A star is born: Phoebe Dynevor on her breakout role in Bridgerton

WE ARE LIVING in an era when meeting up is complicated. No longer a simple matter of agreeing a pub and time, it’s now a Crystal Maze-like challenge, with tiers, quarantines and coughs threatening to thwart us at every turn. So we were especially sad when it was announced in the midst of the pandemic that even texting would be hit – with the 2021 release of new emojis cancelled due to overstretched developers.

Luckily, that situation has now changed (insert your own party streamer here). The Unicode Consortium, responsible for creating a new set of textable mini pictures every year, has decided to do a small roll-out after all, to land on our phones at some point between January and October.

This batch is just a top-up to keep us going until 2022 but, as usual, it falls into two camps: the ‘I didn’t know I needed this until now’ emojis, and those that nod to cultural representation. From the first group, we’re getting a face with spiral eyes (to be used next time you’re mesmerised by a Cardi B video) and a heart on fire (to be used if they make a second series of Normal People). In the second, we’ll now be able to represent a romantic couple who don’t have the same skin colour, and there will also be a transfriendly emoji of a woman with a beard.

Why do we care? Because these tiny symbols, silly as they may seem, say so much about who we are. ‘They’ve become absolutely ingrained in our communication,’ says Dr Philip Seargeant, senior lecturer in applied linguistics at the Open University. ‘People are even using them in work emails, up to a point. Bit by bit, they’re expanding everywhere.’

Even the Duchess of Cambridge is a fan. Last month, she flashed her most recently used emojis to camera during a Q&A. Intriguingly, they included the angry swearing face, the vomiting face and a gust of wind. ‘I think the way people express themselves is very much related to the identity they’re projecting, and emojis are certainly a part of that,’ says Seargeant. Without a further nose through Kate’s phone, it’s hard to draw conclusions – but at the very least, her emojis suggest a sense of humour.

There are still emoji objectors among us, but they’re the ones missing out. These symbols, Seargeant suggests, make our communication more sophisticated. ‘The most popular use is to add an emotional framing for what you’re writing, because when we’re communicating rapidly by text, we don’t have tone of voice or facial expressions. So emojis enhance what we’re doing with language – it’s often about relationship-building or maintenance.’

As usual, the 2021 selection reflects the time we’re living in. It includes a heart wrapped in a bandage – which would’ve been useful in 2020, the most heartbreaking of years – but also offers an overdue acknowledgement of interracial relationships. ‘What we’ve seen over the last five or six years is that every time there’s a new release, the emojis are trying to be more representative of different groups or the way that cultural issues are presented,’ says Seargeant. ‘It started with having more female emojis for the professions. Now we’ve got a lot of non-binary emojis and ways of adding skin tones. Emojis are a good barometer of big cultural issues.’

Not so silly after all, then. They’re also, of course, a quick way to send a cheerful otter, balloon or flamingo to a friend. So let’s raise a glass-emoji to the Unicode Consortium, keeping us in colourful communication when we need it most.