Perception and Interpretation of Emoji in the Pedagogical Process: Aposterior Features of Artificial Digital Language

This study is experimental. The investigation is based on data collected from an experiment that was conducted involving participants in the educational process. The essence of the experiment is to test the artificial digital language of emoji in the learning process from the standpoint of both teachers and students in the field of education. But the experiment was augmented by representatives of other professions (programmers, economists, artists, writers), which helped to expand the object of the study, extrapolating the findings of the experiment on different areas of activity surveyed. The results were obtained for the following categories of respondents: age, profession, knowledge of foreign languages. Experimental data helped revealed the following issues: 1)~artificial emoji language reproduces polylaterality in structure (elements of sign generation) and semantics (multi-vector perception and interpretation of the sign). This explains the scale of differentiation of emoji cha racters; 2)~the polylateral perception and interpretation of emoji depends on the speaker, which in study was classified according to the above categories. It was concluded that the perception and interpretation of the emoji sign depends on all the highlighted categories with an advantage to the professional activity of the speaker and their experience in a particular profession. The concept of a priori and a posteriori of artificial languages was also revealed for the purpose of the research. Language of emoji we categorize as an apriori-posteriori since by form and meaning digital emoji signs display features of both types: the shape of the components of the emoji sign refer to other semiotic systems (such as cuneiform or Morse code); in terms of content, the emoji sign in digital communication can be interpreted depending on individual verbal skills, which, in turn, was considered through the prism of frame semantics (P-semantics) of Charles Fillmore. The experiment results demarcated perceptual characteristics and interpretation of digital emoji signs by respondents depending on the nature of their professional activity. Thus, it was concluded that representatives of the humanities and social sciences (both in service teachers and applicants for the pedagogical profession) and representatives of sciences (economists, programmers) have antithetical properties of perception and interpretation of emoji in digital communication. This coincides with the concept of mental frames embedded in the thinking structure of each individual. The prospects of this research consist of bringing other educational professionals into the experiment, as well as non-teaching professionals to determine the deductive hypothesis of the role, function and influence of digital language of emoji on teachers and non-teachers. The latter will make it possible to identify the advantages and disadvantages of digitalization of society both in the educational process and outside its framework