Student/teacher interaction via email: the

social context of Internet discourse

Joel Bloch
*
The Ohio State University, 196 Arps Hall, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
Abstract
While email has been used in L2 composition classrooms as a way to develop uency, it
can also be used as a means of creating and sustaining relationships, as it is often used
outside the classroom. This paper examines the way students in a graduate-level ESL
course used email on their own initiative to interact with their instructor. The paper
examines 120 email messages received by the instructor during the course and categorizes
them into four areas: (1) phatic communion, (2) asking for help, (3) making excuses, and
(4) making formal requests. From these categories, representative samples were chosen to
illustrate what rhetorical strategies the writers used to achieve their purpose for sending the
email messages. The results show that the students were able to employ a wide variety of
rhetorical strategies to interact with their instructor outside of the traditional classroom
setting. For these students, email seemed to be an important means for interacting with their
instructor. Moreover, the students exhibited a good ability to switch between formal and
informal language, depending upon the rhetorical context of the message. In the conclu-
sion, some of the issues regarding teaching the use of email are discussed.
# 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: ESL; Composition; Computer-mediated discourse; Email; Rhetoric; Social anthropology;
Heteroglossia; EFL; Netiquette; Asynchronic discourse
Introduction
Astudent recently told me howshe broke up with her boyfriend by sending him
an email message. While this story primarily impressed on me the virtue of being
happily married in the age of electronic romance, it also indicates the power of the
Internet and its primary reliance on the written word for establishing and
Journal of Second Language Writing
11 (2002) 117134
*
Tel.: 1-614-292-6360; fax: 1-614-292-4054.
E-mail address: bloch.10@osu.edu (J. Bloch).
1060-3743/02/$ see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
PII: S 1 0 6 0 - 3 7 4 3 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 6 4 - 4
maintaining social relationships. A recent survey has shown that email is by far
the most popular use for the Internet (Nie & Erbring, 2000). Email, which is one
form of a larger category of Internet discourse sometimes called computer-
mediated discourse or more informally ``Netspeak'' (Crystal, 2001), is considered
to be asynchronic in that it, like most forms of written language, is not composed
in the same time frame as it is received. The idea that the written word has begun
to establish itself as the primary means of interpersonal communication has been
called one of the unexpected consequences of the Internet. This reliance on
writing has led to a growing interest in integrating email usage into composition
courses. Using email in interpersonal communication may have important
implications in second language (L2) writing classes. In his study of various
forms of computer-mediated discourse, Crystal found that email has already
become an important component of language teaching to facilitate teacher/
student interaction. Gaer (1999), for example, argues that email gives L2 students
the opportunity to interact and negotiate meaning with an authentic audience
using a variety of language forms. Email can also provide students an alternative
to face-to-face communication by reducing the pressure on students to produce a
constant owof language in a face-to-face context and by eliminating the problem
of heavy accents that can hinder communication.
In L2 courses, the primary focus for using email has been on developing uency
(Li, 2000; Warschauer, 1996) or on facilitating personal reection (Warschauer,
1999). Vilmi (1994), for example, has conducted extensive global courses using
email as a means of connecting students all over the world. One reason Warshauer
gives for its importance in language classes is that email allows students the
opportunity to take chances they might not want to take in face-to-face encounters.
Warschauer (1999), for example, describes howone Japanese student used email to
create a more personal relationship with her English instructor by discussing her
``questions, doubts, and concerns about academic life in the United States'' (p. 49).
Although there is not a lot of evidence in this research that email did improve
uency (Knobel, Lankshear, Honan, & Crawford, 1998), the research does
demonstrate that email can provide a variety of opportunities for interpersonal
interactions that may not be possible inside the traditional L2 composition
classroom. As Warschauer and Healy (1998) argue, it is the ability of language
learners to communicate ``inexpensively and quickly'' with native speakers or
other learners of the target language that make all forms of computer-mediated
communication valuable for language learning (p. 63). In this paper, I would like to
discuss how L2 writing students used email to negotiate one particular kind of
interpersonal relationship that between themselves and their instructor.
The nature of email interactions
The creation of social relationships in Cyberspace has often been discussed. In
his reminiscence of the ``Well,'' one of the rst online discussion groups,
118 J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134
Rheingold (1993) describes how email groups were used to create relationships
that in times of crisis crossed the line from virtual to real communities. Friend-
ships developed, and barriers between people of different backgrounds broke
down. Thus, at least for some people, email can replace the kinds of social
interactions that in the past had only been possible in face-to-face contexts.
This potential for extending traditional social interactions has been extremely
important in academic contexts. From the beginnings of the Internet, email has
played an important role in the professional lives of its users. People who might
before have met only at conferences can now interact on a daily basis. Email is,
therefore, not a substitute for face-to-face interactions but rather a means for
extending the space where these interactions can take place. As Baron (1998) has
argued, email is ``an ideal tool for building and maintaining social relationships''
(p. 155) since it has both the informality of speech and the ability to facilitate
communication at any time or place.
Nevertheless, there are clear dangers in the use of email as a form of commu-
nication (e.g., Feenberg, 1995; Sproull & Kiesler, 1991; Stoll, 1995). Feenberg
argues that computer users often act as if they were participating in face-to-face
interactions, introducing conventions and personal feelings normally used in non-
computer contexts. Misunderstandings or conicts that might be rectied imme-
diately in a face-face context may continue indenitely when email is used.
1
Sproull and Kiesler (1991) likewise found that while the ``rules'' of email use are
not always different from those of traditional forms of communication, the nature
of email messages, particularly their ephemeral nature, can create different, and
potentially more problematic relationships between the writer and the audience
than are found in traditional memos or phone calls. Cyberspace allows for speech
to be used for building social relationships, for creative play, or even for resistance,
but it can also be used for harassment, what is often referred to as ``aming.'' While
aming may result from a specic intent to verbally attack another person, Sproull
and Kiesler (1991) argue that aming may also result from a miscalculation of the
relationship between the writer and the reader of an email message. These
problems can arise when people send hastily composed messages that they would
not have sent if sending them had taken more effort than clicking on a computer
key, when email intended for only one reader was distributed instead to a large
number of readers, or when messages thought to be deleted are retrieved.
Research has also shown that despite the increased amount of social interac-
tions taking place via email, distinctions in social relationships among the
participants can have a profound effect on their email interaction. Citing research
by David Owens on corporate email, Headlam (2001) reports that social
1
An example of this occurred on a course listserv in an undergraduate writing course I taught
where a conflict between a student from another section and his instructor that could have been
resolved quickly and privately in a face-face context continued publicly for over a week in an email
listserv. The problem was compounded by the fact that the email allowed the message itself to be
repeated over and over as the students, even those who supported the teacher, responded to the initial
attack.
J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134 119
differences within the corporation were continually expressed in the email.
Higher-level managers wrote the shortest email messages and took the longest
time to respond; lower level managers wrote much longer email messages; and
perhaps, most interestingly, the corporate executives had the most spelling and
grammar mistakes. Student/teacher relationships can similarly exhibit such social
distinctions, and therefore sending and receiving email, as a form of social
interaction, can be similarly problematic. While some have argued that the
informality of email should not be a concern (e.g., Crystal, 2001), Baron
(2001) worries that her students are too informal and casual in their email
messages, going as far as to say that this informality is a result of the current
``fashion'' in composition teaching to value meaning over form.
Teachers, too, may not understand the consequences of sending email. The Wall
Street Journal reported on a student who challenged the rejection of a portion of
his dissertation by pulling out a year-old email message from his professor saying
to go ahead with this research (Markers, 1996). The professor responded that he
thought the email messages were like phone calls and therefore could not be
considered an ofcial authorization to the student to proceed with the research.
Using email as a form of communication, therefore, necessitates a different
understanding of how language affects the relationship between the writer and the
audience, of the differences between formal and informal writing, and of what is
private and what is public. As Levy (1998) argues, the virtual world is like a
Moebius strip, where ``exterior and interior are continuously transformed into
their opposite'' (p. 116).
In these examples, there appears to be a tension between the potential of email
for undermining some social distinctions and for maintaining other social
distinctions. The work of Bakhtin can be useful for studying how language
can be used to negotiate these kinds of social relationships. For Bakhtin, language
is not a neutral force but a means by which an individual constitutes himself or
herself in a social context. Language is not a unitary formbut is ``heteroglossic,'' a
term Bakhtin used to describe how any given speech can change depending on the
environment in which the speech act is occurring and the types of language that
are being used (Bakhtin, 1981).
In all of these instances, new forms of language can be created that may or may
not be shared by both the writer and the reader. Some have argued that the
language of email is unlike any other form of language, either written or oral.
Baron (1998) describes the development of this language as a process of
creolization, by which a new language is created from a mixture of established
languages. Similarly, Moran and Hawisher (1998) compare email language to a
newborn child who, although a unique individual, may resemble her or his parents
or grandparents. Thus, as with any culture, the virtual world is not monolithic but
contains a variety of subcultures with their own norms and values and corre-
sponding speech genres and languages.
As with these processes of language creation, differences in social status, such
as between a student and a teacher can be a mitigating factor in the types of
120 J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134
language that are produced. As Morson and Emerson (1990) have argued, new
forms of language can frequently, in fact, evolve from the unsystematic inter-
action of these different forms. In this kind of dialogic context, discourse that was
intended to be only informative, for example, can become a means of establishing
authority or for being persuasive. While the term has primarily been used in the
face-to-face context, the concept of ``heteroglossia'' can be a useful perspective
on the language that is generated in computer-mediated environments since these
environments can create a space for these different languages to interact (Stivale,
1997). This interaction can take place either between two people or between an
individual and a potentially innite number of people who can live anywhere in
the world. Native speaker/non-native speaker, non-native speaker/non-native
speaker, or teacher/student are all potential dialogic contexts where email can
facilitate these language interactions. Because of the potential of email for
increased interaction as well as for conict, it is important to understand how
email can affect traditional social relationships in a classroom.
Email in teacher/student interactions
Despite its potential, it has not always been clear howto integrate email into the
composition classroom. Email itself is only one of a number of types of computer-
mediated communication, which can make it difcult to decide on the potentially
most useful one for different contexts or activities. Honeycutt (2001), for
example, argued that one form of Internet discourse, either synchronic or
asynchronic, may be preferable to another for different pedagogical purposes.
Email, for example, allows for more carefully prepared discussions while
synchronic forms of discourse, such as that found in MOOs
2
and chat rooms,
allow for real time, synchronic communication. Similarly, face-to-face interac-
tions could be more useful in many situations than any form of computer-
mediated communication.
3
For both teachers and students, these virtual interactions can present new
challenges and opportunities not only for communicating inside and outside of
their language communities but also for understanding the nature of social
relationships in the university as well as the society in general. Students, for
example, who feel uncomfortable for either cultural reasons or because of anxiety
about speaking in classroom contexts may nd a freedom to interact on the
Internet. While some students may feel uncomfortable in virtual contexts, others
may feel liberated from the traditional structures of the classroom. Although her
2
MOOs or ``MUD, Object Oriented'' are spaces similar to chat rooms but are usually more
complex and flexible. They can also be useful for fostering the same kinds of social interactions as
email but in real time, particularly for one-on-one tutorials or group discussions. See
www.tappedin.org
3
I have found anecdotally that students prefer face-to-face tutorials rather than online tutorials
even when they have experience using chat rooms.
J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134 121
study concentrated primarily on uency, Liaw (1998) found instances where L2
students in Taiwan could respond to each other in personal ways via email that
may not be possible in the traditional classroom. In one example, one of her male
students adopted a female name, which Liaw implies allowed him to interact with
a female writer in ways that were more like female/female interactions than
traditional female/male interactions. As Turkle (1995) has argued, assuming other
persona is one way the freedom of the Internet allows individuals to pursue
different aspects of their personalities. Although this type of example may be
extreme, it demonstrates how the Internet can be a semi-private area where L2
writers can discuss their own ideas and problems without the pressure of being
scrutinized by native speakers, as well as a means to establish and maintain social
and personal relationships that may be different from those in face-to-face
contexts.
One important context where L2 students may be able to exploit the advantages
of email is in their relationship with their teacher. Students may feel the need to
create a social relationship with their teacher, perhaps because they feel it will
help their grades or because they want to have a closer relationship for personal
reasons. Although Moran and Hawisher (1998) argue that the intimacy of such
relationships in the virtual world may in some instances be an illusion, they also
nd that the illusion itself may give certain students a freedom they do not feel
they have in the classroom. Email, like other forms of communication in
Cyberspace, can break down the limitations in time and space that exist in
traditional classrooms. Hawisher and Moran (1993) argue that by dissolving these
boundaries of time and space in a classroom, email can dissolve the traditional
barriers between teachers and students.
For those on the periphery, as students often are, negotiating the often
contradictory nature of this environment through written language may create
serious misunderstandings. This problem is even more complicated for L2
students who may not be as familiar with the norms and values of a target
culture or who may not have the linguistic ability to express the subtle meanings
that can be difcult to express in written language. In this paper, I want to explore
both the potential and possibly problematic areas of email use in the L2
composition classroom by examining how one group of L2 writers used email
to negotiate their relationship with their teacher. From this study, I hope to better
understand the role email plays in classroom discourse and how it can be best
integrated into the classroom curriculum.
Methodology
For this paper, I examined a set of 120 email messages I received over one
quarter (10 weeks) from 26 students in two advanced graduate-level L2 composi-
tion courses (required university-wide). The students needed at least a 550 on the
TOEFL to enter the graduate program. When they arrived on campus, they were
122 J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134
given a placement test, which placed the students into four levels. The students in
this sample were either those who had placed in the second-highest level or who
had already passed at least one lower-level course. Of the 26 students, 14 were
from China and Taiwan, 10 from Korea and 1 each from Indonesia and Turkey.
Fourteen were female and 12 were male. They ranged in age from 22 to 35 years.
Based on their placement test results, it was assumed that the students had a high
level of uency. By the end of the course, the students were expected to write a
1215 page research paper on a topic in their major. Therefore, I was not
concerned with the use of email for developing uency, as has been discussed
in other research (e.g., Knobel et al., 1998). I also included a few messages I
received during the same period from students who were not currently in the
course but were interested in registering for the next quarter in order to provide a
contrast with the messages from the students in my class who already knew me.
As the recipient of the email, I had over 10 years experience teaching L2
composition and had taught this advanced level composition course for 1 year.
Although I consider myself accessible to my students within the classroom
context, I try not to have social or personal relationships with them beyond
saying ``hello'' outside the classroom. While not necessarily claiming that I am
typical of American instructors, I do feel I consciously try to create a social
distance. Our campus, furthermore, is extremely large, which further diminishes
the opportunity for personal interaction outside of the classroom and scheduled
tutorial times. Moreover, I am conscious of being a gatekeeper who can pass
judgment over whether the students have successfully completed the English
writing requirements the university has set out for them. It was not the purpose of
this research to justify this type of teacher/student relationship. Rather, my
interest was in analyzing how the students negotiated their relationships with
me as their instructor. Although the students were required to submit all of their
work via email attachment, there was no requirement to attach a message. I did
encourage students to email me if they had questions since I did not have a phone
in my ofce.
Since the purpose of my research was to explore the various ways the students
negotiated their relationship with me and not to test a specic hypothesis, I choose
to use a more qualitative approach to categorize and analyze the messages. Based
on the research discussed above, the paper addressed three questions.
What purposes do students use email for?
What types of rhetorical forms do the students use for achieving these
purposes?
What are the implications for the use of email in these types of advanced
classes?
Using a method for analyzing discourse developed by McCracken (1990), I
began with no preconceived categories for grouping the messages. After reading
all the messages, I created four categories in which I felt each email message
could be grouped. The categories were
J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134 123
(1) phatic communication (57),
(2) asking for help (42),
(3) making excuses (16), and
(4) making formal requests (5).
Each message was placed in one of the categories (the number of messages in
each category is in parentheses). Two readers read each message and placed it into
one of the four categories. A third reader reconciled any discrepancies. Based on
the sample in each category, I then tried to generalize about the strategies being
used in each category. For purposes of illustration, I chose a few examples to
illustrate the specic features of each category.
4
Data analysis
Phatic communication
One of the most basic uses of language is to create and maintain personal
relationships. Malinowski (1947) used the term ``phatic communion'' to dene
how ``ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words'' (p. 315). Not all
interactions therefore, whether by email or face-to-face, are intended to carry real
information but rather are used to maintain these relationships. Expressions such
as ``How are you?'' and ``Hello'' are used to establish particular levels of
interpersonal relationships in face-to-face contexts. These interactions are impor-
tant in maintaining a relationship even when there is no intention to exchange
meaningful information. A curt ``How are you?'' said quickly and without
expression is different than one said warmly with a smile, perhaps with an
additional follow-up question. Therefore using the appropriate form of language
is important in establishing and maintaining relationships. For Malinowski, these
types of exchanges characteristically used oral language. Although as Crystal
(2001) argues, forms of written language are not as well suited as are oral forms to
such phatic forms of language, email, perhaps because of its potential or apparent
immediacy, may be useful for expressing such social interactions.
Examples 1 and 2 showhowthe students could add this dimension to a message
on their own initiative.
1. Dear teacher:
here I am in the computer room, I am learning a lot about the Internet
sistem and by the way I am happy. Today is friday and the weather is more
or less good.
5
4
The students whose messages were reported in this study had signed forms at the beginning of the
quarter allowing all writing, including the email messages, to be used in research.
5
I did not edit or correct any of these messages.
124 J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134
2. Mr. Bloch:
Attached is the first draft of the first sunmmary. It is a MS word file. By
the way, we missed you in Wendsday's class.
In 1, the student did attach the required assignment but adds a more personal
level to describe his mood and the weather. While the attachment itself fullls the
assignment, the student also seems to use the email to establish a more personal
relationship using this phatic form of language. His message illustrates what
Bakhtin (1981) meant by heteroglossia in that the message may be seen as both
playful in its use of language and resistant to what I considered the serious nature
of the assignment. Bakhtin argues that such playfulness can be a dialogic response
to the often monologic utterances that come from speakers in more powerful
positions, such as the teacher. Thus, the message was able to create a more
dialogic context for what was meant to be simply a monologic action of turning in
an assignment that the teacher required. In example 2, the student begins the
message with a more formal approach by rst informing me of the format of his
paper, something that can help a person in opening a le (Shea, 1994). He goes on,
however, to add a personal message regarding my absence from the previous
class, which seems to me to be an attempt to break down the distance between him
and me. In both examples, it is interesting how the students took it upon
themselves to use email to try to create the kind of personal communication
that is usually reserved for face-to-face contact. Instead of simply handing in a
paper and rushing off to another class, the student has the opportunity to increase
personal communication in a situation where there is an established teacher/
student hierarchy, reecting what Malinowski (1947) called the necessity, at least
in some cultures, to ``say something even where there is hardly anything to say''
(p. 316).
Making excuses
In many ways, excuse making lends itself perfectly to email. A crucial test of
the relationship between the student and teacher comes when the student feels
that he or she must give an excuse for not coming to class or not handing in
homework. This context is an example of what Bahktin means when he discusses
contexts where there are unequal degrees of power between the student and the
teacher. Email gives the student a certain space to negotiate this issue without
having to directly confront the teacher. Unlike a phone call or a face-to-face
interaction, email allows not only the time and space for carefully crafting the
excuse but also eliminates any possibility of having direct, and possibly
embarrassing, contact while delivering the message. In 3, for example, the
student sent me an email message on Friday afternoon for missing class Friday
morning.
3. Hi Joe. how are you doing today? I am very good. could not come to class
today Actually, I tried to come, but I forgot that today's class is going to be
J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134 125
in Campel. Rigt now I am in Central Classroom Building. Have a good
weekend. Sorry for sending this mail.
There was no requirement to send an email concerning missed classes, but
the student, nevertheless, sent one, even though his excuse may not appear to
be particularly convincing. He begins by addressing me by what he thinks is
my rst name and then uses a common phatic expression, ``how are you doing
today,'' a common greeting in oral exchanges, to preface his excuse. I never
asked the students to address me in a particular way, so each student
can choose the way they feel is most appropriate. Here, the student himself
chooses an informal opening, addressing me by my rst name. As with a phone
call or a letter, he frames his message with an introduction and a closing, both
of which can mitigate what appears to be a rather insipid reason for missing
class. As Crystal (2001) found in an informal study of the email he had
received, there is tremendous variation in the way writers open and close their
messages.
Since it is not clear in 3 whether the student felt there was something to be
gained by sending an email, it was not known whether the student felt there was a
particularly rhetorical exigency the email was responding to or whether the
excuse was rhetorically persuasive. In example 4, however, the motivation for the
email, which is to explain an illness, does not appear at rst glance to be as
problematic a situation since the student seems to have a more legitimate excuse
for missing class.
4. Hi! Mr. Bloch.
How're you doing. I hope you're O.K. as usual. Yet right now I feel
bad. May be I am going to sick. Because recently I always sneezing and
coughing. It started from yesterday, I didn't feel good since I entered
your class. That's why you ask questions several times I cannot answer
it. Because I am not concentrate. Today may be I cannot come to your
class. And I hope tomorrow I can enter your class again. Thank you!
Bye!
The student goes beyond simply explaining why he missed a class to discuss a
possibly more problematic situation he had been having all quarter, explaining
why his classroom work may not be what I expected it to be but then assuring me
that he will return and presumably do better. While missing one class is not a
major problem, the student can exploit the use of email to negotiate with me what
could be a more serious problem, his performance in class over the quarter.
Although he could have explained this to my face, it is interesting that he chose
the Internet, where he may have felt more comfortable in making his excuses
without having to directly confront me.
Not every message, however, tried to give me a detailed reason for the
problem. In 5, the student gives a more direct excuse for not handing in her
homework.
126 J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134
5. Dear Mr. Bloch:
I am too busy
6
these days. Can I turn in my last assigment by email
(Window.word format attach) on Thursday (3/14)? I'll thank you very
much. Have a good day!
In this rhetorical context, the writer uses a straightforward negotiation over the
date for handing in a paper. The student begins not by apologizing but by giving
me an excuse for why she has not handed in her assignment and then asks me for a
specic period of extension and a method for handing the paper in. She concludes
the message by making a friendly gesture of thanking me and wishing me a good
day, as one might in a letter.
Example 6 demonstrates another type of rhetorical approach for dealing with
not having completed the assignment. I had given the students an assignment to do
an Internet search for Websites in their eld. The student reported the results of
her search, which does not seem to be complete; however, she adds at the end, as
was the case with a previous email, a more personal message about how much fun
she had with the assignment, thus turning the excuse for not completing the
assignment into an afrmation of the value of the assignment.
6. I found very wide range eld of about veterinary medicine. Especially
what I was interested was some program are divided into some groups
depending on each specialty. This time my theme was almost about heart,
therefore, I was searching through the cardiology. I could not nd about
edema and cardiac bypass surgery, however, it was fun.
Not all the email related to this assignment, however, engaged me in such a
positive manner.
7. Hi,
I looked for some stuff related with my topic. I found lots of articles
however, I didnt wanna i mailed you Because You already have enough
stuff to spend time.
By
In neither 6 nor 7 did the student complete the assignment. However, in 6 the
student gives me a more positive and afrming response to what she was supposed
to do. By feeling she has to give a reason why she did not complete the assignment
but did have ``fun,'' she seems to not only accept my authority as a teacher to give
the assignment in the rst place but also to afrm that I used my power wisely by
creating an interesting assignment.
While the student in 7 similarly offers a reason for not handing in the assignment,
his reason does not attempt to persuade me that he even tried to do it. This response
could be interpreted as an expression of resistance to my authority as a teacher.
6
The expression ``too busy'' may sound hostile in the sense that the student seems to be saying that
she has better things to do; however, students often confuse ``too'' with ``very'' so that the sentence
could simply be that the writer is ``very busy.''
J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134 127
By not giving what could be considered an appropriate excuse, as the student in
example 6 did, the student seems to be challenging the authoritative nature of my
speech act that asked themto do this assignment. Unlike the writer in example 5, the
student does not attempt to rectify the situation by giving a time when the
assignment will be completed. As Bakhtin (1981) put it, authoritative speech acts
are monolithic and demand an acknowledgment of that fact. In this example, by
seeming to take it upon himself to decidewhether I neededtoreceive his homework,
it may appear that he is undermining my authority to make that decision. In some
teacher/student interactions, challenging the instructor in this way can be a risky
strategy. However, he seems to sense this risk in the nal sentence with his appeal to
the self-interest of the instructor. As in some of the previous examples, this type of
interaction may not have occurred in a face-to-face context. By exploiting the
distance created between reader and writer on the Internet, the student may be able
to take some risks although, as Sproull and Kiesler (1991) point out, using email in
this way can have negative consequences. Regardless of whether the consequences
were positive or negative, there are a number of rhetorical strategies used in this
particular type of context where the degree of power is not equally distributed. As
Crystal (2001) points out about his own email, what is striking is the variety of
language, as well as rhetorical strategies, that the students employ in this particular
context, a fact that can have great pedagogical importance in a composition course.
Asking for help
A third category of messages consisted of those sent to ask for help in particular
assignments. While this category also assumes a difference in the amount of power
each participant in the exchange has, for most people, asking for help presents a
much simpler rhetorical context than making excuses, since asking for help would
normally be viewed by the teacher in a more positive light than making excuses
would be. In 8, for example, the student not only fullls the assignment of
explaining her paper but also reaches out to engage me in the research process.
8. Hi,
I am gonna need to prepare my propose within the two weeks. So i
wanna study my long peper on my related research subject that is to
analyises the effects of the calbindin-D28k in the developing and growing
chicken ovaries and testes. In the long paper I wanna study this subject so
that I prepare my proposel. If you help me on this study I will be very glad.
Thank you
The writer does not simply ask for help, but, as was seen in some of the previous
examples, attempts to frame her problem in a much more personal way than
simply asking a question about the assignment in class. The student here asks me
to help her with a topic she knows I have very little background in. Nevertheless,
she attempts to make me feel I can be of use to her, which can serve as a good basis
for establishing a traditional teacher/student relationship. While this exchange
128 J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134
could have occurred inside the classroom, email gives the student a much greater
opportunity for making her request. The student may not feel that asking this type
of specic question is appropriate in the class or may not have the time to ask it
afterwards, so the Internet affords the student in this situation the opportunity to
choose the most convenient time to ask the question while avoiding appearing to
waste class time, a factor highly valued in some cultures. This ability of the
Internet to extend the time and space of the classroom is one of the fundamental
reasons the Internet can have a profound effect on teaching.
Asking for help can also be motivated by the fear of receiving a low grade in the
course, as was expressed in example 9, which was written in response to an
assignment given for an upcoming paper. Here, the student adds an unsolicited
response to the grade he received on the previous paper, expressing his disappoint-
ment andperhaps disagreement withhis grade. However, he promises me that onthe
next paper hewill dobetter, whichseems tobe a request for patience inthis situation.
9. Dear Dr. Bloch,
I feel sorry and a little surprised that I got a ``C'' in my bibliography
assignment. It is the worst grade I got in my life! What I will do is try my
best in my rest assignments, so I did not hand in my 1st of critical review
in class and decide to rewrite before I send it to you. In my critical review,
I will compare ``New Nondestructive Technique for the Detection and
Quantification of Corrosion in Aircraft Structures'' published by WP
Winner et al. and DA Bruce's ``Non-Destructive Detection of Corrosion
for life Management.''
All these messages allowed the students, who were on the periphery in terms of
having power in the classroom, to engage in a more personal way that perhaps
could narrow that gap between them and me. Much of the motivation for
narrowing this gap seemed to come from the students themselves. From the
large number of grammatical errors found in these messages, it would seem that
the writers were paying more attention to their relationship with the instructor
than to grammatical errors. This nding is somewhat consistent with that of Li
(2000), who found that in student email, the number of grammatical errors was
higher in the email that was intended to have a higher degree of audience
interaction. Perhaps because of the more personal nature of the email, there seems
to be less concern with grammatical correctness. While this lack of concern may
cause them trouble in other contexts and with other readers, they assumed
correctly without having had any direct instruction on the topic that grammatical
correctness did not matter. In this way, they demonstrated, perhaps unconsciously,
a high degree of awareness of what their audience was expecting.
Making formal requests
Each of the previous contexts shares a similar level of intimacy between the
writer and reader in that both the writer and reader knew each other and had
J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134 129
extensive direct face-to-face contact. However, a different context may arise when
the parties do not knoweach other. In this section, I want to look at one category of
unsolicited email messages sent during the same period by students I had never
met to ask permission to take a class the following quarter. In this set of letters, the
most obvious difference is the formality of the language. In the previous sets,
there was a mixture of formal and informal writing. The examples above
contained numerous grammar and spelling errors, even though the writers had
access to an email program that could check spelling.
Although the sample of letters in this category was much smaller than those in
the other categories, all of them were more formal in terms of the absence of any
phatic language and in the far smaller number of grammatical errors compared
with what I received from my own students. In 10, for example, the writer begins
with a formal introduction of herself and what department she was studying in.
10. Dear Mr. Bloch:
My name is , who is a student of Pharmaceutics Department going
to finish 108.02 English course
7
at the end of this quarter. I wish I could
have chance to take English 501E in the spring to improve my writing
skill.
Therefore I'd like to ask your permission for the enrollment of that
course.
Hope I can get in the class to learn more about English writing. I'll
appreciate it if you could consider my request.
Thank you very much and have a nice day.
This email recognizes, as did previous ones, that I am a gatekeeper who has
control over whether the student is going to be admitted to this class. In this
particular kind of exigency, the student seems to feel the need to convince me that
she is sincere in her desire to improve her English-language writing. While in
general, the purpose of all the email was to make a favorable impression on me,
my relationship with the writer, however, was much different since there is a
formal distance between the writer and reader, which greatly lessened the writer's
knowledge of the reader. Gee (1999) argues that one of the differences between
formal and informal discourse is the greater degree of contextuality in informal
discourse. Without the benet of having any prior contact, there was a greater
need to establish a context for the request. Of all the messages, example 10 may
have been the easiest for an outsider to understand since it presents a greater
amount of specic information about the writer than do the other messages.
Moreover, more care seems to be given to composing the letter, since the writer
did not know me personally, although there are still some grammatical problems.
It is difcult for the writer to know how these grammatical problems might be
viewed and what their consequences might be. As Sproull and Kiesler (1991)
7
This is the same class that the previous email was collected from and thus, the writer was at the
same level in the program as the writers of other email.
130 J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134
point out, sending inappropriate email is one of the greatest dangers in using the
Internet for communicative purposes. While informal email seemed to be
appropriate to the writers in the rst three categories, it may not have been
appropriate in this category. This difference illustrates what Crystal (2001) calls
``the remarkable diversity and creativity'' of Internet discourse (p. 242). The
implication is that to be a successful email writer, that is, to be able to achieve the
variety of rhetorical purposes that email can be used for in this teacher/student
relationship, it is important to be able to switch back and forth between both
formal and informal contexts, as is the case with every other form of commu-
nication.
Conclusion
These email messages demonstrate the importance some students place on the
social relationship between themselves and their teacher. The use of email for
developing such relationships may be particularly important in the composition
classroom, where there are a variety of possible rhetorical contexts where
interactions between teacher and student can take place. These interactions could
have an important effect on how the teacher views the student or how the student
performs in class. More importantly, they can also be part of the curriculum that is
being taught. Therefore, even when there is no concern for these social factors,
integrating email into L2 composition courses can stimulate a great deal of
interaction between readers and writers (Li, 2000). As Crystal (2001) argues, the
pedagogical value of email comes from the variety of linguistic choices that a
writer has to make in composing an email message. In each different context,
therefore, it is necessary to determine which of the choices is the most appropriate
to make.
Beyond these linguistic choices, I have tried to show that email may allow for
different kinds of social interactions than can take place in face-to-face contexts.
Other forms of computer-mediated communication, such as chat rooms or MOOs,
may also produce different forms of language and social interactions than those
found in traditional classrooms. I have found anecdotal evidence for this in
students who choose chat rooms over face-to-face communication for tutorials.
The potential of these communicative forms will require further research to
determine how non-native English speakers perceive these differences.
A more immediate question is what are the pedagogical implications of email
and other forms of computer-mediated communication. Their primary importance
may be in demonstrating the necessity of having to make linguistic choices for a
wider variety of audiences than can be found in the traditional classroom (Crystal,
2001). The students in this study seemed to intuitively understand that email is
more than just language; the ability to send and receive messages provides a
writing context where relationships can be negotiated through written language.
Thus, to be successful email users requires more than simply uency; it always
J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134 131
requires the ability both to express oneself using a variety of language forms and
rhetorical strategies as well as to know when it is appropriate to use these different
forms. As Baron (1998) argues, we hardly know what email will be like in the
future since it is a product of both evolving social relationships and evolving
technologies. The variation in levels of grammatical correctness is one such
example of this lack of clear standards. As a result, there is a need for email users
to know a variety of forms of email; however, it is less clear whether the students
understand the appropriateness of the different forms. It may be necessary,
therefore, to include email as a major component of composition courses. Because
of the distance between writer and reader, there is, as Honeycutt (2001) has
argued, less opportunity for repairing misunderstandings and giving clarications.
Thus, email may be deceptive to students in terms of the degree of both linguistic
and grammatical control that is required as compared to oral communication.
Li (2000), for example, suggests the teacher plays multiple roles when using
email in order that the students can experience a variety of interactive contexts.
Warschauer (1999) argues that writing email messages is a good example of an
authentic writing task. Swales and Feak (1994, 2000) include chapters on email
writing in their books on academic writing, placing it in the larger context of
academic communication and the way in which disciplinary knowledge is created.
What is less clear is whether email should be taught, particularly in terms of
conventions related to formality, such as proper forms of addressing the reader,
and in terms of grammatical correctness. As Gimenez (2000) points out in regard
to business email, the need for efciency in email has meant that there are no clear
standards for what is considered to be appropriate email. While there are some
resources on the Internet for teaching the ``netiquette'' of email (e.g., Shea, 1994),
there also is much more than netiquette that needs to be discussed. For example,
should students be encouraged to pay more attention to grammar or spelling or
should they be encouraged to feel that the Internet is a sanctuary from such rules?
In the course that I studied here, for example, I have included more formal email
assignments such as writing to someone in your eld asking for information (e.g.,
Swales & Feak, 1994, 2000) as a way of comparing them to less formal email.
Research on Internet writing by non-native speakers is important in our
understanding of whether computer-mediated discourse differs both linguistically
and socially from other forms of rst and second language writing. Researching
email can potentially help us in understanding how language changes as it
encounters changes in social relationships, such as those that result from
differences in levels of power or between different cultures. As Bahktin has
argued, language preserves its integrity by continually responding to imbalances
in the system(Morson &Emerson, 1990). In an academic context, these linguistic
imbalances reect the evolving social relationships that develop in a composition
course. Including myself in this dialogic exchange of messages with my students
helped me understand not only how my students want to interact with me but also
how they can use email to negotiate this interaction. This kind of research may
also help us understand the globalization of the Internet. As more and more
132 J. Bloch / Journal of Second Language Writing 11 (2002) 117134
non-native speakers of English become Internet users, the type of English found in
these examples, as opposed to the standard forms we are most familiar with, may
become more prevalent. What this means for the future of the Internet is perhaps
the most important issue we need to explore.
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