Abstract
This study investigated the rhetorical, typographical and paralinguistic features used in workplace emails. It revealed that the email exchanges included both spoken and written language features. The use of these features depended on two main factors that are the degree of involvement between the communicators, on the one hand, and the frequency of exchanging emails regarding a single issue on the other. This study also revealed that the communicative purpose of the email has prompted the type of features used in the emails. The emails that included tasks which were previously carried out using oral methods of communication in the workplace (i.e., face-to-face conversations, telephone calls) included several oral communication practices and typographical errors, whereas the emails that included tasks which were traditionally carried out using written method of communication in the workplace (i.e., letters, memorandums, faxes) mainly included written language features and were written appropriately.
Highlights
The use of email for business communication has increased in the last decade in the Western economies but in the Eastern economies as well (AlAfnan, 2015a, 2015b)
This paper analyses the discourse practices in the emails focusing on the rhetorical structures, paralinguistic strategies, and the typographical features used in constructing the texts and how these strategies are interpreted in their context
This study examined the rhetorical, typographical and paralinguistic features used in emails that were exchanged in a private higher educational Institute in Malaysia
Summary
The use of email for business communication has increased in the last decade in the Western economies but in the Eastern economies as well (AlAfnan, 2015a, 2015b). It did not take long to realize that the use of email for business communication has changed the organizational and linguistic practices in the world of business This use was generally theorized as hybrid that includes spoken and written forms (AlAfnan, 2015a, 2015b; Hale and Scanlon, 1999; Yates and Orlikowski, 1993). This paper analyses the discourse practices in the emails focusing on the rhetorical structures, paralinguistic strategies, and the typographical features used in constructing the texts and how these strategies are interpreted in their context.
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