Culture Determines Which Emoticon You Use

Ant writes "A LiveScience story discusses the cultural differences in interpreting facial expressions. The article notes that where you come from plays a large role in what part of the human face you use to determine another person's mood. That also includes communicating online with the usages of smiley faces. 'For instance, in Japan, people tend to look to the eyes for emotional cues, whereas Americans tend to look to the mouth, says researcher Masaki Yuki, a behavioral scientist at Hokkaido University in Japan ... In Japan, emoticons tend to emphasize the eyes, such as the happy face (^_^) and the sad face (;_;). "After seeing the difference between American and Japanese emoticons, it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical American and Japanese smiles," he said.'"

Comments

Re:No emoticons?

[arivanov]

Case A: you are the culture that still reads the text, can understand a joke, can understand sarcasm, can use and read cultural associations including ones not just in your (or nerd) popular culture, can... What is even worse, you expect that from the people around you. If that is the case - you are an endangered animal in a world of TXT-abuse. You need to be entered in the red book of endangered species, towards the end, near the black pages.
Case B: you need a break. Long one to restore your sense of humour.

According to the good slashdot tradition I am not going to RTFA, but I will pitch in my 2c anyway. The observation is correct. If you look at eastern Europeans they use the ;-) much more than English or Americans, Brits tend to use the ROFL emoticon more and so on.

Cheers ;-)

Re:The one I hate

[Daengbo]

I'm in Korea, not Japan, and they tend to use the Korean alphabet to indicate emoticons (e.g. _ for sad). I think it's fine, but the emoticon is obviously limited in scope because of the need to type in Korean. People writing to me in English still switch into their Korean input for emoticons.

In Thailand, they use "555" instead of "lol" (I know, not emoticons ... still related) because five in Thai is pronounced "Ha!" 555 = Ha ha ha!

Re:The most enigmatic one

[kumanopuusan]

Sorry, but the parent isn't insightful, it's misinformation. What the article's author is saying is that the Japanese don't make big smiles. You've actually got it backwards.

Japanese people don't spend a lot of time looking into other people's eyes. It makes people very uncomfortable. I've even been recommended, on more than one occasion, to look at someone's chest rather than their face. During conversation, it's important to look away from the other person occasionally. The practice has the odd effect of making Japanese people in Western countries sometimes appear unattentive or uninterested. During meetings at work, I'm often the only one even looking in the direction of the person who's talking.

So, it isn't that Japanese people stare into each other's eyes all the time. His point is that Japanese people (especially the older generation) can be not very expressive about their emotions. Since they don't make big smiles or frowns, grimacing emoticons don't make sense. What little emotion is conveyed through the face is shown in a person's eyes. A greatly exaggerated version of this forms the Japanese smiley.