Each year the Oxford Dictionary crowns a word of the year, a term selected to both reflect the culture of the recent past and look ahead toward the future.

Previous entries include vape, podcast, locavore, unfriend and selfie. This week, they've announced the word for 2015. But — it's not a word. Instead, it's the popular emoji of a smiley face with tears of joy.

Sociolinguist Tyler Schnoebelen, one of the leading researchers on emoji, joined the show to explain more.