An interesting thing that I have noticed living in Asia is the difference in the way emotions are perceived with that of the west. This is most obviously apparent in the use of internet emoticons.
In the west we seem to concentrate mostly on the mouth when we are conveying emotion, whereas in the East, the emphasis is most certainly on the eyes. Whether this has anything to do with many parts of Asia seeing the smile as a face saving device rather than solely an expression of happiness I have no idea. The difference is certainly interesting though and should be noted when writing with emoticons to someone from Asia.
It is a common theme through all of the east Asian blogging and chat sites, and often some of the emoticons used can be extremely confusing to the uninitiated. The more you see them though, the more they make sense, and the greater insight you get into the language and culture of Asia.
West-East Emoticon Examples
|
Western-style
|
Eastern-style
|
|
| smile/happy |
 |
(^_^)
|
| frown/sad |
 |
(T_T) crying face
|
| wink |
 |
(^_~)
|
| shocked |
:0
|
(o_O)
|
As you can see, the Eastern versions all have mouths which are a standard horizontal line and convey no emotion whatsoever; conversely 3 out of 4 of the western versions have the standard colon (two dots) eyes which also are devoid of emotion.
An interesting difference wouldn’t you say?
Edit – Didn’t want it to, but the blog has automatically converted the western emoticons into their cartoon form. This was not what I wanted but seeing as I don’t know how to turn it off, and most people will probably recognise these anyway, I am going to leave it as it is.
If you have used online forums before you will know that they can be a mine of information–a whole community with expertise, experience and interest in the same topics as you. Having someone available who can answer your questions or offer advice is an invaluable resource.
A brief update on my previous post about the announcement by ICANN to introduce website addresses with non-Latin characters. To begin with I thought it was great idea and could see no down side. It seems however that I didn’t think about it long enough because there is a possible downside that never occurred to me–and this downside is phishing. No, not the tedious task of luring piscine creatures onto a hook, but the more sinister act of luring unsuspecting internet users to undesirable sites. Often with the goal of spreading viruses or stealing data.
