The View From Carnegie 210

As a relatively new faculty member, I am still fascinated by the kinds of requests I receive from students...and those that find me through email are particularly intriguing. It would be a mistake to try to categorize the "typical" student-request-email, however, given the variability in this type of specimen. Ranging from the topic-less and name-less, to the machinations of the most sublime wordsmiths, student-request-emails provide an endless wealth of linguistic features to consider. Still, given that the point of such an email is to obtain faculty approval or assistance of some sort, one wonders what features separate the successful from the unsuccessful requests.

Hartford & Bardovi-Harlig (1996) point out that students are placed in a unique situation when they consider the structure of their request. Specifically, the student must consider how to best protect his/her reputation as a competent member of the class (saving positive face) while simultaneously presenting the request in a way that maximizes the feedback obtained and minimizes the imposition on the professor's time (saving negative face). Juggling this mixture of goals can be quite challenging. The authors note that, in order to be successful, students must, "judge the degree of imposition...take into account the rights and obligations of the parties involved, and choose the most effective ways to influence the faculty's behavior..." (p. 55). Obviously, not all students are as effective at negotiating these requirements. These failed attempts were identified as Negative Affect Requests (NARs) and the authors suggest that they may be perceived as "rude or inappropriate" and may leave the professor with "some desire not to fulfill the request" (p. 56).

So, what separates a PAR (Positive Affect Request) from a NAR? Hartford & Bardovi-Harlig collected emails from their graduate students over the period of a year and then judged these emails on several categories including the use of linguistic forms, content, and the level of imposition. Regarding linguistic forms, they found that NARs contained more want statements, utilized "appreciate" not as an expression of gratitude, but as a part of the request itself (e.g., I'd appreciate finding out...), and showed more use of Please + Imperative (e.g., Please consider it.). In contrast, students who succeeded in creating a PAR utilized twice as many "Other" forms including "wonder" statements (e.g., I was wondering if...) and the use of mitigating words (e.g., kindly).

Interestingly, level of imposition was not related with the occurrence of PARs or NARs. Both categories had instances of low imposition (e.g., asking for an appointment, requesting reading references) and high imposition (e.g., asking for incompletes, asking for an extension). However, when the authors examined the content of the emails, they found that the way students dealt with the level of imposition of their request made a difference. For example, PARs were twice as likely to include an acknowledgment of the imposition (including apologies and expressions of gratitude) while NARs were twice as likely to contain no mention of the imposition at all. Furthermore, the explanation for the imposition was also determinative. PARs were twice as likely to refer to inflexible institutional deadlines or procedures for their imposition while the majority of NARs (about 73%) referred to student-oriented reasons for the imposition.

More recently, Biesenbach-Lucas (2007) examined the e-politeness strategies of students and pointed out that very few students (if any) receive explicit training on how to construct appropriate upward-moving (i.e., lower to higher status) emails. Consequently, students (especially first-year students?) may rely on the messages they have written or received in the past (most likely to/from their peers) as their template for emails to authority figures (p. 60). However, there does seem to be evidence that students acknowledge the need for more formal emails in these cases. For example, addressers (if used) tend to be more formal. Still, given that the conventions of email are still developing and changing, students may understandably struggle with this transition, especially given the more informal, speech-like nature of most email use.

Biesenbach-Lucas documented politeness negotiation in emails collected from native and nonnative speakers, across varying levels of message imposition. She found that for the lowest imposition requests (making an appointment), native speakers used direct and indirect requests equally often. For the slightly higher imposition request (asking for feedback), they used direct requests much more often than indirect requests. Only in the highest imposition category (asking for an extension) did students utilize significantly more indirect requests. Furthermore, in this high imposition category, they were also much more likely than in the other cases to utilize "hints" when constructing their requests (e.g., I'm having a hard time finishing this paper.). The use of hints in this case is very interesting. Because the request is never directly stated, the door is still open to deny that a request for an extension was made. As a result, this strategy may reflect an acknowledgement of the threat to the negative face of the professor (as well as an attempt to preserve the positive face of the student). If the student "gets lucky" the professor may correctly detect the request and, if in amiable mood, offer the extension. Additional analyses included the use of syntactic and lexical modifiers and the perspective used (e.g., I..., you..., we...). Overall, she concludes that native speakers, despite direct instruction, do seem to be, "developing awareness of e-politeness" (p. 74).

Finally, Duthler (2006) compared the politeness of requests made by students via email or voicemail. He argued that while both mediums allow for pre-editing of messages, email provides, "elevated control over message production" and thus the opportunity to "create more polite speech than with the use of other CMC media" (p. 501). The author also points out that students have a number of message forms to choose from when developing their requests which vary along the continuum of politeness. Students can create Bald, On Record requests (directives); use Positive Politeness (emphasizing solidarity); use Negative Politeness (acknowledging the imposition); create Off-Record requests (hints & ambiguous language); or simply make no request (p. 502). When deciding among these options, students must consider the weightiness of the social situation including 1) the degree of imposition, 2) the power of the recipient over the sender, and 3) the social distance between the two (p. 503).

Duthler asked participants to make a request over voicemail or email that varied according to level of imposition. He proposed that students would have more cognitive resources available to negotiate the politeness of the message over email. Politeness was measured by examining the number of adjunct phrases (sentences/phrases other than the request sentence), the formality of the addresser, and an overall politeness rating. Results showed that under conditions of high imposition, emails utilized significantly more adjunct phrases than voicemail. Furthermore, a clear pattern emerged across a number of the analyses in which measures of politeness varied in emails across conditions of imposition while the politeness of voicemails remained static. It seems that email provides greater opportunity to respond appropriately to the constraints of the request-task.

However, one counter-intuitive finding showed that addressers were significantly less formal under conditions of high than of low imposition. In addition, in a post-test manipulation check, it was found that there was no significant difference in participant ratings of the imposition of their request across conditions. In other words, the perception of the students across both low and high imposition categories was that their messages were of moderate imposition (about a 6 on a 9 point scale). This was in contrast to the pretest measures utilized to select the scenarios for each condition. It may be informative to consider further the match between student perceptions of their emails and their use of the linguistic features of politeness. Is the process of negotiating the weightiness of requests a conscious one? If not, how do students develop e-politeness finesse and how does this skill impact their interactions with faculty?

Biesenbach-Lucas, S. (2007). Students writing emails to faculty: An examination of e-politeness among native and non-native speakers of English. Language Learning & Technology, 11(2), 59-81.

Hartford, B. S. & Bardovi-Harlig (1996). "At your earliest convenience:" A study of written student requests to faculty. In L. F. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and Language Learning, Vol 7 (p. 55-69). Urbana, IL: DEIL.

Posted by Aimee Knupsky at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Warning: This entry presents a compilation of ideas derived from a variety of articles in language and memory and is not meant to reflect an exhaustive or authoritative review of the literature!

What are men doing when they communicate? This is a question that keeps popping up in my mind as I review the literature on email and gender (sex) differences in language use. The convention seems to be that a long list of "feminine" language features (read: language characteristics used by women) is presented. Then, a much shorter list of "masculine" language features (read: language characteristics used by men) is sometimes offered. Not trusting my perception of this difference, I started to keep a list of the linguistic features ascribed to females and males in my readings.

First, I created a table of the specific (as possible) features coded and analyzed for gender-preferential use. While the difference wasn't quite as dramatic as I thought it was going to be, the list of features attributed to females is twice as long as that for males.

Then, I created a similar table for the topics that were described as female or male specific. Obviously, this list is less complete, but still indicates that females are "credited" with twice as many topics as males.

Well...perhaps these results are due to a default focus on "how women differ from men," but here's the issue--most of the research then demonstrates that there are no significant differences in the overall length of the e-mails/responses/letters in the study. So, if women are "doing" twice as many things linguistically (including digressing and using nonessentials), and have twice as many topics available to them, what are men doing to make up the difference in length of communication? Are men just much more focused on one topic? Previous research suggests otherwise; women tend to change topics less frequently, developing each topic more extensively.

These are lists I will continue to update as I trudge through the literature. As the scope of the literature reviewed expands, I'll feel more comfortable with the relative differences. In the meantime, I take away two impressions. First, you could never examine all these features in one study (and derive any meaningful observations). Second, men seem to be cussing each other out, insulting each other, and telling one another what to do (okay, simplistic and non-representative, but looking at the lists, I couldn't help it!).

Posted by Aimee Knupsky at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thomson, Murachver, & Green (2001) asked, "Where is the gender in gendered language?" Arguing that previous work on sex differences in language tended to ignore the dynamic nature of language-in-use, the authors present a series of studies in which they demonstrate that the use of gender-preferential speech is highly dependent upon the sociolinguistic context, the nature of the conversational topic, and the gender salience of the recipient.

In particular, the authors utilize the Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) developed by Coupland et al. (1988) to explore the nature of sex differences in the language displayed in emails (p. 171). The basic idea is that people engaged in discussion tend to converge towards the language style used by their partner(s), increasing the similarity of the language features used among the group. Of course, in some cases, people can elect to diverge from the language style used by their partner(s), thus emphasizing the differences among the group. Furthermore, people may converge to the language style they think their partner(s) utilize, based on ideas about stereotypes or characteristics of certain social groups.

Thomson and his colleagues asked their participants to engage in a 2-week-long series of emails with 1) a partner who utilized language with typical feminine features and 2) a partner who utilized language with typical masculine features. In both cases, the email partner was actually one of the researchers. The linguistic features of the participants' emails were then coded and analyzed for signs of convergence towards the language style of the partner. Table 1 shows that when participants conversed with the "female" partner, they used feminine language features whereas when they conversed with the "male" partner, they used more masculine language features. A second experiment counterbalanced the gendered name of the partner (e.g., Jack vs. Jill) with the language style of the partner (masculine vs. feminine). Once again, the authors found evidence that participants converged towards the language style of the partner, displaying linguistic features consistent with that style. One interesting difference was that several sex differences did occur based on the participants' own gender...the authors argue that this difference could be due to a tendency to uphold one's own language style when the gender and language style of a partner do not match (p. 174).

In a related study, Thomson & Murachver (2001) demonstrated that people are aware of gender-preferential language styles and that it is possible to identify the gender of one's partner based on the linguistic features they utilize. Participants were assigned to same-sex partners because, the authors argue, gender-preferential language is likely to be maximized in such cases (but, see the interactions between sender & recipient in mixed-sex pairs found by Colley and colleagues). Across three experiments, the authors showed that 1) it was possible to reclassify the emails based on the use of a "combination" of linguistic features, and 2) that students were able to successfully classify the emails as having been written by a male or a female, even when the emails were not "natural," but were created using the gender-preferential linguistic features identified in the first experiment.

Based on these results (and those from the previous study), the authors make a strong argument that, "gender-preferential language is not definitional" (p. 194). In other words, male-preferential and female-preferential language can be utilized by both males and females, depending upon the context, the conversational partner(s), and the task at hand. Furthermore, the authors emphasize the implication of the ability to predict the sex of a writer by pointing out that, "although computer-mediated communication has been hailed as the great equalizer, in many instances it is likely to be just the opposite" (p. 203).

Finally, Thomson (2006) expands the examination of contextual effects on language use in CMC to include topic. Specifically, he argues that the stereotypical nature of the topic being discussed will influence the gender-preferential language used in discussion groups on-line. He examined the language used in female-stereotypical discussion lists (fashion, health, and shopping), male-stereotypical discussion lists (sports, cars, and computers), and gender-neutral discussion lists (music, films, and television) and found that participants displayed linguistic features appropriate for the stereotype of the particular topic (see Table 2).

In a follow-up study in which he controlled the sex composition of the discussion groups, results were similar. Regardless of the participants' own sex (male or female), when asked to discuss "masculine" topics, they displayed more masculine linguistic features and when asked to discuss "feminine" topics they displayed more feminine linguistic features. The only surprise was that more emotion was expressed when discussing masculine topics; emotion is one of the most consistent and commonly referred to feminine linguistic feature in previous research. In conclusion, Thompson argues that, "gendered language in CMC discussion is more a function of the context or topic of discussion than the gender of the participants" (p. 175).

Thomson, R. (2006). The effect of topic discussion on gendered language in computer-mediated communication discussion. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 25(2), 167-178.

Coupland, N., Coupland, J., Giles, H., & Henwood, K. (1988). Accommodating the elderly: Invoking and extending a theory. Language in Society, 17, 1-41.

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In two related articles, Colley & Todd (2002) and Colley et al. (2004) explore whether the sex differences demonstrated in speech and writing transfer into the medium of email. In particular, they reference previous research showing that females utilize more emotional language, measured through the use of indicators of excitability (!!, very) and nonessentials ( ..., "weak"). In addition, the use of hedges (I guess) and tag questions (right?) led researchers to emphasize the "weak" nature of female language. In contrast, male language has been characterized as assertive and competitive, with more opinions given, and the use of longer monologues. These differences were summarized by Tannen as rapport talk (females) versus report talk (males).

Interestingly, these apparent sex differences, common in research conducting in the '70s, have begun to fade in more recent research. Perhaps this change is best explained by the shift in focus to the function of the language act and considering the context in which it is performed. For example, tag questions can function to include the listener in a conversation and are not, in such cases, a sign of uncertainty. In terms of context, the characteristics of both the speaker and the listener, as well as the setting of and purpose for the talk, can influence the type of language displayed. Finally, I'd point out that labeling relation-building language as "weak" is a reflection of inherent cultural stereotypes, apparent even in our own discipline-specific terminology.

In any event, the questions posed by Colley and colleagues are interesting because email, as a more informal medium, could serve to increase the use of feminine language style by both females and males. For example, Colley et al. (2004) argue that, "the informal conventions of e-mails may allow women to express emotional tone" (p. 376). And, Colley & Todd (2002) argue that when writers chose to diverge from (or converge towards) the recipient, increasing the use of feminine language would be an effective way to support rapport building (p. 390). The alternative, increasing or decreasing the use of masculine language would not be effective for this purpose, especially given its "adversarial" nature.

To consider the influence of context on language use in emails, Colley & Todd (2002) manipulated the sex of the recipient of the email message. Specifically, male and female students were asked to write an email to a male or female friend regarding a recent holiday. Note that participants were free to chose any friend of the assigned sex with whom they had an ongoing relationship. However, they knew that this friend would not actually receive the email. In addition, in electing to allow participants to select real friends, the researchers were not able to control the level of closeness to these friends.

Colley & Todd coded several aspects of the language used in these emails. First, elements of style were considered including the use of specific speech acts such as humor, apologies and self-disclosures as well as the use of nonessentials and markers of excitability. Second, the topic of the emails was examined. Finally, markers of intimacy were recorded including the use of personal pronouns (I/me/my/myself; we/our/ourselves; you/yourself), references to the recipient, mention of future contact, initial personal inquires, and affectionate sign-offs. As can be seen in Table 1, several sex differences were identified across these three categories. In addition, females used more second-person singular pronouns (you/yourself) and tended to use more first-person plural pronouns (we/our) than males.

However, the more important findings are the interactions between sender and recipient. In particular, both males and females self-disclosed more, and tended to use more first-person singular pronouns (I/me/myself), when writing to recipients of the opposite sex than to those of the same sex. Furthermore, females used several features more frequently in emails to males including humor, references to the recipient, multiple exclamation points, and nonessentials. Overall, the authors suggest that females displayed three broad features of feminine language use in their emails including interpersonal sensitivity, social warmth, and greater emotionality (p. 388). In addition, they suggest that the language changes seen in emails written by females to males are an indication of a "heightened arousal, intimacy, and desire to engage the recipient's interest" (p. 389).

Colley and colleagues (2004) conducted a very similar study in which they considered the medium of the message. Male and female participants either wrote an email or letter to a male or female friend discussing what they did for the summer. Two aspects of these messages were considered. First, they considered style by examining formality (e.g., incomplete sentences & abbreviations), excitability, nonessentials, and relational devices (e.g., questions). Second, they considered the content of the emails, categorizing the phrases in the emails as activities, relationships, and personal disclosures as well as noting the use of initial personal enquiries, mentions of future contact, and the use of affectionate signatures.

Overall, the emails were more informal in structure than letters (fewer words, more abbreviations, more incomplete sentences, and more multiple exclamations). In terms of sex differences, females used more positive intensifiers (sooo, really), multiple exclamations, initial personal enquiries, affectionate signatures, and expressed more positive emotions.

Once again, however, the interesting results are those that demonstrate the interaction between sender and recipient. Women used more positive intensifiers in emails to males than to females; more men used affectionate signatures in emails to females than to other males. In contrast to these opposite-sex differences, the results also showed that females used more humor and multiple exclamations in their emails to other females. These same-sex patterns are in contrast to those found in the earlier study. However, the authors argue that the difference could be due to the topic of the email--in the earlier study, the participants were focused on describing a place; in the later study, participants were focused on describing their personal experiences (p. 375).

In general, the results of these two studies should encourage researchers to consider situational factors and individual differences when exploring the language patterns used in emails. Of particular interest is the relation between the sender and the recipient as well as the purpose of the email message.

Colley, A., Todd, Z. (2002). Gender-linked differences in the style and content of e-mails to friends. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 21(4), 380-392.

Colley, A., Todd, Z., Bland, M., Holmes, M., Khanom, N., & Pike, H. (2004). Style and content in e-mails and letters to male and female friends. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 23, 369-378.

Posted by Aimee Knupsky at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)