emoji Grammar as Beat Gestures (Paper with Gretchen at Emoji2018)
Emoji aren’t ruining language: they’re a natural substitute for gesture 🔥🔥🔥 (The Conversation)