ABSTRACT
As computer-mediated communication (CMC) continues to replace face-to-face (F2F) interaction, the nature of communication has changed. Emoticons (emotional icons) are facial expressions pictorially represented by text and punctuation marks. Emoticons have become substitutes for the visual cues of F2F communication in CMC, and have been used for many years to diversify communication in informal text messages. This study compares and analyzes syntactic typographic structures and variables between two different cultural emoticons, American and Korean, and examines whether emoticons can be culturally neutral.
