The use of email for interpersonal communication in a second language: A comparative case study of two Chinese speakers' email practices in English.

摘要

This study examines two Chinese speakers' longitudinal email communication practices in English in the United States. The purpose is to uncover how and why they employed certain discourse features and strategies in various email communicative events. Drawing on critical discourse analysis approaches, this study undertakes not only the analysis of text (email messages), but also the analysis of discourse practice (email writing processes) and of sociocultural practice (email use in situational, institutional, and wider societal/cultural contexts). A particular focus is on the two participants' institutional email practices involving asymmetrical power relationships, such as student-to-professor and client-to-lawyer communication. Issues of power, identity, and ideology in relation to their email practices are explored within three interconnected areas: (1) medium use, (2) interpersonal communication with emphasis on politeness, and (3) second language use.; The data consist of the authentic emails that the participants wrote for their social and personal purposes over two and a half years when they were in the U.S., and a series of in-depth face-to-face interviews along with several on-line interviews that revealed their perspectives on email practices. These two types of data illustrate a complex, interactive relationship between second language (L2) speakers' language use in email and social contexts. The study found that the participants' social relationships and interactions with their email interlocutors, their identity construction in situated practices, and their culturally-shaped values and beliefs interacted with one another in shaping and constraining their use of email as a medium and as a discourse. Moreover, the study also found that their long-term socialization in the target culture affected their email practices, particularly with respect to politeness realizations as shown in their institutional communication. This reveals that the appropriateness of L2 speakers' email practices requires adequate culture-specific and medium-specific pragmatic knowledge. The study closes by exploring the implications for critical language awareness in computer-mediated communication and interpersonal/intercultural communication using a second language. L2 learners need to acquire competence in using appropriate language in order to construct desirable situated identities and achieve effective communication.