Cultural differences in the use of Smileys

[mandy]

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.

Intrigued, Yuki decided to study this phenomenon. First, he and his colleagues asked groups of American and Japanese students to rate how happy or sad various computer-generated emoticons seemed to them. As Yuki predicted, the Japanese gave more weight to the emoticons' eyes when gauging emotions, whereas Americans gave more weight to the mouth. For example, the American subjects rated smiling emoticons with sad-looking eyes as happier than the Japanese subjects did...

full article: http://www.livescience.com/health/070510...lture.html

(BTW, this smiley has the same meaning in every country: )

[BellisimaJ.]

(BTW, this smiley has the same meaning in every country: fluck )