The role of sentence closing as an emotional marker: A case of Japanese mobile phone e-mail

• This study explores Japanese Keitai-mail texting practice using a very large corpus of raw data (43,295 texts).
• This study emphasises the sentence closing methods as a unique and frequently occurring language practice.
• This study provides concrete evidence by a quantitative number of each occurrence which depicts this type of language practice.
• Keitai-mail extends previous language practices by a more sensitive differentiation of the use of several types of symbols.

This study investigates how symbols are used as a sentence closing method in Japanese mobile phone e-mail (Keitai-mail), in order to discuss how this practice has extended to increase the possibility of what can be conveyed via written composition.43,295 mails from 60 Japanese young people are analysed in this study. The results show that, as in other CMC practices, emoticons are mostly used as sentence closure devices in the collected data (about 63%), indicating that writers of Keitai-mail naturally use the end of the sentence as a place to add extra-textual messages such as feelings or implications. Moreover, some standard scripts such as periods (‘。’) are also used as emotional markers in addition to their formal usage as simple sentence closing devices. These texting practices can be interpreted as showing that the sentence closing is the most important method since the messages intended to be expressed in Keitai-mail have become more sensitive in terms of reflecting a subtle meaning or implication through this method. The choice of whether to use standard or picture-based symbols contributes to this practice as well.