Dear Professor: The Influence of Recipient Sex and Status on Personalization and Politeness in E-Mail

Abstract

Although previous research has demonstrated a number of factors that affect the linguistic style of e-mails (e.g., sex of the sender and recipient), the present study emphasized the important role of recipient status on the personalization and politeness of educational e-mails. A total of 66 female undergraduates were asked to compose e-mails to a male or female peer or professor requesting study help for an upcoming exam. Results showed that participants wrote significantly more personalized and polite e-mails to peers, although e-mails to professors displayed significantly more written complexity.

Acquisition of Politeness Markers in an EFL Context: Impact of Input Enhancement and Output Tasks

“…A number of studies, mainly descriptive in nature, have been conducted on different aspects of politeness in general and politeness markers in particular. These studies have examined the perceptions of politeness by learners of different genders and cultural backgrounds (Ahmadian and Vahid Dastjerdi, 2010;Chang, 2008, Niroomand, 2012, the different uses of politeness strategies (negative or positive) by EFL learners (Nash, 1983), e-politeness in native and nonnative communications (Biesenbach-Lucas, 2007;Knupsky and Nagy-Bell, 2011), and the realization of politeness in different speech acts like apology, refusal, and disagreement (Behnam and Niroomand, 2011;Kana, 1982;Tamimi Sa'd and Mohammadi, 2014;Ülbeği, 2009) and in advertisements (Pishghadam and Navari, 2012). Other descriptive studies have analyzed the interactions in the workplace (Holmes, 2000) and the realization of politeness in political discourse (Harris, 2001) for politeness markers and strategies used.…”

Cultural Cues in Students' Computer-Mediated Communication: Influences on E-mail Style, Perception of the Sender, and Willingness to Help

“…One possible explanation for this finding is that the politeness of the Asian‐style requests may not have been perceived as unusual enough to trigger alignment to this style in the participants' responses. E‐mail requests to fellow students often are formulated in a more polite style than those addressed to faculty members (Knupsky & Nagy‐Bell, ). This somewhat surprising finding might be explained by the fact that asking for support from a peer is often regarded as a more imposing request (Duthler, ) than asking for support from a professor, for example when asking for an appointment during his or her consultation hours (Duthler, ).…”

“…Politeness was operationalized by a relative politeness score (ICC = .94) comprising various politeness features (Biesenbach‐Lucas, ; Knupsky & Nagy‐Bell, ) coded in the categories of lexical modifiers, syntactic modifiers, and typing errors. We assessed the number of modal verbs, personal pronouns, “please/thank you,” and downtoners/flowery phrases (e.g., “possibly,” “maybe,” “glad”) and calculated the number of typing errors, with correct spelling being an indicator for politeness.…”

Socio-pragmatic influence on opening salutation and closing valediction of British workplace email

“…Rather more surprisingly, Bou-Franch (2011) found opening and closings tended toward familiarity and warmth when sent down the hierarchy in a Spanish university whilst greetings between equals were likely to display distance. In an educational experimental setting Knupsky and Nagy-Bell (2011) found that students were significantly more likely to use formal openings when writing to hypothetical professors as opposed to peers. In her study of a New Zealand educational organization and a factory shop floor, Waldvogel (2007) found that status was not a major influence on greeting and closing formulae; what influence status did have tended to take place when email senders communicated upwards to seniors although 45% of such messages contained no greeting.…”

“…Variable X19 (Politeness marker) looked to account for overt linguistic forms of politeness such as relational small talk or imposition minimizers. It should be noted that salutary greeting and closing forms are themselves often classified as forms of politeness markers (Bunz and Campbell, 2002;Waldvogel, 2007;Knupsky and Nagy-Bell, 2011) however for the purposes of variable X19 they were discounted and only 'macro-level' politeness markers (Knupsky and Nagy-Bell, 2011) i.e. those that appeared as part of the main body of the email were included (as shown in examples 7 and 8 below).…”