A Contrastive Study Of Politeness In Academic Emails

With the rapid development of information technology, Email, taking theadvantages of quickness and convenience, has inevitably become the alternativemeans of communication over other traditional ones. Recently, an increasing numberof students on campus are asked to use Emails as well as other online tools tocommunicate with their faculties for the purpose of speed and efficiency. However,owning to the inadequacy of established conventions or guidance for online pragmaticbehaviors, many students suffer from inappropriate Email writing and pragmaticinfelicities so that the hierarchical relationship between them and faculties can beeasily damaged.According to this point of fact, the present study was started with a collection offifty English Emails and fifty Chinese Emails written by university students of nativespeakers. Aiming to find the differences and similarities between English and Chinesestudents’ request in Emails, the present study examines every Email from the aspectsof form of address, the degree of directness in request and the type of internal andexternal modifier used by students. Based on the results of examination on all Emails,this thesis lastly launches a discussion on the degree of inappropriateness influencedby those relational features of requestive illocutions. Additionally, four non-receivedfaculty participants are invited to take part in the present study in order to evaluate allEmils based on the reference on time, acknowledgement of imposition andexplanation on request.Findings from the present study have shown that significant differences existin both forms of address, head acts between English and Chinese Emails, butsimilar in the use of internal and external modifiers. More specifically, aconsiderable variation in the forms of address was employed by Chinese andEnglish students. Chinese students prefer simple address as “Title+name”,meanwhile, English students prefer more complicated ones; both English andChinese Emails are typically characterized by significantly directness; all Chineseand English students tend to use External Modifier rather than Internal Modifier;politeness Marker “Please” was the most preferred token in Internal Modifier, andthe wildly used structure of Politeness Marker is “please+imperative”; grounder isthe favorite supportive move, which was found to be adhered to both direct and indirect strategies; vacancy of address, pre-closing and Email-closing was found inboth English and Chinese Emails. And most of the Chinese Emails lack Post-signature.On the other hand, the reasons that give rise to pragmatic infelicities are almostthe same. This is primarily due to the students’ misinterpretation on hierarchicalrelationship and the ignorance of acknowledgement on imposition so that faculty’snegative face will be seriously threatened. Based on research findings, the authorfollowed Economidou-Kogetsidis’s claim and concluded that under the influence ofmessage culture, students who are not only in Western culture but also in Asianculture begin to turn to brevity and efficiency in conveying information, which caneasily cause the pragmatic infelicities and ignorance of politeness.