- Regional and Cultural Tells In Digital Textual Communication

There are quite a few tells that people use in online messaging which can be used to identify a user’s culture or place of origin. Beyond the obvious sentence patterns, word usage, and other language behaviours, there are some small behaviours that can be used to identify groups:

  • In Russia it is common to end messages with ) or ( to indicate expression. This comes from emoticons such as :), but colons can be hard to type on Cyrillic keyboards, so they just became opening and closing brackets. ) generally represents a smiley expression, while ( generally represents a sad expression. Multiple brackets are sometimes used to convey a stronger form of the emotion.

  • ‘XD’ is a commonly used Polish emoticon. Different capitalisations and the number of xs and ds influence the meaning. It was adopted from the West’s usage as an expression akin to 😆 when Poland properly embraced the internet in the 2000s, but unlike in the West it didn’t slide out of fashion and adopted more general, varied usage among Poles. Sometimes it is also used as a noun.

  • Japan frequently uses kaomoji. For example: (^_^) and (づ ◕‿◕ )づ. Their textual construction allows a great variety to be constructed and for them to be easily altered based on context, unlike emoji.

  • In Brazilian Portuguese, ‘kkkkk’ and ‘ksksks’ are commonly used to express laughter. ‘rsrsrs’ is also used as a shortening of ‘risos’, meaning ‘laughter’.

  • Inverted punctuation (¿ or ¡) is commonly used by Spanish speakers, even when writing English.

  • In Thai, the number 5 is pronounced ‘hâaห้า’, so Thai speakers will often write ‘5’ to indicate laughter, with more 5s increasing the intensity: ’555555’.

  • French uses a space before much punctuation, which French speakers will often bring across into English: ‘How are you ?’.

  • In some Nordic cultures, most notably Sweden, it is common to use a double caret (^^) to indicate a smile or nod. It is roughly equivalent to the 😊 emoji, though is used more casually. It is also used as a shorthand of the (^_^) kaomoji more generally across the world.