How Young Japanese Express Their Emotions Visually in Mobile Phone Messages: A Sociolinguistic Analysis

Abstract

This study explores features of young Japanese people's mobile phone messages (MPMs) and the markedly visual style of presentation which characterises them. The Japanese language's complex writing system facilitates artful manipulation of written forms and playful, radical deviation from conventional use of the language, resulting in a vast number of graphic features, including gyaru-moji and emoji. These innovative and non-standard features paradoxically reflect a strong visual orientation that has always been inherent in the Japanese language. A close analysis of naturally occurring MPM data reveals that they retain important features of traditional Japanese communication: young people seem to enjoy intimacy and creativity while at the same time maintaining a traditional distance and an anxiety to ensure that neither party loses face. This new medium appears to offer a flexible communication space that meets the need that young Japanese feel to create a new style of interaction in a rapidly changing world, while at the same time temporarily allowing them to be free from the pressure to conform to social expectations.