Generic Structural Features of Requestive Academic Emails

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to analyze the generic structural features of requestive academic emails. For this purpose, 182 emails written by 81 Tunisian postgraduate students to their professor were analysed. The collected academic email messages share a main communicative function which is requesting. This study drew on the framework of genre analysis and employed the pattern of move schemata proposed by Swales (1990) and follows the typology suggested by Guffey (2010). The gathered emails are made up of the email’s subject line, an opening, body text and closing. The findings revealed that more than half of the subject lines of emails are either inappropriate, improper or do not exist. This shows that the participants are to some extent not able to write proper subject lines when addressing their professor however they did appear to pay attention to greetings in their emails. By examining the structure of the body of the gathered emails, it is noticed that postgraduate students tended to use the inductive style when emailing their professor. They do not go straight to the request. Instead, they go through some strategies (introduction, self-identification, apologizing, or reminding remarks, pre-request and request). The findings revealed that more than half of the emails either do not display perfect closings or do not display closings while the remaining emails are considered acceptable since they contain both greeting and the sender’s name. Accordingly, this study suggests some useful pedagogical implications. Tunisian EFL learners need to be supplemented with explicit instruction regarding teaching pragmatic issues concerning writing emails. The use of authentic materials in the context of pragmatics instruction is highly recommended Another practical method is to introduce and teach email writing guidelines and etiquettes so that Tunisian students can readily refer to them when writing emails.

Keywords: structural features, request, email,  moves.

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-19-03

Publication date:July 31^st 2019