Emojis range from the prosaic to the whimsical – and like just about everything else, they’re a product of culture. Here is a look at the differences between emoticons in East Asia and the West: the way they look, the way we use them, and some of the crazier creations.

Eastern and Western Smiles

Emojis started off as a craze in Japan – and, like so many other Japanese, cultural phenomena, it soon caught on in the West. That’s not to say that for decades before the arrival of emojis, children and teenagers outside of Japan were not drawing smiley or winky faces on each others math notebooks. The difference lies, rather, in how we draw those faces.

Across the West, people express more emotion in the mouth and chin: when we smile, the emphasis is on the corners of the mouth turning up, as in the emoticon. However, in Japan, emotions tend to be shown more around the eyes: hence, the focal point of a smile is in the eyes, giving us the emoji ^_^. While smiling-mouthed emojis were quickly developed for use in the West, there is still a distinctly Japanese and sometimes just downright confusing feel to emoticons.
Last summer, 250 new emojis were released, including the somewhat sinister ‘Hovering’ emoji, a man in a business suit levitating, which could symbolize either a fun happy hour or a new contract, depending on context.

Formal vs Informal Chatting

Emojis now pervade virtually every kind of digital communication – whether you’re WeChatting, WhatsApping, emailing or (God forbid) texting your best friend, the mates you play football with, or your boss. In some cases, emojis serve as a kind of shorthand to make requests seem less aggressive: “I noticed we are still missing the March 13 report – could you check to see if you have it? J” is less curt than the same request without a smiley face. It’s akin to the way punctuation is changing with smart phone use, so that “Excited to see you.” with a full stop at the end sounds anything but, an exclamation point now mandatory to get the message across.

Emojis also have their part in the blurring of lines between our professional and personal lives that is increasingly common today. Communication with clients and superiors is far less codified than it once was; sending your boss a ‘thumbs up’ emoji via WeChat seems perfectly normal. Aubergines and peaches are scattered throughout the more salacious WhatsApp messages people send out late at night. Usernames on WeChat are peppered with emoticons: a pink bow here, a rocket ship there, all used to denote aspects of the person who created the account.

A Pile of Poo?

Who wasn’t confused by the smiling “Pile of Poo” emoji the first time it came up on their smart phone screen? Like many emojis, it actually is a direct cultural import from Japan. In fact, poo is a symbol of good luck in Japan because the word for poo in Japanese, “unko,” sounds like another unrelated word for “luck.” 

But the pile of poo is not alone in the confusion it creates: there is also, on WeChat, the enigmatic “cow” emoji, the slice of watermelon, the mysteriously un-huggy looking “hug” and the happy ghost. They are joined by the screaming face, reminiscent of a certain famous painting, and used by millions of unhappy students and workers to express their dismay when the deadline for an assignment is moved forward or a surprise meeting is called.

On WhatsApp there are shoes, handbags, painted nails, marine wildlife: you could have a whole conversation in emojis if you felt like it. Some people point to emojis as the final frontier in the breakdown of verbal language: just as we are increasingly attached to our phones, we are also increasingly reliant on these tiny symbols to get our messages across. But what seems obvious is that the vast majority of emoticons (with perhaps the notable exception of the “Hand with Middle Finger Extended” emoji) rely on context to mean anything at all, just as words do. With that in mind, emoticons are just another fun way to say what you want to say.

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Keywords: emojis in Asia emojis in China