The Language of Japanese Spam Mails

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25770162
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: Backhaus Peter 早稲田大学, 教育・総合科学学術院, 准教授 (40582888)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 日本語 / ジェンダー / スパム / CMC（コンピュータを介したコミュニケーション）

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This paper analyzes the language of Japanese spam mails. Special focus is on one specific type of spam: make-believe dating invitations by women looking for physical relationships with male partners, a phenomenon also known as "gyaku-enjokosai". The textual analysis of a corpus of 343 spam messages is complemented by two additional research tools: a questionnaire survey with 55 Japanese undergraduate students and a series of semi-structured interviews with a former writer of spam messages.
Taken together the three parts of the project provide some new insights into the textual characteristics of spam, including both the producing end of these texts and their (potential) readers.

Free Research Field

社会言語学