Cover not available
Part of
Email Pragmatics and Second Language Learners
Edited by Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis, Milica Savić and Nicola Halenko
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 328] 2021
► pp. 179–202

Chapter 7
Email communication in English and in German

A contrastive pragmatic investigation of German university students’ emails sent to university staff in their native and foreign language

ORCID logo | University of Erfurt
This semi-longitudinal investigation examines greetings and closings in emails written by German university students in their native and foreign language. The results reveal students’ preference for formal greetings in both English and German. However, the data also suggest that not all students were aware of appropriate address term combinations in formal English emails. Regarding closings, the students used a limited set of standard formal closings in English but employed a greater variety of closing strategies in German. The results further revealed the importance of micro-analysing individual students’ contributions in a corpus, as this provides insights into an individual’s language use over time and also shows the impact individual students’ routine preferences can have on group scores.
Keywords: greetings, openings, salutations, leave-takings, closings, address terms (terms of address), EFL, German, institutional discourse, student emails
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Greetings
    • 2.2Closings
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1Greetings
    • 4.2Closings
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 27 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.328.07sch
References (22)
References
Biesenbach-Lucas, Sigrun. 2009. “Little Words that Could Impact One’s Impression on Others: Greetings and Closings in Institutional Emails”. In Little words: Their History, Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics and Acquisition, ed. by Ronald Leow, Héctor Campos, and Donna Laddiere, 183–197. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Bou-Franch, Patricia. 2011. “Openings and Closings in Spanish Email Conversations.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1772–1785. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Codina-Espurz, Victória, and Patricia Salazar-Campillo. 2019. “Openings and Closing in Emails by CLIL Students: A Pedagogical Proposal.” English Language Teaching 12 (2): 57–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crystal, David. 2006. Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duden. 2015. Briefe und E-mails gut und richtig schreiben: Geschäfts- und Privatkorrespondenz verständlich und korrekt formulieren. Berlin: Dudenverlag.Google Scholar
Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria. 2011. “‘Please Answer Me as Soon as Possible’: Pragmatic Failure in Non-native Speakers‘ E-mail Requests to Faculty.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 3193–3215. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Edmondson, Willis, and Juliane House. 1981. Let’s Talk and Talk About it. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg.Google Scholar
Eslami, Zohreh. 2013. “Online Communication and Students’ Pragmatic Choices in English.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 9 (1): 71–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Félix-Brasdefer, J. César. 2012a. “Openings and Closings in FL Learner-instructor Email Consultations.” In Discourse and Language Learning across L2 Instructional Settings, ed. by Eva Alcón Soler, and Pilar Safont Jordá, 223–248. New York, NY: Rodopi.Google Scholar
. 2012b. “Email Requests to Faculty: E-politeness and Internal Modification.” In Interlanguage Request Modification, ed. by Maria Economidou-Kogetsidis, and Helen Woodfield, 87–118. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hiller, Gundula Gwenn. 2014. Kulturelle und sprachliche Diversität in der Hochschule: Am Beispiel von E-Mail-Kommunikation. In Interkulturalität und kulturelle Diversität, ed. by Alois Moosmüller, and Jana Möller-Kiero, 1-15. Münster: Waxmann.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Nicole, Katrin Keller, and Anke Pfeiffer. 2011. “„Hallöchen Herr Professor!“ Überlegungen zur Normierungsproblematik in der E-Mail-Kommunikation am Beispiel des Hochschulkontextes.“ Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung: 1–17.Google Scholar
Kiesendahl, Jana. 2006. “„Guten Abend“, „Gute Nacht“, „Hallöchen“ und „Liebe Grüsse“. Angemessenheit in studentischen E-Mails.“ Aptum – Zeitschrift für Sprachkritik und Sprachkultur 2 (3): 275–288.Google Scholar
Marsden, Liz, and Daniel Kádár. 2017. “The Pragmatics of Mimesis: A Case Study of Intercultural Email Communication.” Scandinavian Journal of Intercultural Theory and Practice 4 (1): 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merrison, Andrew John, Jack Wilson, Bethan Davies, and Michael Haugh. 2012. “Getting Stuff Done: Comparing E-mail Requests from Students in Higher Education in Britain and Australia.” Journal of Pragmatics 44: 1077–1098. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
PONS Online dictionary. (ND). [URL]
Pöschel, Sigrid. 2018. PONS: Briefe, E-mails und Bewerbungen: Der umfassende Ratgeber für die Geschäfts- und Privatkorrespondenz. Stuttgart: PONS.Google Scholar
Savić, Milica. 2018. “Lecturer Perceptions of Im/politeness and In/appropriateness in Student E-mail Requests: A Norwegian Perspective.” Journal of Pragmatics 124: 52–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. “Relational Practices in Norwegian Students’ E-mail Requests in English: A Focus on Openings and Closings.” Journal of Intercultural Communication 49: [URL]
Schauer, Gila A. 2019. Teaching and Learning English in the Primary School: Interlanguage Pragmatics in the EFL context. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seifert, Jan. 2012. „Nähe und Distanz in studentischen E-Mails.“ Aptum – Zeitschrift für Sprachkritik und Sprachkultur 8 (1): 1–25.Google Scholar
Waldvogel, Joan. 2007. “Greetings and Closings in Workplace Email.” Journal of Computer-mediated Communication 12: 456–477. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Safont, Pilar
2024. Multilingual cyberpragmatics in instructional settings. Exploring gender and age effects in Catalan, Spanish and English email requests. International Journal of Multilingualism 21:3 ► pp. 1494 ff. DOI logo
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen & María-del-Carmen Méndez-García
2023. “I would like to complain”: A study of the moves and strategies employed by Spanish EFL learners in formal complaint e-mails. Intercultural Pragmatics 20:2 ► pp. 161 ff. DOI logo
Boone, Griet, Nicolas Ruytenbeek & Sofie Decock
2022. “The message is clear”: An L1 business perspective on non-target-like formulaic expressions in L2 German. Intercultural Pragmatics 19:5 ► pp. 571 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.