electronic writing

Emoticons! Don't get me started on Japanese emoticons. There's already plenty of websites on them out there already, because there are a staggering number of them. For example, this page lists only emoticons that mean I'm sorry! I stumbled on it because my advisor put the following emoticon into an email: m(__)m

I was so stumped. I figured it didn't make any sense, so it must be an emoticon. At first I thought--an angel with wings? Then I figured out that it's roughly supposed to mean "sumimasen" (the equivalent of sorry, excuse me, etc.) But I still couldn't understand what it was supposed to depict. Then, finally...AHA! It's a picture of a person bowing! The m's are the shoulders, the (__) is the top of the person's head, which you can see because he's bent over bowing. AHA! So, this emoticon also means "yoroshiku onegaishimasu", roughly meaning in my context "thank you in advance for taking care of that thing for me." Amazing.

I thought that was the end of that. Japanese emoticons are a sophisticated language, I get it. But tonight, Tomoko showed me some of the notebooks of her sixth grade students. Some of the girl's notebooks were very colorful and covered with little red hearts, pink flowers, etc.--something one might expect for a girly notebook at that age. But what really struck me was that there were those really sophisticated emoticons!! In handwritten notes! I was floored.

I couldn't imagine using an American emoticon in my handwritten notes. This is perhaps because American emoticons are mostly meant to be read sideways, like <3 and :-). So, if I wanted to convey the feeling of the emoticon in a handwritten note, I'd just draw a right-side-up heart or smiley face or something like that. No way would I draw less-than sign and a 3 to stand for a heart, or a colon and a parentheses to stand for a smiley face. These girls, though, were mimicking the punctuation marks down to the letter. So, I literally saw marks like these ヾ(＠⌒▽⌒＠)ﾉ (=^^=) etc. drawn into the lines of their notebooks.

It's almost as though the symbols themselves have become a universal language that has taken on its own meaning. Our happy face or tongue-stick-out face :-P is merely representative of the feeling. It was created out of the limitations of the typed word. When those limitations are removed (i.e. handwriting) we can just draw the relevant smiley to convey the feeling better. But ヾ(＠⌒▽⌒＠)ﾉ doesn't just represent "I'm super happy," that particular combinations of symbols is actually invested with some meaning, such that even when expressing the feeling in handwriting, one uses those symbols in that combination (and some variants, of course). It's like spelling--emotions now have spellings and words and vocabulary to be used in correct, acceptable, recognizable combinations, except that they aren't words, they are collections of symbols that create emoticons.

Or this could all just be b.s., and Japanese girls just draw out the symbols because their emoticons are so sophisticated, and it's tough to do better with a freehand drawing. I can't imagine hand writing （ToT）instead of *cries* or ::cries::, or m(__)m instead of *bows* or ::bows:: though. That bowing one is a pretty non-intuitive emoticon to me.

Hmm...I don't think I've done a good job of conveying what I feel is intuitively different about Japanese vs American emoticons, and why Japanese ones are used in handwriting. Maybe I'll think on it some more.

On a related note, some will recall that novels written, sold, and read entirely on cell phones have become quite popular. Many authors are young teenage girls. I'm willing to bet that those novels are rife with emoticons.