Some eight years ago, a collection of expressive little icons — emoji 😎 — showed up in our smart devices and now it’s hard to imagine life without them. Everyone uses them — teenagers, adults, corporations and even large institutions like the EU. Emoji aren’t just silly icons for adding flair to our online conversations. Some argue that emoji is a “lingua franca” — a bridging language that allows us to communicate across spoken language barriers and cultural differences. Emoji saw their virtual light of day in the year of 2010 when they became available globally. In the beginning, they might have seemed overwhelming, with…

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