Multilingual cyberpragmatics in instructional settings. Exploring gender and age effects in Catalan, Spanish and English email requests

Abstract

The present study focuses on email communication in the multilingual university setting. Previous studies dealing with similar settings point to the lack of politeness markers in students' email messages (Bjorge, 2007), requests tend to be more direct and they may not match with the degree of imposition or social distance involved. Students' lack of netetiquette and the lack of physical presence on the Internet may influence their pragmatic behavior. In addition to that, other studies (Barón and Ortega, 2018) point to age effects and further confirm the preference for direct pragmatic forms. Nevertheless, very few studies have adopted a multilingual perspective.For this reason, we have examined 250 email requests to faculty. Openings and requests produced in Catalan, Spanish or English were analyzed. Our main goal was to confirm whether students' requests would devoid politeness markers and whether openings would show a lack of netetiquette. We were also interested in identifying age and gender effects and in finding out if the pragmatic forms chosen would be in line with the politeness orientation of the language involved. Results are in line with previous studies but they also contradict them adding interesting information on the way multilingualism is displayed in email interaction.