Orality and literacy, formality and informality in email communication
Approaches to the linguistic characteristics of computer-mediated communication (CMC) have highlighted the frequent oral traits involved in electronic mail along with features of written language. But email is today a new communication exchange medium in social, professional and academic settings, f...
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Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos
2008-04-01
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Online Access: | http://www.aelfe.org/documents/05_15_Perez_et_al.pdf |
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doaj-f5591ad4c8364c5a97e15a5e5b95fef62020-11-24T21:27:02ZdeuAsociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines EspecíficosIbérica1139-72412008-04-01157188Orality and literacy, formality and informality in email communicationCarmen Pérez SabaterEd TurneyBegoña Montero FletaApproaches to the linguistic characteristics of computer-mediated communication (CMC) have highlighted the frequent oral traits involved in electronic mail along with features of written language. But email is today a new communication exchange medium in social, professional and academic settings, frequently used as a substitute for the traditional formal letter. The oral characterizations and linguistic formality involved in this use of emails are still in need of research. This paper explores the formal and informal features in emails based on a corpus of messages exchanged by academic institutions, and studies the similarities and differences on the basis of their mode of communication (one-to-one or one-to-many) and the sender’s mother tongue (native or nonnative). The language samples collected were systematically analyzed for formality of greetings and farewells, use of contractions, politeness indicators and non-standard linguistic features. The findings provide new insights into traits of orality and formality in email communication and demonstrate the emergence of a new style in writing for even the most important, confidential and formal purposes which seems to be forming a new sub-genre of letter-writing.http://www.aelfe.org/documents/05_15_Perez_et_al.pdfCMCasynchronous communicationformalityinformalityemail style |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
deu |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Carmen Pérez Sabater Ed Turney Begoña Montero Fleta |
spellingShingle |
Carmen Pérez Sabater Ed Turney Begoña Montero Fleta Orality and literacy, formality and informality in email communication Ibérica CMC asynchronous communication formality informality email style |
author_facet |
Carmen Pérez Sabater Ed Turney Begoña Montero Fleta |
author_sort |
Carmen Pérez Sabater |
title |
Orality and literacy, formality and informality in email communication |
title_short |
Orality and literacy, formality and informality in email communication |
title_full |
Orality and literacy, formality and informality in email communication |
title_fullStr |
Orality and literacy, formality and informality in email communication |
title_full_unstemmed |
Orality and literacy, formality and informality in email communication |
title_sort |
orality and literacy, formality and informality in email communication |
publisher |
Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos |
series |
Ibérica |
issn |
1139-7241 |
publishDate |
2008-04-01 |
description |
Approaches to the linguistic characteristics of computer-mediated communication (CMC) have highlighted the frequent oral traits involved in electronic mail along with features of written language. But email is today a new communication exchange medium in social, professional and academic settings, frequently used as a substitute for the traditional formal letter. The oral characterizations and linguistic formality involved in this use of emails are still in need of research. This paper explores the formal and informal features in emails based on a corpus of messages exchanged by academic institutions, and studies the similarities and differences on the basis of their mode of communication (one-to-one or one-to-many) and the sender’s mother tongue (native or nonnative). The language samples collected were systematically analyzed for formality of greetings and farewells, use of contractions, politeness indicators and non-standard linguistic features. The findings provide new insights into traits of orality and formality in email communication and demonstrate the emergence of a new style in writing for even the most important, confidential and formal purposes which seems to be forming a new sub-genre of letter-writing. |
topic |
CMC asynchronous communication formality informality email style |
url |
http://www.aelfe.org/documents/05_15_Perez_et_al.pdf |
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