Characteristics of effective auto-reply emails: Politeness and perceptions

摘要

There is an extensive body of previous research that examines the role of politeness in email communication [1-10], but information about its role in the specific subtype of auto-reply messages is much more limited [10]. The present pilot study, grounded in Brown and Levinson's Politeness Theory (1987), further develops this line of investigation by considering readers' perceptions of positive and negative politeness strategies in auto-reply email as well as other features that they report considering when evaluating a message.