An analysis of the pragmatic elements in written academic interaction: a case study of North-American University student emails

Análisis de los elementos pragmáticos en la interacción escrita académica: el caso de los correos electrónicos de universitarios norteamericanos

Abstract

The current study investigates the use and function of the pragmatic moves related to politeness in the written form. It analyses a corpus written by American and native Spanish students who participated in the first task of the writing skills of the University of Antonio Nebrija’s Project: Proyecto de Examen Multinivel de Certificación del Español Académico. In order to recognise the key text features of both sources, their writings were examined for pragmatic moves related to politeness, forms of address, degree of requestive directness and internal/external modification devices in the heading, body and farewell of emails. Results suggest that those American students analysed in the study did not adjust to an appropriate register and manner in academic Spanish.