The year 2015 could be called the year of the emoji. They have landed a teenage boy in a police cell and prompted Vladimir Putin's wrath¹ in Russia, and the loveable smiley faces are even set to come to life in their own Hollywood film. Emoji are now used in around half of every sentence on sites like Instagram, and Facebook looks set to introduce them alongside the famous "like" button as a way of expression your reaction to a post.

2015年可以被称为表情符号年，他们使一个少年进了牢房，激怒了俄罗斯总统普京，这些可爱的笑脸甚至在关于他们的好莱坞电影中活了过来。现在，在像Instagram这样的社交网站上的表情符号大概每半句话中就会有他们的出现。Facebook 更是打算将表情符号加入"喜爱"列表来用于表达你对于一条状态的反应。

If you were to believe the headlines, this is just the tipping point: some outlets² have claimed that emoji are an emerging language that could soon compete with English in global usage. To many, this would be an exciting evolution of the way we communicate; to others, it is linguistic³ Armageddon.

如果你同意这个标题所说的话，这正是一个转折点：已经有人认为表情符号是一种新兴起的语言，很快就快要比肩英语在全球的使用量了。对大多数人来说，这将是一次令人激动的交流方式的进化；对于其他人来说，这是语言学的末日

As a linguist⁴ concerned with visual communication, I have been interested to explore exactly what lies in these claims. Do emoji show the same characteristics of other communicative systems and actual languages? And what do they help us to express that words alone can't say?

作为一个关注视觉交流的语言学家，我一直想要找出到底是什么隐藏在这些说法后面。表情符号真的有着同别的交流系统和真实语言一样的特点吗？他们到底帮助我们表达了什么单靠文字不能表达的意思呢？

When emoji appear with text, they often supplement or enhance the writing. This is similar to gestures that appear along with speech. Over the past three decades, research has shown that our hands provide important information that often transcends⁵ and clarifies the message in speech. Emoji serve this function too – for instance, adding a kissy or winking⁶ face can disambiguate whether a statement is flirtatiously teasing or just plain mean.

当表情符号在文本上出现的时候，他们一直是作为增加文字表现力的补充物。这和演讲中伴随出现的手势是相似的。在过去的三十年中，调查显示演讲过程中我们的手总是能表达出超越语言信息本身的重要信息，并让我们所想表达的信息更清楚。表情符号也有这样的功能——例如，在文字中加一个吻或者一个眨眼睛的表情能消除歧义，区分出一句话到底是轻佻的讥讽还是就只是平实的意思。

This is a key point about language use: rarely is natural language ever limited to speech alone. When we are speaking, we constantly use gestures to illustrate⁷ what we mean. For this reason, linguists⁸ say that language is "multi-modal". Writing takes away that extra non-verbal information, but emoji may allow us to re-incorporate it into our text.

这是一个语言使用的关键点：自然语言几乎不被限制在口头使用。当我们在说话的时候，会不断地使用手势来表达我们想说的意思。因此，语言学家认为语言是"多模态"的。写作带走了额外的非口头的信息，但是表情符号也许能让我们重新将这些信息融合到文本上。

Emoji are not always used as embellishments, however – sometimes, strings⁹ of the characters can themselves convey meaning in a longer sequence on their own. But to constitute their own language, they would need a key component¹⁰: grammar.

然而，表情符号并不是一味只被用做修饰的，有时候成行的表情能够以更长的序列靠他们自己传达使用者的意思。但是要组成一个他们自己的语言，必须要有一个关键的组成部分：语法。

Nevertheless, some may argue that despite emoji's current simplicity¹¹, this may be the groundwork for emerging complexity¹² – that although emoji do not constitute a language at the present time, they could develop into one over time.

但是，有人认为虽然现在表情符号用起来很简单，这却可能会是他们以后复杂使用方法的基础——虽然表情符号眼下还没成为一门系统的语言，但是他们一定能够慢慢发展起来最后成为一门语言的。