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

No emoticons?

[eln]

So what culture am I a part of if I want to strangle someone every time they use any kind of emoticon at all?

Re:No emoticons?

[stsp]

So what culture am I a part of if I want to strangle someone every time they use any kind of emoticon at all?

Vogon.

Re:No emoticons?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you're just old >:->
But what I don't understand is why do you want to strangle people who use emoticon ? O_o
I mean... it's just a way to communicate more efficiently ! :)
Oh, boy... I'm so dead :(

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:No emoticons?

[nevernamed]

Of course it would be easy to understand why those anime cartoons have such huge eyes after reading this!

Re:No emoticons?

[h2g2bob]

I mean... it's just a way to communicate more efficiently

That's right, they DO serve a purpose. Text is very easy to mis-read, especially if it contains sarcasm or jokes. Humans normally use facial expressions and tone of voice to convey this information, which isn't part of email or IM. Emoticons show this.

Re:No emoticons?

[mrchaotica]

Text is very easy to mis-read, especially if it contains sarcasm or jokes.

<sarcasm>This sounds like a job for XML!</sarcasm>

D'uhhhhhhhhh

[Xtense]

Well, ain't it obvious? It's not like the Internet is some sort of global village or something...

Oh, wait...

Alas, if you think you saw emoticons, just google for Shift_JIS art, especially of the 2chan kind (there's some on en.wiki, but it's mostly the copy-pasted stuff). For what I know, that BBS is, and i quote, "f*****g huge". It's more than a subculture, but less than a culture of it's own. If i recall correctly, they've even written a book and have their Shift_JIS creatures roaming some japanese TV programs.

Re:That's interesting.

[Mylakovich]

Interesting indeed! Facinating, even! What a unique and special person you are.

The most enigmatic one

[wumpus188]

(.)(.)

I am a regular ./ reader and this one always puzzled me.

Re:The most enigmatic one

[sakdoctor]

/-{ }-\

What does this one say about culture?

Re:The most enigmatic one

[Panseh]

For instance, in Japan, people tend to look to the eyes for emotional cues, whereas Americans tend to look to the mouth... Maybe Japanese actually spend time looking at the face, while Americans are looking somewhere else and catching a glimpse of the mouth by chance.

The article reasons that Japanese attempt to suppress their emotions, but that cannot be the case. Looking into a person's eyes is very intimate interaction while looking at their lips would be more akin to hiding emotion.

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.

Re:The most enigmatic one

[Red Pointy Tail]

(.)(.)

I am a regular ./ reader and this one always puzzled me

Everyone stand clear! Don't answer that one!

It's a boobie-trapped question!

Re:The most enigmatic one

[Raideen]

Things must be changing then. My relatives look directly into my eyes when speaking to me. It's true about the "older" generations (like my grandparents in their 90s) but my parents (in their 60s) crack jokes, smile brightly, and are visually expressive. The only time that I'm aware of that looking down is appropriate is when you're being submissive, like when you're being reprimanded by your boss or parents. I'm not saying that you're wrong--just that our experiences are quite different. However, I share your experience about there being less emphasis on eye contact. Visual or audible indications (like nodding or "hmmm") that indicate that you're paying attention are still required though. Anyone with their eyes closed during a meeting (which isn't uncommon and can show intent listening) that isn't making any type of gesture could very well be sleeping. :-) (I'm American born and started BBSing in the 1990 so I use the horizontal type. BTW, I was referring to my relatives in Japan, not just my immediate family who has been in the U.S. for 30+ years.)

non-human emoticons

[kahei]

It would be instructive to consider the Internet's small but active flounder population, whose emoticons look like this: ..)

Notice the distinctive adaptation to a 'flounder-like' way of percieving faces. Of course you may object that internet-using flounders are imaginary. As a matter of fact, that's an objection was raised even by many prominent flounders when the 'unicorn flounder' smiley was first circulated:

-..)

Let :-) Reign Supreme!

[eklitzke]

I'm a young college-aged student, and I've definitely noticed a shift towards Japanese style emoticons like ^_^ from my peers. Even among those who use the "sideways" emoticons, certainly you would never see :-) -- the hyphen is considered superfluous, and a simple :) will do just fine.

Maybe I'm asocial, but because of this I've adopted the "retro" :-) style smilies, which seems to really bug a lot of my friends.

Triangle eyes

[suv4x4]

"...the happy face (^_^) [...] it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical [..] Japanese smiles,"

I've never seen a Japanese, or a human being bend his/her eyes in a triangle shape when smiling.
Could it possibly something else?

Japanese animes also show a character who's under stress having a huge cross attached right from his forehead, or suddenly disappearing eyeballs and long black dashes coming out of the characters face. Anyone seen that on an actual real human, or it just me.

Smilies are an art, and while the way they ended up looking depend heavily on the culture of the people producing them (Japanese smilies follow closely the anime drawing style), I think saying they are strictly modeled after actual people crying and smiling is just a bunch of wishful thinking. Check some photos, an Asian guy won't smile quite a lot differently than a European guy.

Re:/b/tards

[Mikachu]

Rules 1 and 2, asshat. :P

The mouth lies

[Colin Smith]

It's easy to fake a smile. It's more difficult to fake happiness or amusement shown through the eyes. Some cultures recognise this.

Oh no, it's....

[Dogtanian]

The goatse emoticon:

(=O=)

or what about

=(3OE)=

Re:Oh no, it's....

[Just Some Guy]

The goatse emoticon:

(=O=)

I will never see a TIE fighter the same way again, you bastard.

Re:Russian smileys ))))

[Dogtanian]

Finally an appropriate thread to ask this in. Could someone please explain why Russian smileys have no eyes, and typically multiple chins? Because many people in Eastern Europe really look like that... the radiation from Chernobyl had a devastating effect on the populations there.

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:Ve haff vays of making you smile.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a german smiley actually: Ü

Cultural differences on Eroticon six

[SoVeryTired]

As far as I know, this one is unique to Eroticon Six...

(.)(.)(.)

Re:Emoticon Classes

[freeweed]

Um..

Count me in the vast group of people that have been online well over a decade, are familiar with virtually all Internet terminology, and have never, EVER heard of "ROFL" being referred to as an "emoticon".

Notice the term itself - emoticon. A portmandeau of "emotion" and "icon". The last part is a hint that there's something semi-graphical about it. Abbreviations don't exactly fit this term, in the slightest.

In fact, use of things like ROFL and LOL pre-date the emoticon phenomenon in my experience. Heck, humanity was using abbreviations like this for years before we even had computers (KISS, FUBAR, etc). I don't think retconning them as emoticons makes any sense, and in fact you're the first person I've ever seen try to do that.