Characteristics and peculiarities of emojis used by chinese and ukrainians: psychological and cultural aspects

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Characteristics and peculiarities of emojis used by chinese and ukrainians: psychological and cultural aspects

Bilyanina V.І.

National Academy of Security Service of Ukraine

The article studies the problem of emoji as a cross-cultural tool for the reflection of emotions, developing interaction and giving the on-line communication signs of the face-to-face interpersonal dialogue. The paper overviews the existent amount of research on the subject (East and West diversity in using emoji; Cultural, age and sex diversity in using emoji; Emoji as a new cross-cultural language of on-line communication etc.) and figures out the need of comparison of the emoji usage manner of the Chinese and Ukrainians. The research, made on the base of the anonymous social survey of different age, gender and social categories respondents from China and Ukraine, stresses the problem of cross-cultural communication using emoji, based on the cultural diversity, reflected in the difference hidden under their meaning. The poll cleared out that there are emojis that both Ukrainians and Chinese use differently from their original meaning, founded by Japanese. The article figures out several reasons of the existent phenomenon that contradicts the statement of the unific form of emoji all over the world, as well as the idea of the emojis' capacity to stand as a new international language well understood in cross-cultural on-line communication, replacing verbal communication with nonverbal. It is mentioned that cultural diversity, social and historical background as well as different translation of emojis into different languages (by using names that are closely related to the original but does not follow from it) can be the reason of the cross-cultural misunderstandings. The study results illustrate the activity of Chinese respondents in the use of icons depicting objects of everyday life and consumption as opposed to emoticons. The usage of happy smiling emojis is a peculiarity of the Ukrainian online communication culture. The article defines the `concept of happiness 'and its national and cultural uniqueness, especially the content that is invested by representatives of different cultures in the concept of "norm" and "happiness", to be one of the probable causes of this phenomenon. Author considers cultural and personal emotionality as well as social context to be the reason of the different connotation and usage ofemojis in cross-cultural on-line communication.

Key words: emoji, cultural context, emotions, non-verbal communication.

Біляніна В. І. ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКА ТА ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ВИКОРИСТАННЯ ЕМОДЖІ КИТАЙЦЯМИ ТА УКРАЇНЦЯМИ: ПСИХОЛОГІЧНИЙ І КУЛЬТУРНИЙ АСПЕКТИ

Статтю присвячено вивченню емоджі як міжкультурного засобу комунікації для передачі емоцій, установлення взаємодії і надання онлайнспілкуванню ознак міжособистісного діалогу віч-на-віч. Стаття висвітлює наявні дослідження із визначеної тематики, такі як розбіжності у використанні емоджі між Сходом і Заходом; культурні, вікові та статеві відмінності у використанні емоджі; емоджі як нова міжкультурна мова онлайн-спілкування та інші, визначаючи необхідність вивчення особливостей використання емоджі китайцями та українцями. Дослідження, здійснене на основі анонімного опитування респондентів різних вікових, статевих і соціальних категорій із Китаю та України, демонструє наявність проблеми правильного декодування інформації у міжкультурному спілкуванні із використанням емоджі, що ґрунтується на культурологічних відмінностях конотації ідентичних зображень. Окрім того, опитування продемонструвало наявність емоджі, які всі респонденти (як китайці, так і українці) вживають у значенні, відмінному від його первинного змісту, закладеного японцями. Стаття виділяє низку причин, які можуть слугувати поясненням цієї проблеми, що, у свою чергу, заперечує наявне припущення щодо універсальності емоджі для міжкультурної комунікації, так само, як і гіпотезу про можливість емоджі утворити нову мову онлайн-комунікації, замістивши вербальне спілкування невербальним. Причинами наявних непорозумінь визначено культурні розбіжності, соціальний та історичний контексти, які прямо впливають на зміст, котрим наділяють зображення носіїрізних культур, та відмінності у перекладі назв емоджі різними мовами, тісно пов'язані із першою, проте не випливають із неї. Результати проведеного дослідження ілюструють активність китайських респондентів у використанні картинок із зображенням предметів щоденного життя і вжитку на противагу смайликам. Натомість пріоритетність смайликів над іншими зображеннями становить особливість української культури онлайн-спілкування. Стаття визначає концепт щастя та його національно-культурну унікальність однією з імовірних причин такого феномену, особливо зміст, який вкладають представники різних культур у поняття «норма» і «щастя». Автором визначено, що причиною наявних відмінностей у конотації та використанні емоджі є культурна та індивідуальна емоційність, підкріплені соціальним контекстом.

Ключові слова: емоджі, культурний контекст, емоції, невербальне спілкування.

Defining the problem and argumentation of the topicality of the consideration

online communication dialogue

Recent language studies are not only about language ontology but are much more related to language changes in the human environment. Communication is an inevitable part of human life. The recent global pandemic has had a great impact on the way of humans' interaction. The lack of face-to-face dialogue forced people to transfer their communication to the Internet.

In our ordinary face-to-face conversation, not only language itself is a tool, but also body language, voice intonation, and facial expressions that enlarge the meaning of word message with emotions. But online communication does not give communicants that much opportunity to express their feelings. That is the reason of using emoji during chatting with the help of the Internet, QQ, WeChat, Weibo, etc. Adding simple icons brought incredible freedom into the online language. It has to be stressed out that in fact emojis were made to be a universal tool, nevertheless each country has its own peculiarities of using emojis. These peculiarities, especially in the culture of China and Ukraine, are the subject of our scientific research.

Careful examination of the influence of cultural and psychological background on the use of emoji was made to be the object of the research.

Analysis of recent research and publications

Emojis created by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999 slowly spread over the world and became an indispensable tool in our current lives. Since then, there have been many scientific research on this phenomenon. These include works of Gibson W., Huang P., Kaye L. K., Malone S. A., Wall H. J. and Yu Q. [2; 6; 8, p. 3-10], who investigated the motivation aspect of using emojis, their phatic function in the online communication, as well as semiotics and affordances of the new `iconic language'; studies of Ai W., Chen Z., Cheng L., Kluftinger E., Li H., Liu X., Lu X., Mei Q., Thomson S. and Wentland J. [4; 5; 15], who paid attention to the gender and cross-cultural aspect of using emojis in the on-line communication; deep investigation of the usage and meaning of emojis over different languages was made by such scientists as Barbieri F., Borut S., Igor M., Jasmina S., Kraszewski G., Lee J. S., Petra K. N., Ronzano. F. and Saggion H. [3; 9; 12]; while most of the works are pointing out the differences of emojis' meaning in different cultures, there are such researches that pay attention to their `conservatism' (works of Luke Stark and Kate Crawford) [10]; usage of icons to depict meaning made linguists, such as Hamza Alshenqeeti, think over the innovation aspect of emojis, comparing them to the iconic language of antient Egypt and other languages, that faced their time forced transformation, by making the conclusion about human nature of simplification [7]; as soon as emojis were created in the East, there is a number of studies on the East and the West differences in using emojis, such as a work of Louis Tay, Lyle H. Ungar, Mingyang Li and Sharath Chandra Guntuku [14], who thoroughly investigated the frequency of use of emojis and made topical analyses of the most commonly used. There is a lot of scientific research materials, but the difference between peculiarities of the Chinese and Ukrainian on-line communication in using emojis has not been mentioned.

Setting the goals and tasks of the article

To get a comprehensive review of the problem we should:

Carefully study the theoretical background.

Develop and implement methodology.

Set hypotheses based on the obtained statistical data.

The outline of the main research material

Scientists who study emojis treat it as an icon that expresses feelings. Therefore, usage of emojis in writing text messages is determined by the personality, gender, age, and culture of the person.

According to Prada [13] and Tossell [18] surveys, men and women use emojis differently. This difference is seen in different quantity (women use emoji more than men), and quality (most women use positive emojis, while men prefer using more verified emojis) of emojis.

Qiyu Bai [16] proves that young people born in 2000s put special emphasis on writing text messages using emojis. They are not only skilled in using all kinds of emoji icons, but also used to substitute words with emojis, creating a new kind of on-line communication language.

Recently, there are many language research scientists who have explored the cultural differences between the East and the West. In the contest of emojis as a tool of on-line communication great research is made by Sharath Chandra Guntuku, Mingyang Li, Louis Tay, Lyle H. Ungar, who found that Westerners most commonly use emojis that reflect faces and body gestures, while Easterners are more accustomed to use icons that reflect things used in their everyday lives (such as "a bowl of rice", " flowers ", "money", "beer toast", etc.) [14].

To obtain research goals, we intend to use anonymous surveys, and randomly ask Ukrainians and Chinese about the emojis they use when sending text messages. The research was made on the survey of 100 participants, age group: from 16 to 50. The survey was made with the help of "Google Form". As soon as the emoji set used in Facebook, Instagram, Viber, WeChat, QQ, Weibo, etc. are different, it was decided to take into consideration only the most common emojis to get the most relevant result.

The result of the survey is represented in the Table 1 and is the following. Most of the respondents (81%) stressed that they use "smiley face" emojis more frequently than any other type. This coincides with the universalism of emojis denoted by Hamza Alshenqeeti in the article “Are Emojis Creating a New or Old Visual Language for New Generations?” [7, p. 60].

The research showed that Chinese and Ukrainians keep in mind different meanings while using the same emojis.

For example, 14% of Chinese people use the "face upside down" (@) to indicate "smile", while 5% of Ukrainians use it when they are "unknow what to do under strange circumstances".

Thirty percent of Chinese respondents use the "grimacing face" (@) to express "embarrassment", while 10% of Ukrainians use it to express "angry or irritation".

17% of Chinese use the "hug face" (@) to express "happiness", and 10% to express "joy", while 15% of Ukrainian respondents mentioned to use it to show "hug", and 5% use it instead of saying "thank you" / express gratitude.

As for the usage of the "face of victory / face with look of triumph" (@), 15% of Chinese, as well as 15% of Ukrainians apply it to express "anger".

26% of Chinese use the "person bowing" () to depict "boy", 3% use it to show the process of "thinking", and 2,6% use it to say "sorry". As for respondents from Ukraine, 5% of them use it to show that they are "busy with work", and 3% to express "remorse" and need to say "sorry".

Table 1. The results of an anonymous survey on the use of emoji among Chinese and Ukrainians

26% of Chinese use the "person gesturing Ok" emoji () instead of "girl", and 2% use it to express the meaning of "heart" and "love you". Most Ukrainians (6%) use this kind of emoji to express "fear".

Another aspect reviled by the survey was the cultural difference based on the usage of picture-icons, such as emojis with flowers, bowl of rice, bear jar etc. It was figured out that Ukrainians more often use facial expression emojis, while Chinese participants admitted more common usage of topical pictures emojis. Gained results may be explained by the origin of emojis, as soon as they were created in the East (Japan), it took eastern cultures much more time to get used to the substitution of their daily life aspects by emojis. Western countries got acquainted with emojis much later, some of them had `lost' their original meaning, that made using facial emojis more frequent as well as more obvious part of on-line communication.

This hypothesis was confirmed by another aspect of the survey, where participants were asked to name some of the most frequently used emojis. This part of the research made it obvious that there is a certain difference between Eastern and Western cultures in the meaning they suppose emojis obtain. As soon as facial expressions are more likely to be treated the same way in the East and in the West, there is a certain culturally based difference in gestures aspect. As well as during the face-to-face communication there are certain cultural peculiarities, on-line cross-cultural communication faces the same misunderstanding problem. For example, the emoji has its original name, that stands for: "person gesturing Ok". Because in the East well done/excellent work is marked with the circle, but not with the tick as in the West. As well as the "person bowing" (&) emoji is often used in daily life of the East, where it is a must to bow in order to show respect to the opponent, while in the West people used to bow only in the religious context.

The results obtained are correlated with cultural differences in the level of emotional arousal described by Nangyeon Lim [11] in the study: "Cultural differences in emotion: differences in emotional arousal level between the East and the West". It is supposed that one of the main cultural differences is based in emotion: "differences in emotional arousal level between the East and the West". The author insists on the high arousal emotions for the West, while Eastern culture is related to the low arousal emotions. "These cultural differences are explained by the distinctive characteristics of individualism and collectivism" [11]. In his opinion, the concept of happiness in Eastern countries is different from that in Western countries. For example, for Western countries, the concept of happiness is closely related to the high arousal positive emotional states, while Eastern countries pay special attention to the low-arousal positive emotional states.

Conclusions and directions for further research in this area

The results obtained in the research illustrate the difference between Eastern and Western culture and world perception. Iconic symbolism is supposed to find better perception among the countries that used to have characters in their everyday correspondence. Highly developed technics and widely spread Internet made people transfer their face-to-face communication on-line and brought plenty of changes to the language of communication, substituting it by the iconic symbols that are easier to type and normally well understand among communicators. Spreading into the cross-cultural Internet communication emojis faced the problem of misunderstanding, based on the cultural peculiarities depicted in them, and as soon as their original meanings and names were not obvious people used to use them unconsciously, by giving them meaning according to their cultural individual world perception.

The results obtained can be used in future research to examine the reflection of modern language changes in the world of languages in the East and the West.

References

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