| This project seeks a comparative understanding of the use and meanings of smiley-emoticons used in everyday e-mail communication in both the U.S. and Japan. Emoticons are computer “faces” created with a combination of punctuation symbols, accent marks and letters. Their infinite variety brings a wide range of expressiveness to everyday on-line conversation. My thesis for the use of smileys in e-mail communication is that we see a kind of paralinguistic and kinesic compensation at work. By this I mean that images depicting facial expressions are used to supplement and clarify written expression. In face-to-face interpersonal communication, interactants are supplied with a lot of information that is given and taken with verbal utterances -- words and miscellaneous sounds. A lot of cross-code checking takes place as we have learned to search out redundancy across communicative codes -- how is the facial expression backing up what was just heard in words in conjunction with a pattern of movement of other body parts? How is this manifest in the computer generation of e-mail communication in Japan and the U.S.? |
in the U. S. |
in Japan | |
'-) ;-) |
Wink |
(~_^) |
| :-) | Smiling | (^^) |
| ;-( | Crying | (;|;) |
| 8-| | Surprise | ('.') |
| :* | Kiss | (~e~) |
| :-D | Laughing | (^o^) |