ALERTS BASED ON SIGNIFICANCE OF FREE FORMAT TEXT MESSAGES

A method and system for processing a free format short message service (SMS) text message for alerting a mobile phone's user to significant information in the message received by the mobile phone from a sender. Program code stored in memory on the mobile phone executes the method on a processor. A theme, a rheme, at least one structural component, and a sentence type of the normalized message are generated from which a FEATURE FACTOR priority is determined. Semantic content of the normalized message is determined from which an EMOTIONAL FACTOR priority is determined. A TOTAL PRIORITY computed as a sum of the FEATURE FACTOR priority and the EMOTIONAL FACTOR priority is determined to exceed a predetermined threshold, from which it is determined that the received message is significant, which triggers overriding default handset settings of the mobile phone and alerting the user that the received message is significant.