Let's See If E-mail Resembles Writing or Speech: A Comparison of English Business E-mails Written by Iranians and !ative English Speakers

The present study aimed at a contrastive linguisticanalysisof English business e-mails at a micro level. To this end, an authentic corpus of English business e-mails written by Iranians (containing 60 business e-mails) was compared and contrasted with a corresponding corpus of such e-mails written by native speakers of English. Baron's (1998) linguistic profile of e-mail constituted the basis for the analysisand certain linguistic features included in this profile (i.e. pronouns, adjectives/adverbs, tense, contractions, forms of address, and salutation/signature) were selected to be examined against another profile of spoken and written linguistic features. Results showed that the language of business e-mail does not exclusively fit into either end of the speech-writing continuum and falls somewhere in between.The linguistic comparison of the two corpora suggested a more speech-like grammar for Iranian e-mails and, more speech-like and, therefore, less formal style for native English emails. Investigating structures and characteristics of English language realized in business settings and for commercial purposes, this study offered a number of implications for business English teaching staff, material developers, and last but not least, business negotiators.

Keywords:

Contrastive , Business e-mails , Micro level , Linguistic features