Texting Your Smile – From East to West
Emoticons are becoming essential to communicating the
feelings and tone behind the words in text messages. But did you know that emoticons with the same
meaning differ across cultures?
Texting in a multicultural world
The emoticon :)
that we in the West use for smile, is often written as ^.^ in the East. What if
you’re texting that you’re sad?
Westerners use :( while many
people in Asian cultures signal that feeling with -_- . And if you’re so sad
that you’re crying as you text, you
might write :’( , while your Asian friend may signal the same
emotion with ; _ ;
It’s interesting that American and other Westerners
replicate emotions with side-way symbols that suggest the mouth, while some Asians
use horizontal representations that suggest the eyes. How might this differing
symbol usage reflect on cultural communication?
Cultures differ in how they take in information
Anthropologist Edward T. Hall in his groundbreaking book, Beyond Culture, distinguishes between high and
low-context cultures. Westerners (America/Northern Europe) prefer low-context
communication wherein the information exchanged is explicitly embedded in the
code (the spoken or written word. Thus,
“Read my lips” or “take a person at his/her word.”
Most other cultures around the world, however, use
high-context communication wherein the meaning of the message comes from the
context in which it is given. Thus, a person’s reputation, social position, gestures and
face convey more meaning than does the simple code of the spoken or written word.
“The eyes are the windows to the soul” is one Arab proverb. And ancient
languages such as Chinese have tonal and pictorial roots that signal meaning.
An understanding of high and low context cultures is basic
to effective cross-cultural communication. When we recognize that the other
person’s way of integrating and evaluating information may be differ from ours,
we’re likely to avoid a surprising miscommunication :0 or o_0
when texting in our multicultural world.
Best,
Jolinda Osborne
