Interpersonal Meaning In Task-oriented E-mail Discourse

Ever since Internet came into being, the past forty years has witnessed an increasing utility ofcomputer and Internet in daily life. People are able to send message and chat on Internet. Inaddiction to computer-mediated communication (CMC), explosive changes have taken placein aspects of social culture and psychology, and attracted interests of sociologists andpsychologists. As one member of the research circle, the camp of linguists in variouslinguistic branches has also followed the step to involve them in the study of Internetlanguage to throw their light on how the Internet exerts influences on the use of language.That is how this thesis finds it meaningful to probe into the study of the interpersonalmeaning in email language.In this thesis, an expanded linguistic framework is borrowed from systemic-functionallinguistics to reveal distinct features in the computer-mediated context, i.e. the realization ofinterpersonal meaning in task-oriented email discourse. Forty task-oriented emails written bynative English speakers are collected for the research. Task-oriented emails refer to the mailssent for urgent business, either personal or institutional, which needs the participation of boththe sender and the recipient. The main purpose of emailing is to involve both parties in thebusiness to give or command information or goods & services. To reveal interpersonalmeaning realization in task-oriented emails, a quantitative study is combined with aqualitative study. The qualitative study of interpersonal meaning realization in the thesis isbased on the frequency study of address forms and personal pronouns at the lexical level,process, mood and tense at the level of grammatical structure, and modality and evaluativeexpressions at the discourse level. The elements at the three levels function under theinfluence of tenor and task to realize the interpersonal meaning in task-oriented emails, i.e.personal attitude and interpersonal interaction at the micro-social level and the generalizationof social value and culture at the macro-social level. Graphical features will also be analyzed.A study of context will be carried out to explain the appearance of the features.