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Culture Determines Which Emoticon You Use
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun May 13, 2007 03:32 AM
from the i'm-feeling-:/ dept.
from the i'm-feeling-:/ dept.
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.'"
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No emoticons? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No emoticons? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No emoticons? (Score:4, Funny)
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What culture? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No emoticons? (Score:4, Funny)
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
Parent
Re:No emoticons? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No emoticons? (Score:5, Funny)
<sarcasm>This sounds like a job for XML!</sarcasm>
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Re:No emoticons? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Cheers
Parent
Re:Emoticon Classes (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Let's see...
"He wrinkled up his nose in distaste."
"She walked around with her nose in the air."
"The boy snorted with disgust."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Lighten up.
Re:No emoticons? 2nd order punctuation! (Score:3, Interesting)
After the N+1st flamewar on USENET, it slowly penetrated my conservative neanderthal brain that emoticons might actually have valid use: indicating tone-of-voice. Email/postings (incl /.) are very abbreviated, telegraphic, and intentions can easily be misread. Flamewars often result between participants who fundamentally agree. Homor usually falls flat without much greater context. An emoticon alerts the reader of
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
D'uhhhhhhhhh (Score:4, Informative)
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:/b/tards (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's interesting. (Score:2, Insightful)
It also depends on the context, though; the less personal the context is, the more I tend away from these emoticons. In very formal contex
Re:That's interesting. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:2)
(9-.-)9
The most enigmatic one (Score:5, Funny)
I am a regular
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Oh no, it's.... (Score:5, Funny)
(=O=)
or what about
=(3OE)=
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Re:Oh no, it's.... (Score:5, Funny)
I will never see a TIE fighter the same way again, you bastard.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What does this one say about culture?
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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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
(.)(.) (.)(.) (.)(.)
(.)(.) (.)(.)
Oh wait, OK,
Re:The most enigmatic one (Score:4, Funny)
I am a regular
Everyone stand clear! Don't answer that one!
It's a boobie-trapped question!
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non-human emoticons (Score:5, Insightful)
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:
-..)
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Let :-) Reign Supreme! (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm asocial, but because of this I've adopted the "retro"
Re: (Score:2)
but you can express frustration and resignation much easier with the asian smilies.
^__^
-__-
T__T
-__-;;
Interestingly, asian smilies always resembled the defunct bixies [code-knacker.de].
Re: (Score:2)
Triangle eyes (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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Yes, it's the eyebrows. People often raise their eyebrows when they smile (or laugh...) and ^_^ is about as close as you can get. For example, here's Mr. Spock: ^_-
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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.
If you step back and take a detached look at Western (or more specifically, American-influenced) animation, you'll note that there are a number of conventions which don't really reflect reality per se. (For example, no-one ever had steam coming out of their ears when they got angry). It just happens that the Japanese ones look strange to you because you're not familiar with them.
Humorous comics in general use a number of conventions and visual language which are almost second-nature to us- but only becau
I've been using them for 20 years... (Score:3, Interesting)
I first saw an emoticon when I started using Quantum Link (AOL before it became AOL.) I was in a chat room and was confused because now and then someone would end their sentence with ":D"
Eventually I had to ask and someone wrote "look at it sideways."
Using a few basic emoticons has become as natural to me as regular punctuation marks, and just like regular punctuation when it is used responsibly it clarifies and enhances communication.
The mouth lies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
: )
It's true, just look at Furry (Score:2)
>:8) - Dragon
D: - Drama
From futaba (Score:2)
If Slashdot didn't rape Japanese I would post a few.
Cultural differences on Eroticon six (Score:5, Funny)
(.)(.)(.)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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OLOLOLOLLOLOL ^^^^^^^^
Re:The one I hate (Score:5, Interesting)
In Thailand, they use "555" instead of "lol" (I know, not emoticons
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Russian smileys )))) (Score:5, Funny)
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