Language Use in Computer-Mediated Communication: An Investigation into the Genre of Workplace Emails

Abstract

This study investigated the moves and communicative purposes used in 522 email messages that were exchanged in a Malaysian private educational institute. Using Swales's (1990) move approach, this study revealed that email writers used fourteen moves that are mainly six framing and eight content moves. Content moves included four main, one intertextual, one supporting and two follow-up moves. The four main content moves reflected the main communicative purposes of the emails that are discussing issues, enquiring about issues, couriering (delivering) documents and informing about organizational and academic issues. The four communicative purposes varied in their structural organization, number of recipients and reaction to receiving the email.

Student-Teacher Email Requests: Comparative Analysis of Politeness Strategies Used by Malaysian and Filipino University Students

“…The asynchronous nature of email communication, particularly in thread or chain emails, has narrowed the social distance between communicators and reduced degrees of power relations, especially between superiors and subordinates (AlAfnan, 2015a). Email communication has been classified as an umbrella genre that includes several subgenres, including conversation, requesting, couriering, and informing (AlAfnan, 2015b). In this study, the focus will be on the requesting sub-genre, in general, and politeness strategies used in student-teacher requesting emails, in particular.…”

Analyzing the Rhetorical, Typographical and Paralinguistic Features of Electronic Mails in the Workplace

“…The use of email for business communication has increased in the last decade not only in the Western economies but in the Eastern economies as well (AlAfnan, 2015a(AlAfnan, , 2015b. The use of email for organizational communication has become a daily practice that is inevitable, especially when organizations establish partnerships with international bodies or institutions (AlAfnan, 2014a(AlAfnan, , 2014b.…”

“…However, it did not take long to realize that the use of email for business communication has changed the organizational and linguistic practices in the world of business. This use was generally theorized as hybrid that includes spoken and written forms (AlAfnan, 2015a(AlAfnan, , 2015bHale and Scanlon, 1999;Yates and Orlikowski, 1993). Baron (1998), for example, viewed the social dynamics of emails as predominantly writing, the lexicon and style as predominantly speech, whereas the format and syntax were seen as a mixture of writing and speech.…”