«It is shown that the students do not use email appropriately, do not know the requirements for a good composition or for appropriate behaviour in their interaction with teachers using email as a medium of communication»

Dimitrinka G. Níkleva
«Markers of politeness and impoliteness in student-teacher interaction in the discourse genre of emails»
Signos, vol. 51, n.º 97 (2018)

Revista Signos. Estudios de Lingüística | Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso | Viña del Mar | CHILE

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«Abstract

»Politeness is a socio-pragmatic phenomenon that conditions the success or failure of communication. Consequently, this study aims to investigate the markers of politeness and impoliteness in pupil-teacher interaction at the university stage in Spain using email, one of the most used discourse genres today. The objectives formulated for this study are:
1) To study the opinion of a group of university students on their preparedness for the composing of emails;
2) to compare the perception that the participating subjects have about their ability in the different aspects related with email composition with the competence that is seen in the composition of such texts in the analysed corpus;
3) to design a didactic intervention to teach how to compose emails, and to put it into practice so as to improve the results;
4) to compare the results after the didactic intervention.

»Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis has been carried out on an opinion questionnaire of 160 students on the composition of emails and on a corpus of 120 emails. A didactic intervention was then designed, based on the results obtained. Subsequently, another corpus of 60 emails was selected to compare the results from before and after the intervention. The results demonstrate considerable improvement in many aspects.

»Introduction

»Politeness is a social behaviour, governed by social rules and conventions that a sociocultural community establishes in order to prescribe expected behaviour in determined contexts. It is a mode of behaviour established to maintain social order and harmonious relations between the members of a society. Consequently, it has a social function whose final objective is the negotiation of agreement.

»Within the framework of linguistics, its study belongs to pragmatics for being a linguistic strategy, and for being a socio-pragmatic phenomenon that conditions, among other things, the success or failure of communication. It is produced in a determined sociocultural context, the components of which guarantee the presence or absence of appropriateness in speech acts. It could also be defined as a form of social behaviour, governed by rules and principles, and therefore it can be considered a communication strategy.

»In the terms of Martín Zorraquino (1999), verbal politeness consists of the rights and obligations that arise for the interlocutors in every communicative situation. According to Leech (1983), politeness is a principle of the social regulation of interaction.

»Another significant feature is that politeness is a behaviour acquired in the process of socialization, brought about principally by parents and teachers. Think, for example, of the types of phrases with which a child is taught to give thanks or ask for something: ‘What do you say?, How do you ask nicely?’, etc.

»This article offers an approach to the phenomenon of politeness and impoliteness from a theoretical basis and an essentially pragmatic perspective, with a simultaneous focus on making the study applicable to language teaching. In order to do so, email is the discourse genre chosen to discern and analyse the markers of politeness and impoliteness in student-teacher interaction in the Spanish university sphere, with the added intention of helping the students to learn to compose emails adequately.

»Discussion

»The variables analysed in the corpus [corpus 1 (before the didactic intervention) and corpus 2 (after the didactic intervention)] were:

»Presentation/identification; subject heading (presence/absence) and appropriateness of the subject heading; greeting (presence/absence) and appropriateness of the greeting; signing off and appropriateness of the signing off; appropriateness to the topic; appropriateness to the addressee; register (formal/informal); form of personal address (tú/usted); appropriateness of the user address; modalizers and lexicalized expressions (gracias, por favor ‘thank you, please’, etc.); hedged expressions of illocutionary force (si no te importa; si no es mucha molestia; perdone las molestias; pido perdón ‘if you don’t mind; if it’s not too much bother; sorry for the bother; please excuse me’); hedging verbal tenses (me gustaría, podría ‘I’d like; I could/might’); intensifiers (quantifiers, etc.); fallacies.

»These variables were selected because appropriateness is a manifestation of politeness, since it considers the circumstances of the communicative situation: The roles of the participants, age, communicative purpose, etc. In this sense, to be appropriate means to be polite at the same time.

»Some variables related to spelling and linguistic correctness in general are included in the analysis because, in our opinion, correctness is also a marker of politeness that considers the characteristics of the addressee and of the roles at play in the communicative situation.

»After this first stage of the study, a didactic intervention was designed in order to teach the students to compose emails and achieve an improved pragmatic competence in which, most importantly, politeness and appropriateness are emphasized. The importance of linguistic correctness was also stressed.

»The methodology consisted of discussing various emails in class with different activities that promoted reflexion and group conversation. The teacher took the role of coordinator and centred the conversation on a few aspects that needed improving. It was observed that the students themselves spotted the errors, the impoliteness, the lack of appropriateness, etc. They even laughed at the inadequate and impolite behaviour. To begin with they were not conscious of the importance of many of the criteria, but together they formulated some pragmatic and linguistic rules for the composition of emails.

»[...]

»It must be stressed that in the questionnaire, the students answered various questions correctly, yet this did not correspond with what they do in reality (as seen in the corpus).

»Regarding the form of personal address, in the questionnaire 100 % answered that they use the usted form. Nevertheless, in corpus 1 only 53.33 % used it, and this number fell to 45 % in corpus 2. It is important to note that in corpus 2 the number of students who did not greet fell from 10 % to 1.7 %.

»As well as the greetings that have been collected in Table 4, one was found that was actually in the subject line: “Hola, hola X ‘hello, hello X’ [first name of the teacher]. Soy XXX ‘This is XXX’ [first name of the student]”. The reduplication of the informal greeting aims to establish a very relaxed and, at the same time, close and friendly tone, removing distance and abolishing their roles.

»The common formulas for signing off were:

»Un saludo y gracias. ‘Regards and thanks’.

»Un abrazo. ‘A hug’ – which is equivalent to ‘best wishes’ or ‘love’, depending on the register.

»Espero tu respuesta, gracias ‘I hope to hear from you, thanks’

»Sin más me despido. Un saludo y quedo a la espera de su contestación. ‘Without further ado, I’ll sign off. Regards and I await your reply’.

»Espero noticias suyas pronto!! ‘I hope to hear from you soon!!’

»Un Saludo y Muchísimas Gracias de Corazón. ‘Regards and Many Heartfelt Thanks.’

»Muchas Gracias. ‘Many Thanks.’

»Muchas gracias de antemano Un saludo. ‘Many thanks in advance. Regards.’

»Muchísimas gracias por adelantado. Le envío un cordial saludo. ‘Very many thanks in advance. I send you kind regards’.

»Muchas gracias, por todo. Perdone las molestias. ‘Many thanks, for everything. Sorry for the bother.’

»Nos vemos el viernes. Un saludo! ‘See you on Friday. Regards!’

»Atentamente. ‘Yours sincerely.’ (Used only twice in corpus 1 and 4 times in corpus 2).

»Le mando desde Burdeos un gran besito. Espero tener respuesta pronto. Muchas gracias. ‘A big ‘little’ kiss from Bordeaux. I hope to get a reply soon. Many thanks.’

»In the last example, the contradiction between the adjective gran [big] and the diminutive besito ‘little kiss’ is noteworthy. The combination between the two words, due to their semantics and the formal features of the diminutive, results in incoherence.

»In corpus 2 an improvement was also observed in the use of the ‘subject’ heading, signing off, in the appropriateness to the topic and addressee. The use of formal register increases, and therefore the signs of politeness too. The ‘subject’ heading is the space given for formulating the topic or subject matter of the message. It is a short phrase that sums up the contents of the text and, therefore, allows the formulation of a hypothesis concerning the relevance and interest of the message.

»In this way it determines the decision regarding its reading or, on the contrary, its deletion. Consequently it is a question of politeness to provide this information for the addressee. In professional emails the ‘subject’ is characterized by a greater obligatory nature that is explained with the highest degree of formality in the interaction and with the necessity of contextualizing the message. Moreover, it is impolite to try to impose upon the teacher the obligation of reading it with urgency without the students identifying themselves (in the case of the user address not being identifiable).

»Another variable included in the corpus analysis is the user address. It is convenient to choose an address that is informative about the sender. In the professional world the use of institutional email is recommended. However, very few students make use of it and, furthermore, the majority have an email address that does not identify them (despite the fact that normally they introduce themselves in the message body).

»It is inappropriate and impolite to use an email address like elmasguay@ [thecoolest@], lacabraloca@ [crazy@] o lamassexy@ [thesexiest@] in correspondence with teachers. It shows a lack of appropriateness and politeness. The data obtained reveal that 83.1 % of the emails in corpus 1 have an ‘unsatisfactory’ address that does not identify the user. Only 8.5 % use an appropriate address that identifies them or that is institutional. In corpus 2 the appropriateness of the user address has improved from 8.5 % to 21.7 %.

»Another example of impoliteness and lack of appropriateness in correspondence with a teacher is the use of smile emoticons or substitute-laughter verbal expressions like jeje [‘haha’]. In corpus 1 the following email was found, about which it is important to clarify that the student and the teacher have not yet met:

»“Muchísimas Gracias por la Rápida respuesta a mi mensaje!!! jeje Por último, me gustaría saber cuando será el examen o si va a haber varias posibilidades, el tipo del mismo (o solamente lo que me ha puesto de los textos) y poco más jeje creo que ha resuelto claramente mis dudas!! pero me faltaría eso por saber...
Un Saludo y Muchísimas Gracias de Corazón.”

»‘Many Thanks for the Quick reply to my message!!! haha Lastly, I’d like to know when the exam will be and if there are going to be various possibilities, its type (or only what you have told me about the texts) and not much more haha i [sic] think you have clearly resolved my doubts!! but I still need to know this...
Regards and Many Heartfelt Thanks’.

»It must be highlighted that after the didactic intervention the use of emoticons and paralinguistic substitutes of the type ‘haha’ disappear in corpus 2.

»It is important to emphasize that a marker of politeness is not only the use of formal register but also spelling, punctuation, the good use of upper- and lower-case letters, etc., whose degree of obligation varies depending firstly on the addressee and then on the roles between the participants of the communication. These features are not only examples of correctness but also of politeness. Since, regrettably, it seems very difficult to manage to get the students always to write well, one ought at least to insist on them knowing how to differentiate between different communication situations and all the rules that derive from their components and from the relationship between them.

»One can allow that they relax more with their friends and are careless with spelling, use many abbreviations and smile emoticons, but they should know how to use formal register and apply the rules of correctness according to the addressee (age, roles, etc.) and the communicative purpose.

»Some students who use informal register sometimes insert phrases from another language, such as tipical spanish [sic], criticizing the lack of punctuality of some teachers, but neglecting correctness both in Spanish and in English.

»[...]

»Another of the analysis variables was the use of modalizers and lexicalized expressions such as por favor ‘please’ and gracias ‘thank you’. It is confirmed that Spanish presents a lower frequency of their usage in comparison with English, for example. In the great majority of the emails the students ask for something: Information, favours, etc. Nonetheless, a high frequency in the use of por favor and gracias was not observed. It was observed that in corpus 1, in 79.7 % of the emails, the expression por favor was not used even once.

»The word gracias normally appears in the signing off formulas, but even so in 39 % of emails (corpus 1) it is not used once. It is fitting to add that the use of quantifiers occurs again with much frequency in the signing off: Muchísimas gracias ‘very many thanks’, mil gracias ‘a thousand thank yous’, etc.

»The use of formal register in the correspondence between students and teachers is a marker of politeness as well. In corpus 1, 72.9 % of the emails have used formal register compared to 27.1 % informal. Nevertheless, in the emails with formal register the informal greeting hola ‘hello’ predominates (53.3 %) over 13.3 % that use a formal greeting and 10 % that have no greeting.

»The formal greeting in Spanish is Estimado o Estimada ‘Dear’, followed by a colon, not a comma. In corpus 1 it was used correctly in only 5 emails (out of 60). In 3 emails it was used with a comma.

»In one email the diminutive of teacher was used, which is inappropriate and impolite, since the student and teacher barely know each other; moreover, the interaction roles do not allow this form of address, nor had it been permitted.

»To the three factors that determine politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987) –power, social distance and cultural context– the emotional relationship between the interlocutors must be added (Kienpointner, 2008). Kienpointner establishes a relation between politeness and emotional arguments. The strategies of (im)politeness are often used to “create or modify more or less pleasant emotions during the interaction” (Kienpointner, 2008: 27).

»It was decided to include in the analysis one of these emotional arguments –fallacies– that has decreased in corpus 2: False reasoning or arguments. Following the classification of Copi (1969), only those that predominate in the student emails have been collected, which are fallacies that appeal to psychological and affective means. Among them, the most frequent in the analysed emails is of the argumentum ad misericordiam type –those that are used to provoke pity in the other person. For example: “¡Profesora, no me suspenda! Mi padre no me va a pagar más los estudios, si no apruebo”. (‘Don’t fail me, professor! My father won’t pay for my studies anymore if I don’t pass.’).

»Another group of fallacies that has been found in the student emails is of those based on pseudo-reasoning: False cause, accident, etc.

»Cultural differences that determine different behaviour and strategies must be considered. In other words, (im)polite strategies to create emotions are different in different languages and cultures.

»In some languages and cultures priority to the independence of the individual is given, and this brings about mutual distancing, as in Anglo-American, Dutch or Swedish culture, while in other cultures affiliation or closeness and group solidarity are more important, as in Spanish peninsular, Turkish, Chinese, and Japanese culture (Bravo & Briz, 2004; Briz, 2004; Haverkate, 2004).

»For example, regarding the rank of imposition, Kienpointner (2008: 26): states “the fear of intrusion in English culture or the desire for affiliation in Spanish culture”. Thus emotions become a communicative purpose.

»“The emotions (positive or negative) have a dialectic relationship with (im)politeness: On the one hand, certain emotions are the effect of (im)polite communicative acts; on the other, emotions can cause these same acts” (Kienpointner, 2008: 27).

»Following this line, fallacies have been included in the analysis, because they are a type of argumentation and therefore, as a strategy, the same as politeness.

»A dependency relationship has been established between the use of por favor ‘please’ and fallacies, because in the analysed emails the most used fallacy is the argumentum ad misericordiam type and therefore is usually used to try to provoke the teacher’s pity and request a favour, normally related to marks. This causes an increased use of por favor. However, its use in cases of requesting information is minimal.

»The students do not always give thanks for the information they request and receive. Neither do they apologise when asking for information that has already been given in the class or that is available on a virtual platform of the course and is available to everyone. They are not conscious of how much work is required for a teacher to have to reply individually about issues already dealt with in class and/or available online. It is, therefore, the author’s opinion that to educate the students on how to choose when to send the teacher an email would be an act of politeness and respect.

»Below are a few examples of fallacies in the analysed emails:

»“Sólo le pido que se ponga en mi lugar, voy a perder la plaza de profesor en un colegio con lo que eso cuesta conseguirlo y todo porque tuve un mal día a la hora de hacer la parte práctica su examen [sic]...”

»“I only ask that you put yourself in my shoes, I’m going to lose my position as a teacher in a school, after all the trouble it takes to get one, and all because I had a bad day at the time of doing the practical part your exam [sic]...”.

»“En serio X [Profesora], no soy alumno de rogar ni suplicar pero es que necesito el aprobado, no creo que me vuelva a salir la oportunidad de poder trabajar como profesor sin tener que hacer las oposiciones y si no me cree en que solo me queda su asignatura le puedo enviar una copia de mi expediente. [...] Perdóneme por la insistencia pero es que este suspenso trastoca todo por lo que he estado trabajando durante el curso académico además de mi futuro como docente”.

»“Seriously, X [Teacher], I am not the type of student to beg but I really need to pass, I don’t think I’ll get another opportunity to able to work as a teacher without having to do the public exams and if you don’t believe that I only have your subject left to pass I can send you a copy of my file. [...] Forgive me for insisting but this failure ruins everything that I have been studying for during the academic course as well as my future as a teacher”.

»“Me gustaría pues que me ayudase para conseguir aprobar la asignatura por fin, ya que es mi último año en la facultad y debido a la situación económica que vivimos no puedo permitirme seguir ningún año más aquí... además de que ya tenía que haber finalizado la carrera. Ruego pues que me ayude lo máximo posible para poder dar por finalizado este tema”.

»“So I’d like you to help me to finally pass the subject, given that this is my last year in the faculty and due to the current economic situation I can’t afford to carry on another year here... and also I should have finished my degree already. I implore you to help me as much as possible to finish this subject”.

»Politeness is not an automatic result of certain formulas. Let us look at the subject of a student who sent three messages. In the first two she requests information that she is refused, but she is told where she can look it up, given that there is a virtual platform online that is used for the subject, as well as having been provided in class. It is also suggested to her to go to a tutorial. The student does not attend classes even though they are compulsory, nor is she able to go to a tutorial. Her reaction to the teacher’s reply is to be upset at not receiving what she asked for and how she asked for it, so that in her last message she uses the formal greeting with the correct punctuation, but the entire message is ironic.

»Thus she utilizes another type of fallacy: Ad hominem (false reasoning used to attack the interlocutor or opponent). In the first sentence of the email there is this ironic ad hominem attack: Gracias por su comprensiva respuesta ‘Thank you for your understanding reply.’ Furthermore, she goes on to describe the teacher as inflexible and lacking understanding:

»“He leido [sic] que para hacer compatible tabajo [sic] y estudios en esta universidad, también depende de la flexibilidad y comprensión que el profesorado estime dar al alumno o alumna en cuestión, por eso yo buenamente pensaba que usted me podía responder a esas pequeñas dudas que tenía.”

»“I have read [original missing accent] that to make wok [sic] and studies compatible in this university also depends on the flexibility and understanding that teachers deem to give the student in question, so I honestly thought that you could reply to these small questions that I had”.

»The student tries to reinforce her positive face with the use of the qualifying adverb buenamente [honestly] and with the quantifier pequeñas [small], while the intention regarding the face of the teacher is exactly the opposite: She accuses her of inflexibility and lack of understanding. Moreover, in the rest of the message she reflects on what one earns, on the prices of university teaching, on “los precios que suben como la espuma a diferencia del sueldo del trabajador” ‘the prices that soar, unlike the pay of the worker.’

»If a favour is asked and this request is refused, one must know how to accept it and, depending on the communicative situation, know how to maintain polite style. It is a question not only of politeness but also of education, without which one tries not to request but to impose and demand. One must know when and with whom this can be done.

»Insistence on being granted a favour is by itself impolite, as in the case of these other emails:

»“Necesito que me diga mi nota en la mayor brevedad posible”. “I need you to tell me my mark as soon as possible”.

»“Necesito acabar ya”. “I need to finish now”. (Referring to finishing and passing the academic course).

»“Espero que me pueda ayudar con la mayor brevedad posible”. “I hope you can help me as quickly as possible”.

»In some emails the use of the captatio benevolentiae strategy is observed, normally in the days approaching the exam. An example would be:

»“Estoy haciendo todo lo que está en mis manos para poder sacar la asignatura hacia delante con el estudio intensivo...”

»“I am doing all that I can to be able to pass the subject, with intensive studying...”.

»On other occasions, face-flattering polite expressions are [emphasized]:

»“Me ha gustado mucho el trato que usted nos ha dado y lo interesante de cómo impartía las clases. Nos ha motivado mucho. Enhorabuena y espero que siga así. ¡Gracias!”.

»“I have really liked how you have treated us and how interesting your way of teaching has been. You have really motivated us. Congratulations and I hope it continues. Thank you!”.

»Among hedging strategies, the students introduce apologies for not accenting words when they send email from a mobile telephone or for possible spelling mistakes due to their state of mind, as in this message where a student informs that she cannot take the exam the next day because of the death of a family member:

»“Perdone si no me expreso muy bien, pero las circunstancias me lo impiden.”

»“Forgive me if I am not expressing myself well, but the circumstances make it difficult for me”.

»“...me gustaría tener una breve tutoría con usted si es posible [...] Si es posible le rogaría me constestase [sic] citándome cuando usted desee.”

»“...I would like to have a short tutorial with you if possible [...] If it is possible could you please replys [sic] making the appointment whenever you’d like”.

»To conclude the discussion of the results, it is worth highlighting that during the analysis of the data obtained it was noteworthy how the students filled out the questionnaire, answering what they believe is considered to be correct, and not what they think or do. Their questionnaire responses have been contrasted with the email corpus, where the record shows what they do in reality. They know that in theory they should identify themselves, state the subject or topic of the message, greet and sign off respectfully, use the form of personal address usted, utilize standard register in the emails they send to their teachers, consider the variable age of the addressee and the interaction roles, take care over correctness, etc.

»The reality is far removed. Errors of spelling, accenting, punctuation, morphology, etc. abound. The erroneous usage of upper- and lower-case letters is very worrying. Many students do not separate sentences, and they write the whole message without a break, which makes comprehension difficult.

»For all of these reasons, it is shown that the students do not use email appropriately, do not know the requirements for a good composition or for appropriate behaviour in their interaction with teachers using email as a medium of communication.

»Conclusions

»Despite the fact that university students are considered to be qualified to compose different text types, the markers of politeness in their emails –as part of their discourse and pragmalinguistic competence– do not meet the adequacy required for the teacher-student relationship type.

»The teacher-student relationship is a social relationship, in which a role difference exists that creates rights and obligations which require the use of formal or standard register, without neglecting the markers of politeness and correctness of expression. The message should be appropriate for the subject, appropriate for the addressee and appropriate for the communicative situation. All these aspects form part of politeness and affect the efficacy of the communication.

»A pragmatic competence is required for the composition of emails. The codification and decodification of an email form part of a polyphonic phenomenon that demands a collaborative (shared) and negotiated interpretation in which the sender and receiver are jointly responsible for the success or failure of the interaction.

»It can be concluded that politeness acts as an indication of the appropriateness of linguistic and social behaviour, and from the pragmalinguistic point of view contributes to the success or failure of the communicative interaction. It is a principle of the social regulation of interactions. Moreover, the illocutionary force (the intentional value) underlies the whole message and one must know the rules both to encode and decode it.

»The didactic intervention, as an essential part of this investigation, has improved the results in many aspects: The number of students who identify themselves and greet in a polite form has increased; the usage of the subject heading and of signing off has improved; the appropriateness to topic and addressee has improved, as has the appropriateness of user addresses; the use of emoticons and paralinguistic substitutes has disappeared; and spelling and linguistic correctness in general has also improved, although to a lesser extent.

»All this permits us to state that the email as discourse genre should be taught at several educational stages. Hence teachers will update the types of text and genres that they teach, corresponding to current demand, according to which email is a new discourse genre (Vela Delfa, 2008; Níkleva & Núñez, 2013).

»This will bring about improved competence for the students who, at the same time, will respond with greater interest and motivation, since email forms a part of their daily life.»