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?

[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?

[mrchaotica]

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

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

The most enigmatic one

[wumpus188]

(.)(.)

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

Cultural differences on Eroticon six

[SoVeryTired]

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

(.)(.)(.)