The Readers and Writers behind Electronic Mail
Sally Abolrous
As
electronic mail replaces face-to-face communication in many work environments,
a thorough analysis of this evolving medium and its impact on communication is
necessary. In many workplaces, telephone calls and knocks on doors have
dramatically decreased in frequency, but the number of emails that circulate
through one’s inbox is continuing to increase. Yet, our understanding of this
new medium and how it is being used is limited. Some scholars argue that email
has many of the characteristics of speech; some argue that it has the same
characteristics as writing, while others argue that it is a completely new
genre of communication.
In order
to understand other mediums, such as writing and speech, researchers have
attempted to first understand the writers or speakers and readers or listeners
who are involved in and shape written and oral communication. Therefore, to
understand the medium of electronic mail, it is also important to identify
and analyze the characters involved—the senders and receivers of email and
the personas they adopt when writing or reading email.
In this paper,
I will begin with a background on some theories and models that have been
developed as an attempt to understand written and oral communication. I will
then look at some specific characteristics of the language of email, and from
those, identify the senders and receivers involved, their expectations, and
the personas that they adopt. Through this analysis, I hope to show that the
senders and receivers of electronic mail are more similar to speakers and
listeners than writers and readers of formal writing. This is due to the fact
that email itself is closer to the medium of speech than it is to writing,
as evidenced by some of its qualities. At the same time, email has some evolving
qualities that belong to neither medium.
WRITERS AND READERS - A BACKGROUND
(top)
In an
attempt to understand two-way communication, whether written or spoken, many
theories have been developed to describe the writer and reader relationship with
the text. Most of these theories are based on Roman Jakobsen’s model of the
communication process, which shows the six factors involved in verbal
communication.
Context
Addresser
__________________Message _________________ Addressee
Contact
Code
The model
above shows the addresser as the
writer, speaker, or sender of information (message) and the addressee as the reader, listener or
receiver of information. The other factors involved in sending the message are
the context (point of reference), the
code (language), and the contact (physical channel).
Other
scholars have theorized about the relationships between addressers, addressees
and text. Walker Gibson developed a model which implies that there are other
factors involved in communication: a fictitious writer and a mock reader.
Writer [Fictitious
Writer______TEXT_______Mock Reader] Reader
Gibson
suggests that the writer takes on a persona to communicate with the readers.
The real writer is in disguise behind that persona and generally never appears
in the text. Likewise, readers also take
on roles that are usually imbedded in the text for them with the freedom to
accept or reject. These fictitious personas are the ones who closely interact
with the text, not the actual writers and readers. “A bad book,” Gibson
explains, “is a book in whose mock reader we discover a person we refuse to
become, a mask we refuse to put on, a role we will not play” (268).
Similarly,
Walter Ong also discusses the mock writers and readers of verbal communication.
However, Ong goes beyond discussing written text; he makes a distinction between
writers and speakers, and readers and listeners. He claims that “the writer’s
mask and reader’s are less removable than those of the oral communicator and
his hearer” (171). This is due to the fact that a speaker is usually addressing
his audience, his listeners, directly or face-to-face, while a writer’s audience
is further away. It is therefore easier for the writer to stay in disguise
as a fictitious writer and the reader to continue playing his or her role.
Ong’s suggested relationship between physical proximity and the fixedness
of a communicator’s mask may be true with the mediums of writing and speech,
but does not hold true with the medium of email. Senders and Receivers of
email are much like readers and writers of text in terms of proximity, but
the masks they wear are more easily removed, more so than those of the writers
and readers or even speakers and listeners.
While the
mediums of formal writing and speech have been investigated, the medium of
email has not. The types of personas that senders and receivers of email adopt
have not been explored. Because email has inherited traits from both formal
writing and speech, the senders and receivers of email have adopted traits
from both mediums but also developed their own. An email writer has a different
mock reader in mind than a writer of a formal report or a speaker. Likewise,
the actual readers of email are also different from readers of formal reports
or listeners of speeches and have different expectations from the writers.
To investigate these emerging personas, I will look for patterns in the language
and mechanics of email, and through them, identify the characters hiding behind
the masks, their motivations, and their expectations.
For our
purposes, we will refer to the fictitious writer/speaker of email as a
fictitious sender and the mock reader/hearer as a mock receiver. That way, we
can avoid using the terms speaker/hearer and writer/reader which are most
associated with of the mediums of speech and writing.
In order
to understand the senders and receivers of electronic mail and the roles that
they play, an investigation of the language used in email is essential. Some of
the characteristics of email language that differentiate it from other mediums
are that it is informal and conversational, direct and concise, unedited, and
emotional. Although some of these qualities are borrowed from writing or
speech, others are new qualities that are specific to the medium of email. By
investigating these characteristics, the personas of the senders and receivers
embedded in the text can become apparent.
Compared
to formal writing, email can be described as informal and conversational. Lan
describes it as being “shaped by communicative needs and by usage, not rigid
rules. It is organic, evolving and dynamic...” (54). My observations of email
have led me to conclude that a lot of email resembles people’s unedited thought
processes.
Senders of
email are usually unconcerned with sentence structure or transitions between
ideas; As a result, they are more likely to write as they talk, rather than as
they would write a paper or a report. They are more likely to jump from idea to
idea without changing paragraphs or giving the receiver an overview of what
they will discuss. The example below is from a student (whom I never met) who
emailed me for an add code to a technical writing class that I am teaching.
Hi my name is [sender’s
name] and I am trying to get into you TC class at
In the
example above, many elements contribute to the informality of this email. The
sender used an informal greeting—a simple “Hi” without the name of the person
to whom it is addressed. This type of greeting is usually found in speech, but
not in formal writing. Furthermore, the sender did not bother to properly
punctuate his sentences, resulting in a run-on sentence. He introduced his name
at the beginning of the email but did not include a signature at the end. This
is also a quality of speech since we usually introduce ourselves up front and
do not repeat that information again at the end of the conversation.
Additionally, the sender did not take the time to adopt a persona; he is being
his true self without trying to make a good impression on the Technical Writing
teacher by at least eliminating the grammatical and mechanical mistakes from
his writing. His mock receiver, therefore, is not judgmental and is more
understanding than the reader of his formal reports.
Another
element that contributes to the conversational quality of email is the frequent
use of speech tokens such as: huh, blah, wow, he he, duh, oh, umm and hmm.
These tokens are clearly a characteristic of speech; however, senders
frequently use them in email to indicate patterns of thought. As a result,
email at times sounds more like the sender’s unedited internal thought process,
rather than organized thoughts that are suitable for formal writing. The
example below clearly illustrates that.
Hmm, my email client doesn't
read html, I'll have to pipe it to another program.
Oh no! I
finally got on a search engine and all of my links to my projects are
broken! Ahhh!
Oh well.
Guess it's time to spend some time in html-land.
The
example above can be described as a one-sided conversation. The sender is
clearly not trying to adopt a certain persona but allowing herself to speak
freely of her thoughts. These characteristics of email suggest that the
sender’s fictional persona closely resembles that of the actual sender. At the
same time, the sender’s view of his or her mock receiver is of one who is
accustomed to this medium of communication, its informality and its unorganized
content, and is less critical and more understanding than a mock reader of
formal writing.
Compared
to speech, email is considered more direct and concise. If a sender’s intent is
to ask a question, an email may only contain the question without the addition
of a greeting or a closing. If the intent is to make a comment, an email may be
as short as a one-word comment. If the intent is to convey an emotion, an email
with only a smiley face may be sent to the receiver. This characteristic of
email is more related to formal writing than speech, which in many cases, is
written with the objective to be as clear and direct as possible. However, even
in formal writing, writers usually include courtesy phrases, or at least
greetings and closings in addition to the information that they are trying to
send. In email however, senders are less concerned with such formalities and
are more concerned with conciseness. Likewise, receivers expect directness and
conciseness.
A quality
of email that makes it seem more concise and direct is the liberal use of
abbreviations.
hey sis call em ok!!!!!! r u busy!? k well see ya!
SHIMO
In the short
email above, the sender uses many abbreviations such as: sis for sister, r for are, u for you, and k for okay. These
abbreviations, along with many others, are often used in emails. The
unintentional message that gets sent along with the sender’s message is that
the sender is trying to be concise and trying to communicate his or her idea
quickly and efficiently (in the least amount of letters possible). Notice,
however, that these abbreviations have been borrowed from spoken language. They
are written as they are normally spoken as an attempt from the sender to create
the experience of a conversation.
Other
types of abbreviations used in emails are ones that have been developed and
agreed upon by email users and are specific to the medium of email. Some were
developed as a means to communicate ideas and emotions that are difficult to
explain; others are used as a tool for efficiency and conciseness. Some
examples of frequently used and agreed upon abbreviations are listed below:
Lol – Laughing out loud
Rofol – Rolling on the floor laughing out loud
Eom – End of message
Btw - By the way
The use of abbreviations is also a common
feature of both formal writing and speech. Within discourse communities,
members develop their own abbreviations and specialized vocabulary. In this
case, the users of email have developed their own discourse community with
their own medium-specific language. Members of the email discourse community
are expected to be familiar with and use this new language as a means of making
email more concise, informal and conversational. Therefore, to use these
abbreviations is to accept that role (of either a sender or a receiver) that
has been defined by the community.
Closely
related to the above characteristics, this characteristic of email gives it
much of the qualities of speech. While some senders edit their messages before
sending them out, most do not. During her studies of the characteristics of
email, Baron observed that “emails typically undergo little or no editing” (50).
Receivers of email messages are accustomed to unedited text and therefore are
less judgmental than the readers of formal writing. The example below is an
email from one of my students.
im trying to remember if i was sceduled for a
Thanks,
Mike
The
example above clearly illustrates that the sender of this message did not run
it through a spell-checker or care to review it for misspellings and
grammatical errors. He did not care to capitalize the letters that need
capitalization or use apostrophes where needed. The message appears to be the
sender’s unedited thought process, which he spontaneously wrote down and sent.
His mock receiver, although a technical writing teacher, does not care about
the grammar or mechanics and does not expect him to edit his message or take
time formulating it. However, she expects him to be direct and concise.
As the real receiver, as opposed to a mock
receiver of email, I notice grammatical mistakes and misspellings but am more
tolerant towards them than I would if the student was turning in a formal
paper. In that sense, I adopt the role of the mock receiver that is embedded in
the text for me, but that role very closely resembles the real me. Similarly,
the sender who did not carefully edit his email before sending it to his
technical writing teacher is playing a role, which very closely resembles the
real him. This characteristic of email is one that has been adopted from
speech, not formal writing. And because of that, the masks of the senders and
receivers are easily removed and the personas that hide behind the masks are
not out of sight.
Email is
also characterized as a medium which easily evokes emotions. Unlike speech,
where the hearer can rely on contextual cues and non-verbal communication to
gather the speaker’s intent, there is no context in email. The sender’s tone,
whether angry, happy, disappointed, or upset, cannot be clearly communicated
due to the lack of context. Senders then are usually aware that whatever they
say can be misinterpreted; and to avoid that, they use emoticons (which are
shown below) to indicate their mood to the receivers. In doing that, senders
embed roles in the text for their mock receivers to play—roles that dismiss
insults if a wink emoticon is present or roles that laugh at not-so-funny jokes
if a smiley emoticon is present. While emoticons were invented by senders using
simple keyboard strokes to create shapes such as ;) and J and L, email
software has now implemented emoticons for all types of emotions and occasions
(see figures 1 and 2 below).
|
Figure 2. An
example of emoticons from MSN Messenger. |
|
|
Figure 1. An example of
emoticons from Microsoft Hotmail. |
|
/projects/readers_and_writers_files/image001.gif){kind=link}
/projects/readers_and_writers_files/image004.jpg){kind=link}
The use of
emoticons in email creates a context for the text. Senders take the non-verbal
and contextual elements present in speech and face-to-face communication and
add them to a medium that was once much like writing. With the use of
emoticons, the sender’s role becomes much like the actual sender because it
removes the ambiguity from the text, removes the sender’s mask, and reveals the
sender’s true emotions. However, in some cases, emoticons only add to the
ambiguity of text. For example, if they are being used as a tool of sarcasm,
the receiver may not interpret them as such. Nevertheless, emoticons, if
successful, bring the real sender closer to the fictional sender and make
written text more like speech by adding context and emotion to it.
At the
beginning of the paper, I suggested that some scholars view email as a medium
that is a hybrid of speech and writing, others view it as a form of speech or
writing, and some view it as its own genre. In this paper, I have focused on
its similarities to and differences from these other mediums by the
characteristics of its language and its users. Although email is clearly more
related to speech than it is to writing, many of its qualities suggest that it
is evolving into a new genre. The senders and receivers of email are shaping it
and developing standards to fit their needs. Because of the dynamic nature of
email, senders and receivers are finding ways to incorporate useful qualities
of writing (i.e. conciseness) and useful qualities of speech (i.e. informality)
into it in order to make it an effective and efficient medium.
The
development of standards and rules to govern behavior give the email medium the
character of a discourse community. In it, senders and receivers behave alike.
They have community-specific terms, abbreviations and guidelines. While
researching for this paper, I came across several Websites that offer tips on
the etiquette of email. Some of the suggestions included the following:
o
Be conservative in what you send and liberal in
what you receive.
o
Messages should be concise and to the point.
o
Limit cc’s to those with a need to know.
(From:
IEEE email netiquette guidelines, http://eleccomm.ieee.org/email-netiquette.shtml)
The need
for such guidelines suggests that the medium of email is new, unfamiliar, and
although has many of the qualities of speech and writing, is still different
enough from them that their rules and guidelines do not apply. The users of
email are working for autonomy to distinguish themselves from other mediums, or
other discourse communities.
Because of
email’s directness and informality, the senders’ and receivers’ masks are
not as fixed as they are within other mediums—they are more easily removed. In writing, the physical distance between the
writer and the reader allows writers to completely remove themselves from
the text and adopt fictional personas. On the other hand, because of the close
proximity of the speakers to their listeners, speakers are sometimes reserved
and must behave in an acceptable manner and be considerate of the listeners’
responses. However, in the medium of email, Baron points out that studies
show that “ by reducing visible and auditory social cues about interlocutors,
email enables participants to interact in a less constrained way than when
face-to-face”(147). This indicates that the senders and receivers of electronic
mail resemble the actual senders and receivers; they are less reserved, more
open and straightforward than both speakers and writers. As the email medium
continues to evolve and continues to find ways to overcome communication challenges
(such as the level of context using emoticons), the senders and receivers
of email will continue to change, perhaps in a direction further away from
both writers and speakers.
WORKS CITED (top)
1.
Baron,
N. (1998). Letters by phone or speech by other means: the linguistics of email.
Language and Communication, 18,
133-170.
2.
Baron,
N. (1998). Writing in the Age of Email: the Impact of Ideology vs. Technology. Visible Language, 32 (1). 35-53.
3.
Gibson,
W. (1950). Authors, speakers, readers, and mock readers. College English, 11, 265-269.
4.
Jacobsen,
R. (1978). Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics. In Style in Language, T.A. Sebeok, Ed.
5.
Lan,
L. (2000). Email: a challenge to Standard English? English Today 64, Vol. 16(4).
6.
Ong,
W.S.J. (1975). The writer’s audience is always a fiction. PMLA, 90, 9-21.