Abstract:
The present study examined email communication practices of two groups of students in Iran and the United States to uncoverthe probable differences between Iranian and American email communication norms. The study also aimed at investigatinghow power distance in academic centers influences students’choices of communication strategies in email writing. The use of two politeness strategies namely "indirectness" and"message length" and some common politeness conventionsincluding opening and closing protocols were observed inIranian and American emails. The findings showed that both Iranian and American students’ choices of opening and closing protocols alter as the students’ institutional distance from the person to whom they write changes. Also, differences were found in the use of politeness strategies in American and Iranian email messages. The study concluded that Iranian students probably resort to their L1 social and cultural norms in their email communication, particularly, in their status- equal communication.
Machine summary:
The use of two politeness strategies namely "indirectness" and"message length" and some common politeness conventionsincluding opening and closing protocols were observed inIranian and American emails.
In a similar study, Biesenbach-Lucas (2007) examined email requests sent by native and non-native English speaking students to faculty members at an American university over a period of several semesters.
3. Method This comparative study investigates the use of English in email communication by two groups of students through the analysis of the actual email messages they composed.
The reason for conducting this study is to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of the use of English in CMC by comparing the actual emails that some American and Iranian graduate students composed.
As its primary purposes, this study focuses on the following questions: • How different is Iranian students’ use of English language from Native Americans’ in email communication?
The study, then, investigates how socio-cultural and institutional distance influences the way Iranian English students and Native Americans communicate through email.
4. 3 Politeness strategies in emails To examine the influence of the differences in socio-cultural norms in request making between Iranian and American cultures, the researchers compared the two politeness strategies used in emails, namely (in)directness, and message length.
Iranian students’ persistence in using opening and closing protocols in their status-unequal email communication was not due to the fact that institutional distance did not have any effect on their email writing but because they were influenced by a further variable through which they transferred their own cultural norms from their first language.