Chapter 10
A study on how cultural and gender parameters affect emoticon distribution,
usage and frequency in American and Japanese online discourse
This study attempts to understand how cultural and gender
parameters affect emoticon distribution, usage and frequency in American and
Japanese online discourse. From a corpus of American and Japanese personal blog
comments of over 45,000 sentences and data from interviews with bloggers, emoticon
function, usage and frequency were compared across gender and cross-culturally. In
addition, an examination of how emoticons interact with the linguistic text and
other unconventional means of communication such as unconventional phonetic
spelling, was also given consideration.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.A review of the emoticon literature: Function, gender and cultural factors
- 3.Data
- 4.Emoticons analyzed
- 5.Methods of emoticon classification
- 5.1Emoticons as propositional markers
- Emoticons as iconic/emotion strengtheners
- Emoticons that enhance verbal linguistic content
- Emoticons as lexical replacements
- 5.2Emoticons as politeness-affiliated speech act markers
- Emoticons that act as PIU’s
- Emoticons that act as negative impact downgraders (NID)
- Supplementary UMC’s
- 6.Results
- 6.1Japanese emoticon frequency
- 6.2American emoticon frequency
- 6.3Cross-cultural emoticon frequency
- 6.4Functions: Emoticons as propositional markers
- Japanese female examples (Emoticons as iconic/emotion
strengtheners)
- Japanese male examples (emoticons as iconic/emotional
strengtheners)
- American female examples (emoticons as iconic/emotion
strengtheners)
- American male example (emoticons as iconic/emotion strengtheners)
- Japanese female example (emoticons as lexical replacements/enhancers of
verbal linguistic content)
- Japanese male example (emoticon as lexical replacement/enhancer of
verbal linguistic content)
- American female example (emoticon as lexical replacement/enhancer of
verbal linguistic content)
- American male examples (emoticons that enhance verbal linguistic
content)
- 7.Politeness-affiliated data
- Politeness-affiliated data: Japanese female example (comments opening and solidarity
markers)
- Japanese male examples (comment openings and closings)
- American male example (comments opening and closing)
- Japanese male examples (markers of solidarity)
- American female examples (markers of solidarity and compliments)
- American male examples (solidarity markers and compliments)
- Japanese female examples (expressing gratitude)
- American female examples (expressing gratitude)
- American male examples (expressing thanks)
- 8.Interplay and relationship between emoticons and other UMC’s
- 9.Discussion
- 10.Conclusion
-
Notes
-
References
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