This essay offers an exploration of the practice of emotional expression in text-messages, and gives recommendations concerning how best to signify emotion when communicating with text-messages. Emotions can be shown in text-messages in two ways: With words and with orthography. Two potential problems associated with expressing emotions in text-messages are ambiguity of tone and disinhibited communicative behavior. Two of the advantages of expressing emotions in text-messages are ease of contact between interlocutors and the control text-message senders have over their messages. When the two methods of expressing emotion in text-messages are understood, the two problems are avoided, and the two benefits are embraced, text-messages can be more effective tools for sharing emotional meaning-and thus more effective tools for personal connection.

The process of collecting text-messages for scholarly investigation poses researchers with a number of challenges related to communicative context, privacy, and data transferal. This paper explains a data collection method that largely overcomes these challenges. The method is a form of Discourse Completion Task in which study participants are asked to send from their mobile phones the text-messages they would send in certain hypothetical scenarios. While similar methods have been used in some previous studies, this paper presents the first full explanation and justification of the text-message DCT method, and includes an explanation of the how the method was used successfully in a study of punctuation marks in text-messages.

Because of the pervasiveness of the text messaging medium, further understanding of meaningmaking practices in text messages is desirable. This study offers new knowledge of the potential uses and meanings of the full-stop in text messages. Although the full-stop has become infamous for its potential negative connotations in text messages, few studies have evaluated uses of the full-stop in varied emotional contexts. For this study, text message Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) detailing different emotional contexts were given to undergraduate students. The uses of full-stops in the text message responses elicited with the DCTs were evaluated via two methods of analysis. First, a basic content analysis was conducted for the purpose of understanding the relative uses of the full-stop in the differing emotional contexts. Second, a semiotic analysis was conducted to understand more fully how exactly the elicited fullstops were deployed and what meanings they might convey. It was concluded that the full-stop is not always a device with a negative connotation, and that, in certain circumstances, the fullstop may be seen as more appropriate than other punctuation marks. It may even be seen as a conveyer of formality, seriousness, or earnestness. The study offers practical knowledge of how a certain typographical device is used, as well as the more theoretical knowledge that punctuation devices, like words, can possess a certain semiotic elasticity: their uses and meanings can vary, depending on the contexts in which they are deployed and the people who write and read them.

Shaun Tan’s 2006 wordless graphic novel The Arrival presents readers with an affecting portrait of the immigrant experience. Drawing from semiotic theory and the narrative paradigm, this paper offers a rhetorical criticism of the scenes in The Arrival related to the main character’s employment-related experiences. The paper proposes a novel theoretical concept – a semiotics of unfamiliarity – and, guided by this concept and the narrative paradigm, concludes that The Arrival is an effective rhetorical artifact that poignantly presents important information about the professional difficulties faced by immigrants. It is recommended that The Arrival be considered for use in organizations that employ newly arrived immigrants.

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