Astudy on the "cellular phone mail communication" between young people

2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 15520281
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: SENSHU UNIVERSITY
• Principal Investigator: KATO Yasuhiko Senshu University, School of literature, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (90233824)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): SHINOZAKI Koichi Tokyo Metropolitan University, Humanities division, Assistant professor, 人文学部, 助教授 (00206103)
• Project Period (FY): 2003 – 2004
• Keywords: e-mail / Paralanguage expression / face mark / pictorial symbol

Research Abstract

The communication method using the cellular phone mail has spread quickly in these days in Japan. It is remarkable in the young and is indispensable to their everyday life. Some companies of cellular phones provide various pictorial symbols ("E-Moji") and those young people use the symbols and face marks ("Kao-Moji") as an expression of their feeling. This study brings the communication between young people using cellular phone mail into focus. We made simple inquiries about apology using cellular phone mail when those young people are in their apologetic situation. And we collected actuall cellular phone mail data which were exchanged between young people. The result of our mail data analysis clarified that the usage of face marks and pictorial symbols, in other words, the usage of paralanguage expressions is restricted by the degree of intimacy or relationship between young people.