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Part of
The Discourse of Indirectness: Cues, voices and functions
Edited by Zohar Livnat, Pnina Shukrun-Nagar and Galia Hirsch
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 316] 2020
► pp. 145–166

Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails

A case study

| Tech-CICO (Université de Technologie de Troyes), France
| Tech-CICO (Université de Technologie de Troyes), France
This chapter deals with the question: which strategies are used when formulating a request in a particular context – workplace – and with a specific means of communication (electronic mails). This research is based on a case study: the analysis of 60 emails sent over two days by three employees of a large French professional training company. Our research questions are: how are requests formulated in organizational context? What relationship can we observe between indirectness and effectiveness of email requests.
Keywords: request, electronic mail, workplace, discourse effectiveness, politeness
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Making a request by electronic mail
    • 2.1The act of request
    • 2.2A request by email
  • 3.Data and methods
    • 3.1Theoretical and methodological frames
    • 3.2.Corpus
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Request / Non request
    • 4.2Direct or indirect request?
    • 4.3Polite or brutal request? Managing the illocutionary force of a request
    • 4.4How to be effective and polite?
    • 4.5Request, activity and hierarchical position
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 29 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.07ati
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