Provided are techniques for determining a sentiment of an electronic message. The electronic message is parsed to identify one or more sub-constructs. For at least one of the sub-constructs that is not false-positive, a sentiment indicator is assigned from a set of types of sentiment indicators, and a score is assigned for the sentiment indicator. A final score is obtained for at least one type of sentiment indicator in the electronic message by summing scores for that type of sentiment indicator. Based on the final score for the at least one type of sentiment indicator, a sentiment of the electronic message is identified.