A Study On Politeness Strategies In E-mail Discourse Using English As A Lingua Franca

With more international communication,English is considered as a lingua franca.E-mail plays an important role in successful communications as a convenient and efficient means.This study is exploring how faculty members in institutions of higher learning achieve successful ELF communication.The present study analyzes how faculty members in institutions of higher learning adopt politeness strategies in ELF e-mails.Based on the ELF e-mails of faculty members in institutions of higher learning,it investigates the overall distribution and realizations of politeness strategies,the distribution of politeness strategies in different kinds of e-mails,also the typical pragmatic features on how politeness strategies are used in e-mails.This study collected e-mails from 15 faculty members in one institution of higher learning.120 e-mails are randomly selected as research data for the study.Based on Brown and Levinson' politeness framework,this study firstly investigates the distributions of politeness strategies used in e-mail discourse,namely bald on-record strategy,positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies.Then with the guidance of Leech's classification on illocutionary acts,e-mails in this study are classified into convivial,collaborative,competitive and conflictive e-mails and the distribution of politeness strategies used in the four types of e-mails are found out.Lastly,the typical features on how politeness strategies are used by faculty members in ELF e-mails are discussed.The major findings can be concluded as following: firstly,more positive strategies are adopted in ELF e-mails of faculty members in institutions of higher learning.Basically,all the positive and negative sub-strategies are employed in the collected e-mails.Among all the politeness strategies,“notice and attend to hearers”,“be conventionally indirect” and“giving reasons” are the three most frequently used strategies.Secondly,the distributions in four types of e-mails are distinctive.Overall,convivial and collaborative e-mails adopt more positive strategies than competitive and conflictive e-mails.This result is in agreement with Brown and Levinson's prediction on politeness strategies.Thirdly,the typical features founded in the e-mails are strategies combinatorics,over-politeness,and improper usage of on-record strategy.The present study is helpful for people,especially faculty in institutions of higher learning,to better employ politeness strategies in ELF communication and improve their communicative competence.It is also hoped that this thesis will be enlighten teachers and learners to improve their competence in ELF setting.