Jonathan E. Abel, "The New Real: Media and Mimesis in Japan from Stereographs to Emoji" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)
New Books in East Asian Studies
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The Failures of the Aspirational Universal Language
The H building in the initial emoji set, because the building with a big H on it. And a heart. Most people around the world say oh must be a hospital. But pretty soon we actually kind of see how how using emoji works or doesn't work you start to notice failures of the aspirational universal language everywhere. So we can say in a sense the free and frictionless kind of argument is one of immediacy, right? This sort of representation or connecting something with the world solving a problem in the world,. Getting us to communicate and bring us closer together, making us more immediate to one another.
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