Gender in Low-Imposition Email Requests

Bibliographic Data

ID21481245
AuthorsPatricia Salazar Campillo (0000-0003-2643-4790, Universitat Jaume I, corresponding author)
Year2023
Issue39
Pages320-338
Publication date2023-12-18
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEpos Revista de filología (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0213-201X • E-ISSN: 2255-3495
PublisherUNED - Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5944/epos.39.2023.38318
OpenAlexW4389951693
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited12

For some years now, communication between university students and faculty members has favoured the use of emails as opposed to face-to-face consultations. Previous research has pointed out the difficulties students may face to write an email to a professor since sociopragmatic variables have to be taken into account to show deference. This study investigates whether students’ gender influences the structure, framing moves and pronouns of address in naturally-occurring requestive emails written in the students’ L1. Our results show that both male and female students started their emails with a greeting. Females also identified themselves more and used more pre-closing formulas and their signature to end the emails. Contrary to the general stereotype that females are more polite, the emails written by female students included the informal Spanish pronoun tú to address their professor for the first time. In contrast, males used usted and tú in a more balanced way in their emails

Deference · Linguistics · Politeness · Political science · Pronoun · Digital Communication and Language · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · History · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Psychology · Social Psychology

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