mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Semantic Journeys: Quantifying Change in Emoji Meaning from 2012-2018

arXiv 2105.00846 ↗First posted 3 May 2021cs.CLcited by 4

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Abstract (arXiv)

The semantics of emoji has, to date, been considered from a static perspective. We offer the first longitudinal study of how emoji semantics changes over time, applying techniques from computational linguistics to six years of Twitter data. We identify five patterns in emoji semantic development and find evidence that the less abstract an emoji is, the more likely it is to undergo semantic change. In addition, we analyse select emoji in more detail, examining the effect of seasonality and world events on emoji semantics. To aid future work on emoji and semantics, we make our data publicly available along with a web-based interface that anyone can use to explore semantic change in emoji.

Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 14 of its 54 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 May 2021.

Builds on

14 of 54 references.

References · 14

  1. 2017Word Embeddings Quantify 100 Years of Gender and Ethnic Stereotypescited by 253
  2. 2016Diachronic Word Embeddings Reveal Statistical Laws of Semantic Changecited by 221
  3. 2020SemEval-2020 Task 1: Unsupervised Lexical Semantic Change Detectioncited by 108
  4. 2018Diachronic word embeddings and semantic shifts: a surveycited by 92
  5. 2014Statistically Significant Detection of Linguistic Changecited by 82
  6. 2016Cultural Shift or Linguistic Drift? Comparing Two Computational Measures of Semantic Changecited by 63
  7. 2018Survey of Computational Approaches to Lexical Semantic Changecited by 62
  8. 2014Temporal Analysis of Language through Neural Language Modelscited by 54
  9. 2019Time-Out: Temporal Referencing for Robust Modeling of Lexical Semantic Changecited by 33
  10. 2015Sentiment of Emojiscited by 32
  11. 2019GASC: Genre-Aware Semantic Change for Ancient Greekcited by 10
  12. 2017EmojiNet: An Open Service and API for Emoji Sense Discoverycited by 7
2 more
  1. 2017Temporal Effects on Hashtag Reuse in Twitter: A Cognitive-Inspired Hashtag Recommendation Approachcited by 6
  2. 2017Frequency patterns of semantic change: Corpus-based evidence of a near-critical dynamics in language changecited by 5

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 1; 2022: 1; 2023: 1; 2024: 0; 2025: 0; 2026: 1.

4 papers.

  1. 2023Evolving linguistic divergence on polarizing social mediacited by 6
  2. 2022On the Context-Free Ambiguity of Emojicited by 4
  3. 2021How to Do Things without Words: Modeling Semantic Drift of Emojicited by 0
  4. 2026FinMoji: A Framework for Emoji-driven Sentiment Analysis in Financial Social Mediacited by 0