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«Курсач в аттаче»: особенности электронной коммуникации между преподавателем и студентом
We analyse student-professor e-mail interaction in Russian universities in terms of Field, Tenor and Mode [Halliday 1978]. According to their content, we classify all e-mail messages into three types: “container e-mails”, “organizational e-mails” and “essential e-mails”.
Even though the e-mail correspondence is a variety of the written communication mode, in organizational e-mails many speech-like features are present. They contain temporal and spatial deixis, anaphora and references to common ground. The word order is typical for colloquial speech, which makes organizational e-mails closer to phone calls. E-mails series resemble oral dialogues.
Both students and professors use different discourse styles: formal, informal, slang, etc. The mode of writing depends more on the authors’ age and computer skills rather than on their social status. However, the differences in tenor between the e-mails of students and professors do exist. They are explained by the different perceptions of the norms of social communication and politeness. The analysis of opening and closing formulae also shows that there is no significant difference between the mode of writing e-mails by students and professors. Nevertheless, some specific traits can be found.