The Japanese kaomoji

The Japanese kaomoji or emoticon as noted in chapter 1 is written front facing as opposed to a sideways depiction. As they are produced on a 2 byte keyboard, there are also a much bigger variety of them in comparison to the western emoticon. Many of them are also culturally relevant with some depicting actions as well as emotion that mimic Japanese gestures such as bowing.

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Many of the Japanese kaomoji derive from manga and are often tied in with Japanese communication concepts of indirectness and modesty. The use of ; on the side of the face of the ^_^; kaomoji, for example, represents sweat and is used when the writer feels what they are saying is perhaps too assertive (Sugimoto & Levin 2000).

In a study of young Japanese mobile phone messages Miyake (2007) found that these writers use these signs for self expression and language play. She writes

“these writers are very concerned, when writing their messages, not to hurt their interlocutor, and not to be thought badly of. This anxiety is very much a characteristic of traditional Japanese communication” (p.69). She suggests that unlike western emoticons which function primarily to accentuate emphasis, tone or meaning Japanese signs (she includes emoji and kigou within this) do not often represent a specific semantic meaning but reveal important emotional cues or act as an atmosphere building device. She cites studies such as Nakamura (2001) who suggest that these signs help conversation participants avoid friction. She concludes that no quantitative research has been done in this area and is something this thesis will address.

Miyake (2007) points out that the visual orthographic elements available to mobile phone users (including kamoji among other UMCs) allow them to manage communication in such a way that the users do not lose face. She suggests that in mobile phone messaging at least, it is easier for them to do than in offline face to face dialogues. Although essential a theme strongly linked to UMC usage and culture (discussed in part 2 of this literature review) Miyake concludes that “the passion for creating a comfortable atmosphere seems to parallel the Japanese tendency, in face -to -face conversation, to greatly emphasize harmonious setting and atmosphere over the content of the talk” (2007, p.70).

In a study of Japanese housewives use of text based emoticons in a chat room Katsuno & Yano (2007) suggests that through kaomoji these women could express shades of emotion more satisfactorily th an through linguistic means, and in some instances better with kaomoji than with words. This would relate to Garrison et al (2011)’s finding that the emoticon should be looked upon as a useful linguistic unit that acts on its own. Katsuno & Yano (2007) con clude that the sense of play and

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creativity that kaomoji produces keeps readers interested and entertained and this language play as we have seen is not integral to just online communication (Gottlieb, 2010).

Katsuno & Yano (2002) suggest that the rise of kaomoji and its widespread usage can fall into one of the broad categories as listed below. T hey are

1. A result of the conventions of play and aesthetics in traditional writing systems in Japan;

2. A result of the modern embracing of technology and gadgetry in part for its own sake, impart for its very newness;

3. A result of the pattern of ‘boom / fad culture in Japan;

4. A result of the development of an otaku (geek) subculture; and

5. A result of the influence of manga (comics) with its highly codified visual language.

In interviews with CMC users on both the synchronous and asynchronous communication platform they found responses from, Kaomoji can soften the nuance of a message, and that kaomoji fills the gap between what the sentence means and how they want to say it. Some users commented that with formal language (desu / masu forms) kaomoji can make it more informal and fun sounding. These notions would suggest that kaomoji can both have a semantic and pragmatic role to play.

On the notion of how the CMC medium influences or promotes kaomoji use the following responses were received. “I like chat rooms rather than electronic

bulletin boards, because in chat rooms conversation takes place one after another. This makes me want to use kaomoji, because somebody will respond immediately with another kaomoji” (p.224) and the speed of chat room interaction is also a contributing factor. “In chat rooms, you really need to be able to type fast, because typing is the basis of your conversation. Therefore, I type directly what I think in my mind. As a result, I cannot write whole sentences, but just some words quickly. In this case,

adding kaomoji to my words helps express my feeling or emotion more clearly ” (p.224).

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Katsuno & Yano (2002) conclude that through kaomoji a kind of intimacy is created which they suggest “draws upon the symbolic, not as a secondary or derivative experience, but as a primary form of interaction ” (p.223).

Within the Japanese language literature a number of studies have been conducted with results and differing from studies based on the English language.

Tanaka (2001) in a study of university student’s keitai (mobile phone) e-mails found that the use of the emoticon could be used in the following ways:

1. A tendency for them to be used in mail dialogues with intimate friends 2. Used to maintain good relations with their interlocutor

3. Used to express themselves and support their emotions

4. Used for the possibility of creating fun, light hearted interactions

Natsume (1995) states that within manga giongo or gitaigo (onomatopoeia) such as バキ ュー ン bakyun or ガ ー ン gaan are often used within the narrative of the manga and he calls these onyu (音 喩) or sound symbol. Within the CMC environment these visual devices have had an influence on kaomoji. Harada (2004) for example found that kaomoji like ガ ━━(ﾟД ﾟ;)━━ ン! are often used with giongo or gitaigo (onomatopoeia) within the CMC environment as the examples in table 2.1 show. Harada (2004) suggests that emotional sentiment and tone of voice can be easily expressed with the use of an emoticon and onomatopoeia. It also replicates the fun, lighthearted interactions that Tanaka (2001) speaks of above.

Table 2.1 Kaomoji and Onomatopoeia Use

1. ち ょ っ と 冒 険 チ ェ ク や る ？ （ ＾ ＾ ） ワ ク ワ ク Chotto bouken chiekku yaru? （ ＾ ＾ ）wakuwaku Shall we do an adventure check? （ ＾ ＾ ）very excited 2. そ れ が さ 、 宿 題 思 い 出 し て ん(ﾟ◇ ﾟ)ガ ー ン

Soregasa shukudai omoidashiten (ﾟ◇ ﾟ) gaan I can’ remember that homework (ﾟ◇ ﾟ) gaan 3. そ れ っ て 当 た り ！ ！ （ ＾ ＾ ） ！ ぴ ん ぽ ー ん

Sorette atari !! （ ＾ ＾ ）pinpoon That’s right!! （ ＾ ＾ ）pinpoon

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Akizuki (2009) and Miyake (2004a) suggest that creative orthography and emoticon usage is the digital version of shojyo moji or young girls deformed characters that were popular in the 1970’s and 80’s (See chapter 1 pp54-56 for a description of these creative analogue styles of writing).

Togarashi (1997) found that in informal online dialogue the use of emoticons vastly increased the intimacy levels of the interaction. Similarly Gawauchi (1990) found that the use of emoticons softened the content of the message and strengthen ed intimacy and rapport between conversational partners.

Some studies have looked collectively at emoticons, emoji and kigou.

Mirroring other Japanese language studies Nakamura (2001) suggests that these function to add emotion, create a more lighthearted and cheerful approach to the discourse, are used in awareness of their interlocutors feelings and used to avoid online friction, in addition to simply being used to decorate the text. This latter function will be discussed again later but these functions as described above differ to how the role of the emoticon is described within the English language literature. Their use by Japanese users is tied to the cultural factors that dictate how Japanese interact with one another. This is a focus of research enquiry 2 which looks at UMC and culture.

Satake (2005) suggests, for example, that kaomoji can add to the text meaning and suggests that ごめんなさいgomennasai (I’m sorry) that has an emoticon attached enhances the writers feeling to a stronger apology, one that is heartfelt. He equates the use of kaomoji and emoji as the digital version of 新 言文一 致体 shin genbun itchitai tai which was a new form of young people’s writing style in the 1980s coined by Satake (1980) which means ‘a new unification of the written and spoken styles ’.

Satake (2005) concludes that these new extra -linguistic signs are used predominately by young people (this thesis found differing results) but he only examined mobile phone communication. As a function the signs are used to duplicate spoken interaction, allowing the writers to express themselves without the fear of being misunderstood or being hated by their interlocutor. In other words, they enable smooth harmonious communications within the online environment, which as we will see later in part two

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of this review, mimics studies on Japanese face -to-face communication.

Some studies have looked at whether kaomoji or emoticons can stand alone and still retain meaning (Markman & Oshima, 2007), Arakawa & Kawano (2008) examined responses from 134 university student questionnaires to investigate whether a kaomoji or emoticon can be described as a proposition as in a language i tem or an image as in a facial expression. Their results suggest that the emoticon role is twofold: it can act as a proposition and as an image to reflect author emotion. The majority of the Japanese literature has focused on the keitai or mobile phone communications and kaomoji usage within e-mails. Ono & Tokuda (2005) distributed a questionnaire regarding kaomoji use to 208 high school students, 252 university students and 66 housewives.

They found that 60% of students used kaomoji always or very often. When asked why they use them 35% of high school students, 33% of university students and 28% of housewives stated that they were cute. A slightly lower percentage for each group was because they are interesting. These two factors the participants suggested allowed them to express intimate emotion and maintain good relations with their conversational partner rather than just their appearance or user satisfaction. The largest percentages for all groups as to why kaomoji are used concern the ease that kaomoji provide in portraying emotion and to convey nuances that are unable to be expressed in words alone. In addition, those who used kaomoji as opposed to those who didn’t were

perceived as being friendlier. Iwamoto (2002) in a study regarding net diaries received responses from 473 net diary users. One of the 6 areas of questions concerned

extra-linguistic sign usage (including kaomoji, emoji and kigou). She found that the majority of users used these signs and lists reasons why net diary writers use and don ’t use them. They use them so that they can express their feelings with ease, and that it is easy to convey the nuance of the utterance as it helps to convey meaning that words alone cannot express. In contrast, reasons for why writers do not include them in their net diaries include the desire to express themselves in words, which was the largest motivation followed by reasons such as an opposition to using them in a personal diary.

Such results show that not all Japanese CMC users incorporate these signs in their online writings but interestingly what this study shows is that in monologues like a net

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diary the use of extra-linguistic signs is not universally accepted.

According to Peirce (1955) signs are divisible by a trichotomy. The second trichotomy refers to the relation of the sign to its object and signs are divided into icon, index and symbols. A full discussion on Peirce is given in chapter 3. Kataoka (2003) examined the letter writing of young females and showed that emotive pictorial signs (EPSs) which can be described as an offline UMC equ alivent, were used as icons are identified with the writer or their body part, are largely metaphoric in that emotive actions such as a smiling face or a waving hand are substituted with these signs. They act as prepositional support in that they add meaning to the sentence but they can also stand alone and demonstrate meaning.

Kataoka (2003) describes indexes as metonymic in that they index the writers emotive stance, for example, a tear or a drop of sweat for sadne ss. He describes symbols as more ‘symbolic’ and conventionalized in that the connection between a sign and a psychological state is highly arbitrary, for example as within the use of heart signs. He suggests that these attached symbols offer little to the propositional meaning of the sentence as these symbols originally are not derived from certain emotions but correspond to them through convention of context and use.

In the online environment Miyake (2007) found similar findings to Kataoka (2003) when she examined extra-linguistic signs in mobile phone messages. Her analysis showed that kigou (codes) such as ♡ or ★ were culturally recognizable icons but offered vague meanings within e-mails and served a decorative function. She describes Emoji as having somewhat clearer meanings as they served a function when appearing in text messages. In comparison, emoticons had the clearest of meanings when used in conjunction with mobile phone messages. In a separate study which looked at young people’s text messages Miyake (2005a) divided ekigou (絵 記号)into kaomji, emoji and kigou. She found that the majority of these signs were used as symbols and the minority used as indexes. In her analysis she looked at who the addressee is when these signs are used and found that 80% of her sample used them when communicating with siblings, close friends, their partner and also to people that they are not really close to. From this finding she cannot say that such signs are only

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used with close friends or family. But she does concede that on the contrary other studies such as Kato (2002) found the opposite in that these signs are mostly used with intimates.

Studies have suggested that emoticons can express emotion as well as facilitate the communication of socio-emotional information (Derks et al, 2007). Therefore, are people who use emoticons judged in a different light in comparison to users who do not? Katsuno & Yano (2002) for example found that the use of kaomoji (Japanese emoticon) is inappropriate in the following contexts:

1. When sending a message to a superior

2. When receiving messages from one’s superior 3. When receiving messages from a stranger 4. When receiving messages from an intimate

They cite quotations from some of her interviewees. One suggests that kaomoji are not needed with close friends as they know each other so well they can assume familiar, embedded contexts and that “this parallels Edward Hall’s characterization of Japanese culture as high-context culture (Katsuno & Yano, 2002, p.220). Other

interview data however suggested kaomoji is used to affirm intimacy. Others suggested that in diary pages like the personal online weblog which is essentially a one way monologue rather than a dialogue between two people the use of kaomoji does not feel right. However, as chapter 4 will indicate the use of kaomoji in blog posts was used in a variety of ways among Japanese blog users.

These assertions, specifically 3 and 4, however are not supported by some of the research literature (Derks et al, 2007; Katsuno and Yano, 2007). Timmers, Fischer,

& Manstead (2003) suggest that non-verbal emotions in face to face interaction increase when their interlocutor is considered to be a friend.

Fullwood & Martino (2006) found that emoticon users were generally perceived as being more sociable, outgoing and friendly compared to non emoticon users. This was based on data of 32 university students who were given a series of

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answers to questions both containing and not containing emotions. They were then asked to rate their impressions of them.

Luor et al. (2010) examined how graphic based emoticons influenced task orientated communication and found that within 19,855 mess age logs generated by 199 employees within an IM program negative emoticon use could have a negative effect in both simple and complex task orientated communication. In contrast positive

emoticons created a positive effect. Luor et al (2010) suggest that “positive emoticons should always be employed in work coordination tasks, especially when there is a tendency for unpleasant emoticons to be felt in the communication between senders and receivers” (p.894). In contrast they suggest a warning should be given to users if they wish to use graphic emoticons of a flaming nature in order not to cause

altercations among staff.

Interestingly, however, and in a reflection of Derks et al (2007) who suggest that emoticons are used more in socio-emotional than task orientated social contexts, Yus (2011) suggests that the use of emoticons within the task orientated context is not appropriate, and an “unnecessary distraction, whereas in socio -emotional conversation their use is not only predictable but expected as happens in most conversations among adolescents” (p.198). In a comparison of the impressions smilies (graphic based

emoticons) and text based emoticons have, Ganster et al (2012) found that smiling smiles have a more influential impact on the receivers mood compar ed to smiling emoticons. They conclude that these nonverbal cues can influence message

interpretation and the perception of the sender.

Some of the studies which have looked at the impressions that kaomoji give to readers have been briefly touched on in a review of the Japanese language literature , but there are some Japanese language papers that have specifically looked at the notion of impression formation and emoticon or kaomoji usage. Arakawa & Suzuki (2004) asked 28 university students to give their impression of received mails that contained apologies. Some of these mails included one of three kaomoji within them which were a happy expression (^_^), a tearful one (;_;) and a bowing gesture m(_ _)m. R esults showed that compared to messages that were just text based and contained no kaomoji,

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the mails that included kaomji helped to appease the receivers anger towards the situation. They, therefore, conclude that the kaomoji not only expresses emotion, but also affects the reader’s mood. This, I would suggest, can be traced back to the idea of Japanese communication that is based on harmonious interaction.

Hanai & Oguchi (2008) examined 141 e-mails taken from 18 students over a two week period and found that emoticons appeared quickly in the early dialogue exchanges and had the effect of softening tense relationships between users. Takahara

& Satou (2003）looked at how the inclusion or admittance of kaomoji altered reader impression among the use of polite desu masu forms and non polite forms (kudaketa buntai く だ けた 文体), within greetings, apologies and requests. They found that emoticons attached to non polite forms were seen as sociable, outgoing and friendly. In contrast desu / masu polite forms with no emoticons were seen as since re and honest.

In a similar study Takahara et al (2005) found that when emoticons were frequently attached to apologies that this was seen negatively in the eyes of the reader.

Nakamaru (2002, 2005) examined how the inclusion or non -inclusion of

kaomoji in sentences affects degrees of trust or reliability, emotion and evaluation. He found that sentences that were positive and had a positive kaomoji were rated highly in the above categories but that if sentence content was negative and the kaomoji was positive, that is, they did not match, then they were judged as having low degrees of trust, emotion and overall evaluation.

This literature review illustrates that emoticon usage mostly has a positive effect but with some few instances where their inclusion may cause irritation. This may be related to the concept of T>P>O or Time, Place and Objective. Emoticon usage can vary deeply from person to person, but their use as a tool for impression formation still seems part of the CMC user consciousness and psyche.