=D =) =| =( =O

May 28, 2008 12:21 PM

I use instant messaging a fair amount to talk to people all over the United States and in Europe, mostly Austria, Germany and England. Why is it that smiley faces (as in =) and :X) are so much more prevalent in Europe (at least Northern Europe) than in America? It feels like one pops up every other line, sometimes twice in the same sentence. I should mention that I am young (18) and so are the people I talk to.
posted by Corduroy to society & culture (14 comments total)

Whoops, I don't mean specifically =) and =X. Those are just examples. I mean smiley faces in general.
posted by Corduroy at 12:27 PM on May 28, 2008

I never noticed Europeans using smileys more than Americans, so it could be an individual thing. In fact, the Europeans I've talked to online used smileys less than the Americans I know, on average.

Young people and the Myspace crowd seem to use smileys more often, though, independent of national origin.

But there could be a country-specific thing going on in some cases - for example, it's very common for Chinese MSN users have custom smileys installed that replace certain words with smileys.

Also, if your friends don't speak English well, they might use smileys more often as a way of clearing up ambiguities. It's easy to misinterpret ironic statements or jokes on the net, doubly so if written by someone with poor English. Throwing in a smiley can be helpful to show you mean no offense.
posted by pravit at 1:07 PM on May 28, 2008

I'm sure it's just regional variation, IM dialects. Probably there are also variations in the contractions people use, which you'd notice if you looked carefully.
posted by Class Goat at 1:08 PM on May 28, 2008

I'm an 18 year old american and I use smileys all the time. So I'm thinking this is just an observation for your friends. The only way to answer this would be a large scale study.
posted by MadamM at 1:19 PM on May 28, 2008

I never noticed Europeans using smileys more than Americans, so it could be an individual thing. In fact, the Europeans I've talked to online used smileys less than the Americans I know, on average.

It's funny how that is the opposite of my experience. It's really quite rare that my American friends will use a smiley face, and it's usually in jest when it happens. So yeah, it definitely could be very individual. I was wondering if others had noticed this as well.

Also, if your friends don't speak English well, they might use smileys more often as a way of clearing up ambiguities. It's easy to misinterpret ironic statements or jokes on the net, doubly so if written by someone with poor English. Throwing in a smiley can be helpful to show you mean no offense.

The level of English is pretty varied, so I think that may be accentuating the amount of smileys. Although, strangely enough, the one truly bilingual friend seems to use smiley's the most.
posted by Corduroy at 1:20 PM on May 28, 2008

Interesting question! I'm actually working on a study comparing the uses of emoticons in English vs. Japanese computer-mediated discourse, but we aren't looking at frequency or reasons for use, just function w/in the sentence/message. But I can tell you that of the studies I've read, frequency of emoticon use in US based data is generally low, but does vary by gender (most studies finding females use more than males). I haven't seen any cross-cultural comparisons, but there is at least one study looking at UK college students and text messaging (not IM, sorry) and emoticons usage was generally low there as well.

The Japanese version of emoticons (kaomoji or "face-marks") does seem to be more popular, particularly with some population groups (interestingly they get used a lot by older Japanese!). Also, emoticons on cell phones (emoji) tend to be quite popular in Japan.

Also, there's some speculation among researchers than emoticon use is more frequent among newer users, and in some internet contexts emoticons are seen as immature or otherwise negatively valenced.

So that's probably waaaaay more info than you wanted, but I am a college professor after all ;-)
posted by DiscourseMarker at 1:56 PM on May 28, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

How many people are you talking about, Corduroy? Countering your anecdotes with mine, I know Europeans who are smiley-whores and Europeans who don't use them at all and the Americans I know are a mixed bag as well. I may have missed the E.U. directive about the usage of smilies online, but I doubt it.
posted by ersatz at 2:20 PM on May 28, 2008

XD
posted by ersatz at 2:20 PM on May 28, 2008

Ersatz, I would probably say the number of Europeans I talk to on IM is about six. They do come from three different friend groups who I met at different times and who don't know each other, which is why I thought it must be larger than just an observation on my circle of friends. They all use them extensively.

Perhaps I should pay more attention to my American chums to see if I'm just not noticing their smilies, and am actively looking for smilies from the Europeans.
posted by Corduroy at 2:29 PM on May 28, 2008

And DiscourseMarker, interesting to note the gender variation. Girls I talk to in America are much more likely to use the smiley's, while among the European friends gender doesn't seem to come into play with smiley usage.
posted by Corduroy at 2:33 PM on May 28, 2008

I think in America it's considered a bit kiddy to use emoticons. I never used them for that reason until I started a correspondence with a European who used them all the time. I realized that I associated a lot of warmth and buzz with their emails. Now, I use them a lot, especially when I want an email to come across as non-threatening.
posted by xammerboy at 3:09 PM on May 28, 2008

I would have guessed it has to do with Europeans being more used to using SMS (text msgs on cell phones). But, that flies in the face of the fact that emoticons take too many key-presses to make on cell phones!
posted by Goofyy at 2:48 AM on May 29, 2008

My vote goes to "it is because you are talking to younger people who apparently spend a lot of time on the internet." Generally, the better one's command of English (native or not), the less need there is to rely on text faces (except, of course, where intonation is 100% key in understanding something -- internet communication tends to be substantially more casual than most other written communication).

That said, I'll also note that Japanese text faces really are ubiquitous. I had a syllabus during a study abroad program in Osaka that had one day's listing on the syllabus as (in Japanese) "No class! (^^)" for an off-day. This was from someone who taught written Japanese specifically.

Of course, he was also just an awesome guy, so that may have had something to do with it. : )
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:01 AM on May 29, 2008

The legacy of SMS and the second-language thing are probably the most important factors.

However (and I almost hesitate to say this), European anglophones sometimes slip them in to compensate for their own perception that an American will utterly fail to notice when we're kidding. A surprising number of USians seem, from here, to have no sense of humour whatsoever and it's better to err on the side of caution - especially if you're talking about anything remotely work-related.
posted by genghis at 9:26 AM on May 29, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]