Politeness Strategies and Discourse Features of ESL Grade 7 Students’ Emails
Monique Bernardino
,
Hanna Aven Guarin
,
Patrick Bryan Ablaza
The lack of pragmatic knowledge of email structure and little awareness of politeness strategies in email conventions that affects one’s present.
Abstract:
The lack of pragmatic knowledge of email structure and little awareness of politeness strategies in email conventions that affects one’s presentation of self through language use usually make students perceived negatively when they communicate with their teachers. In this mixed methods study, 96 Grade 7 male students from convenience sampling produced 327 emails after receiving a brief module about pragmatic implications and formal structure in emails and the teacher’s instruction and demonstration in email conventions. The Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) and Politeness and Face Theories were applied to examine the structure, language features, and politeness strategies of these emails and to explore how the students’ pragmatic competence and identities were reflected through their communicative language use. Results showed that despite the simplified (a)synchronous sessions and joint construction, there were variations in how students wrote apologies, requests, invitations, and excuse letters. Most emails contained downtowners, and the politeness marker “po” was mostly used to soften impositions while “God bless” was utilized as a salutation. Although pragmalinguistic competence was observed, institutional power, rank, and distance were not much considered, which led to a vague sociopragmatic competence. This implies the need for explicit instructions about email politeness and the integration of pragmatics-based pedagogical interventions in teaching certain written content and formats.
Keywords: Discourse analysis, email politeness, ESL, pragmatic competence.
0
References
AlAfnan, M. A., & Dela Cruz-Rudio, L. (2023). Student-teacher email requests: Comparative analysis of politeness strategies used by Malaysian and Filipino university students. World Journal of English Language, 13(1), 353-361. https://doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v13n1p353
Al-Ali, M. N., & Sahaneh, M. B. (2008). An investigation into the generic features of English requestive e-mail messages. LSP and Professional Communication, 8(2), 40-64. https://bit.ly/42pXJTU
Alcón-Soler, E. (2013). Mitigating e-mail requests in teenagers’ first and second language academic cyber-consultation. Multilingua, 32(6), 779-799. https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2013-0037
Baron, N. S. (1998). Writing in the age of email: The impact of ideology versus technology. Visible Language, 32(1), 35-53. https://bit.ly/3YwYycq
Baron, N. S. (2000). Alphabet to email: How written English evolved and where it’s heading. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203194317
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. https://doi.org/10125/44104
Bjørge, A. (2007). Power distance in English lingua franca e-mail communication. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17(1), 60-80. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2007.00133.x
Blum-Kulka, S., & Olshtain, E. (1984). Requests and apologies: A cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns. Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 196-213. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/5.3.196
Boccagni, P., Pérez Murcia, L. E., & Belloni, M. (2020). Thinking Home on the Move: A conversation across disciplines. Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1108/9781839097225
Bou-Franch, P. (2006). Solidarity and deference in Spanish computer-mediated communication: A discourse-pragmatic analysis of students’ emails to lecturers. In P. Bou-Franch (Ed.), Ways into discourse (pp. 61-79). Comares.
Bou-Franch, P. (2011). Openings and closings in Spanish email conversations. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(6), 1772-1785. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.11.002
Briones, G. R., & Liwanag, M. H. (2023). Politeness strategies in Filipino student-professor email correspondence in higher education amid pandemic. International Journal of Language Studies, 17(2), 25-50.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813085
Chang, Y.-Y., & Hsu, Y.-P. (1998). Requests on email: A cross-cultural communication. RELC Journal, 29(2), 121-151. https://doi.org/10.1177/003368829802900206
Chen, C.-F. E. (2001, February 24-27). Making e-mail requests to professors: Taiwanese vs. American students [Paper presentation]. The Annual Meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Chen, C.-F. E. (2006). The development of e-mail literacy: From writing to peers to writing to authority figures. Language Learning & Technology, 10(2), 35–55. https://doi.org/10125/44060
Claridad, N., Castillo, C. A., Udtohan, A. M., Reyno, C. J., Pamplona, A., & Nacionales, J. (2023). Examining email etiquettes of Filipino accountancy students: Insights from faculty members in a higher education institution. Journal of Language, Literature, Social, and Cultural Studies, 1(2), 132-142. https://doi.org/10.58881/jllscs.v1i2.61
Colin-Jones, G., & Colin-Jones, Y. Q. (2006). Philippines - culture smart!: The essential guide to customs & culture. Kuperard.
Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2011). “Please answer me as soon as possible”: Pragmatic failure in non-native speakers’ e-mail requests to faculty. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(13), 3193-3215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.06.006
Ford, S. (2006). The use of pragmatics in e-mail requests made by second language learners of English. Studies in Language Sciences, 5, 143-162. https://bit.ly/4cmsuxA
Geranco, D. (2023). A descriptive study on Filipino language politeness in high school students’ interaction. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Studies, 6(12), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.32996/jhsss.2024.6.12.1
Goffman, E. (1982). Interaction ritual: Essays on face to face behavior. Pantheon
Hartford, B. S., & Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1996). At your earliest convenience: A study of written student requests to faculty. In L. F. Bouton (Ed.), Pragmatics and language learning (Vol. 7, pp. 55-69). University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Hofstede, G. (2011). Dimensionalizing cultures: The Hofstede model in context. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1014
Holmes, J. (2005). Politeness strategies as linguistic variables. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language & linguistics (2nd ed., pp. 684-697). Elsevier Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/01512-1
Ishihara, N., & Cohen, A. D. (2015). Teaching and learning pragmatics: Where language and culture meet. Routledge.
Iwasaki, N. (2011). Learning L2 Japanese" politeness" and" impoliteness": Young American men's dilemmas during study abroad. Japanese Language and Literature, 45(1), 67-106. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41151381
Kasper, G. (1992). Pragmatic transfer. Second Language Research, 8(3), 203-231. https://doi.org/10.1177/026765839200800303
Kirkpatrick, A. (1991). Information sequencing in Mandarin in letters of request. Anthropological Linguistics, 33(2), 183-203. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30028184
Krulatz, A. M., & Park, K. (2016). Fostering pragmatic competence: Strategies and materials for email writing. In J. Dobson, & M. Savage (Eds.), Tri-TESOL transcending boundaries and interweaving perspectives conference proceedings (pp. 34-46). WATESOL.
Lasan, I. (2016). EFL learners' perceptions of (in)formality: Address forms in interaction with other (in)formal register markers. University of Toronto.
Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315835976
Li, L., & Yang, Y. (2018). Pragmatic functions of emoji in internet-based communication---a corpus-based study. Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, 3, Article 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-018-0057-z
Liu, Y., Nguyen, N. D. D., Nguyen, H. C., & Wannaruk, A. (2025). Rhetorical move structures and politeness strategies employed in request and refusal emails by international students in a Thai ELF context. Cogent Education, 12(1), Article 2466284. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2025.2466284
Llorica, M. M., & Sosas, R. V. (2022). Politeness strategies of Filipino teenagers in the household. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 18(4), 1357-1368. https://bit.ly/3XXBZO6
Murray, D. E. (1995). Knowledge Machines: Language and information in a technological society. Addison-Wesley Longman Ltd.
Nguyen, T. M. (2019). Exploring university students’ politeness via Vietnamese students’ emails of requests. International Journal of Research in English Education, 4(3), 84-99. https://doi.org/10.29252/ijree.4.3.84
Nguyen, T. T. M., Do, T. T. H., Nguyen, A. T., & Pham, T. T. T. (2015). Teaching email requests in the academic context: A focus on the role of corrective feedback. Language Awareness, 24(2), 169-195. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2015.1010543
Ravago, J. C., De Roxas, J. A. V., Torres, J. M., Casipit, D. O., & Reyes, M. M. (2024). Cross-Cultural gender-based investigation of Filipino and Chinese Facebook users’ disagreement strategies. Qubahan Academic Journal, 4(2), 297-323. https://doi.org/10.48161/qaj.v4n2a538
Schmidt, R. (1993). Awareness and second language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 13, 206-226. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190500002476
Schmidt, R. (2001). Attention. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 3-32). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139524780.003
Serafica, L. L. (2022). The honorific styles of the etnolinguistic communities: An ethnography. Journal of Languages, Linguistics and Literary Studies, 2(4), 162-177. https://doi.org/10.57040/jllls.v2i4.338
Stephens, K. K., Houser, M. L., & Cowan, R. L. (2009). R U able to meat me: The impact of students’ overly casual email messages to instructors. Communication Education, 58(3), 303-326. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634520802582598
Tenedero, P. P. P. (2022). Communication that counts: Language practice and ideology in globalized accounting. Multilingual Matters.
Tuplano, M. V. I. (2018). Identity construction of Filipino charismatics: An analysis of the interplay of language, gender and identity construction in testimonials [Doctoral dissertation, De La Salle University]. Animo Repository. https://bit.ly/4cvoo6x
Van Dijk, T. (1989). Structures of discourse and structures of power. Annals of the International Communication Association, 12(1), 18–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.1989.11678711
Velasco, J. D. F. (2023). Incarcerated in language? University of the Philippines Working Papers in Linguistics, 2(1), 128–131. https://bit.ly/3YqPCp2
Waldvogel, J. (2007). Greetings and closings in workplace email. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(2), 456-477. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00333.x
Xafizovna, R. N. (2021). The category of politeness in different linguocultural traditions. Academicia: An International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 11(2), 1667-1675.
Ye, Z. (2019). The politeness bias and the society of strangers. Language Sciences, 76, Article 101183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2018.06.009
Zhu, W. (2012). Polite requestive strategies in emails: An Investigation of pragmatic competence of Chinese EFL learners. RELC Journal, 43(2), 217-238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033688212449936