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Figure 3.2.1 Frequency of Facial Syntactic Variables
3.3 Culture and Emoticons
Facial expressions are a form of nonverbal communication which convey
emotional states during F2F communication. Most anthropologists believe facial
expressions are learned, and therefore vary from culture to culture (Jack et al.,
2009). On the other hand, Ekman showed facial expressions of emotion are
universal across cultures (Ekman in Matsumoto, 1992). If this is the case, regardless
of culture, the same emotion from different cultural emoticons should be
recognized. Every emoticon bears visual resemblance to