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.
