2016),"Learning with LinkedIn: Students' perceptions of incorporating subject-related blogging in an international marketing course", Interactive Technology and Smart Education, Vol. 13 Iss 2 pp. 166-183 http://dx.Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emeraldsrm:374558 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -Research has shown that the discursive patterns students use in their email interactions with their teachers are not linguistically and socio-culturally appropriate. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to try to explore how socio-cultural conventions influence the Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' choices of discourse strategies in their email communications within an academic context. The study, then, investigates the impact of social distance and gender on the stylistic features of students' email texts. Design/methodology/approach -The email texts written by 180 university students majoring in Applied Linguistics were systematically analyzed based on such patterns as opening and closing moves, reduced forms, text connectives, symbolization and emoticons. Alternatively, three semi-structured interviews were conducted to gauge the participants' motives underlying the selection of particular discourse features. Findings -The findings revealed that students, despite many statements to the contrary, were aware of the socio-cultural conventions governing email writing style and could write status-appropriate email messages, which rightly reflected the etiquette of email communication within an academic context. Practical implications -The findings may offer certain benefits to EFL teachers and students. Originality/value -The paper highlights understanding of a specific social group in relation to their interaction with different status social groups in the context of a specific communication technology and to some extent the perceived effectiveness of such approaches by those invoking them. IntroductionIndubitably, language is considered as a distinctive ability of human beings, which has made possible the evolution of human society. People make use of language in both written and spoken modalities to convey their messages, n...