Email Discourse Among Chinese Using English as a Lingua Franca

295 Pages·2016·3.19 MB·English

by  Yuan-shan Chen

Yuan-shan Chen · Der-Hwa Victoria Rau
Gerald Rau Editors
Email Discourse
Among Chinese
Using English as
a Lingua Franca
Email Discourse Among Chinese Using English
as a Lingua Franca
Yuan-shan Chen Der-Hwa Victoria Rau
(cid:129)
Gerald Rau
Editors
Email Discourse
Among Chinese Using
English as a Lingua Franca
123
Editors
Yuan-shan Chen Gerald Rau
Department ofApplied English Chiayi
National Chin-Yi University of Technology Taiwan
Taichung
Taiwan
Der-Hwa Victoria Rau
Institute of Linguistics
National Chung ChengUniversity
Chiayi
Taiwan
ISBN978-981-287-887-8 ISBN978-981-287-888-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-888-5
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Acknowledgments
Producing a book is always a team effort. We are grateful for the tremendous
support we have received from the many contributors. Their dedication, patience,
andunderstandingduringtheproductionofthisbookhavebeenhighlyappreciated.
Wealsowishtothankthereviewersforprovidingtheirvaluablecomments,which
haveimmeasurablystrengthenedtheindividualchapters,andthusthewholebook.
Our appreciation also goes to our assistants, Mr. Hsuan-Yu Tai and Ms. Tzu-Wei
Hsiang, for their work in helping with the preparation of the manuscript. Special
thanks also go to the Ministry of Science and Technology (formerly National
Science Council) in Taiwan for their financial support (grant numbers:
NSC-101-2628-H-167-001, MOST 103-2410-H-167-009). Finally, we want to
express our appreciation to the staff at Springer Publishing for giving us the
opportunity to publish this volume and for their support throughout.
Yuan-shan Chen
Der-Hwa Victoria Rau
Gerald Rau
v
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Yuan-shan Chen, Der-Hwa Victoria Rau and Gerald Rau
Part I Emails from Students to Professors
2 Negotiating Personal Relationship Through Email Terms
of Address. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Der-Hwa Victoria Rau and Gerald Rau
3 Discourse Organization and Features of Email
Writing Among EFL Students in Taiwan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Li-Jung Huang
4 Do Chinese Students Waffle in Their Apologies?:
An Exploration into EFL Learners’ Emails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Miao-Hsia Chang, Jean Curran, Yueh-Kuei Hsu
and Chih-Chun Hsu
5 Politeness and Effectiveness of English Email Requests:
Taiwanese Professors’ Perspectives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Wan-jing Li and Yuan-shan Chen
Part II Emails from Students to the International Academic
Community
6 Emailing Requests to International Researchers: The
Construction of Identity by Chinese EFL Graduate Students. . . . . 115
Xinren Chen
7 Intercultural Taoci Email: New Wine in an Old Bottle . . . . . . . . . 135
Lin Xiao and Yihong Gao
vii
viii Contents
8 Strategies Used in Chinese University Students’ ELF Emails
to Remedy or Prevent Problems in Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Wei Ren
Part III Emails from Peer to Peer
9 Openings and Closings in Intercultural Email Communication:
A Case Study of Taiwanese, Japanese, and Italian Students . . . . . 185
Hsin-chou Huang
10 Apologies in Emails: Interactions Between Chinese EFL
Learners and Their Foreign Peers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Jianda Liu and Wei Ren
Part IV Emails in the Workplace
11 Status-Congruence in Request E-Mail Discourse of Professional
Secretaries in a University of Taiwan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Pi-Hsia Lü
12 A Study on Symbolic Competence and Face in ELF Email
Communication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Hsuan-Yu Tai
13 Top Secret: Hacking and Fraud Detection in Business Emails
of a Taiwanese Company. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Tzu-Wei Hsiang
Contributors
Miao-Hsia Chang Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University,
Taipei, Taiwan
Hsuan-YuTai InstituteofLinguistics,NationalChungChengUniversity,Chiayi,
Taiwan
Xinren Chen Department of English, School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing
University, Nanjing, China
Yuan-shanChen DepartmentofAppliedEnglish,NationalChin-YiUniversityof
Technology, Taichung, Taiwan
JeanCurran DepartmentofEnglish,NationalTaiwanNormalUniversity,Taipei,
Taiwan
Yihong Gao Research Institute of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Peking
University, Beijing, China
Tzu-Wei Hsiang Institute of Linguistics, National Chung Cheng University,
Chiayi, Taiwan
Chih-Chun Hsu Center for Teaching and Learning Development, National
Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan
Yueh-Kuei Hsu Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University,
Taipei, Taiwan
Hsin-chou Huang Institute of Applied English, National Taiwan Ocean
University, Keelung, Taiwan
Li-Jung Huang Department of English Language, Literature and Linguistics,
Providence University, Taichung, Taiwan
Wan-jing Li Institute of Linguistics, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi,
Taiwan
ix
x Contributors
JiandaLiu NationalKeyResearchCenterforLinguisticsandAppliedLinguistics,
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China
Pi-Hsia Lü Department of English Language, Literature and Linguistics,
Providence University, Taichung, Taiwan
Der-Hwa Victoria Rau Institute of Linguistics, National Chung Cheng
University, Chiayi, Taiwan
Gerald Rau Chiayi, Taiwan
Wei Ren National Key Research Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics,
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China
Lin Xiao Research Institute of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Peking
University, Beijing, China
Chapter 1
Introduction
Yuan-shan Chen, Der-Hwa Victoria Rau and Gerald Rau
During the past few decades, English has become the dominant global lingua
franca. In a broader sense, English as a lingua franca (ELF) includes not only
speakers from the Expanding Circle (e.g., Taiwan, China), but also speakers from
theInner (e.g., theU.S., Britain) andOuterCircles (e.g., India,Singapore). ELFis
not the practice “of orientation to the norms of a particular group of English
speakers, but of mutual negotiation involving efforts and adjustments from all
parties” (Jenkins 2009, p. 201). Since the millennium, there has been a steady
growth of empirical studies targeting English as a lingua franca in oral academic
discourse, which have focused on the specific linguistic features and the commu-
nicative strategies used to achieve mutual understanding. However, little attention
hasbeenpaidtoEnglishinwrittentexts,agapidentifiedbyJenkinsetal.(2011)in
their recent review of ELF research.
This book thus aims to fill this gap by investigating Chinese speakers’ email
discourseinanEnglish-as-a-lingua-francacontext.Thankstocomputertechnology,
cyber communications have become more and more popular in the global village.
Unlike formal academic writing, email discourse does not have well-established
conventions, and email writers need to have high linguistic and pragmatic com-
petence to compose appropriate emails. The chapters in this collection address a
wide range of email discourse by Chinese speakersof English. To our knowledge,
thisisthefirsteditedvolumedevotedsolelytoChinesespeakers’emaildiscoursein
English. We target Chinese speakers of English because they constitute the largest
populationfromtheExpandingCirclewhouseEnglishinalinguafrancacontext.It
is our sincere hope that the studies reported in this volume will inspire others to
further explore this issue.
Y.Chen(&)
DepartmentofAppliedEnglish,NationalChin-YiUniversityofTechnology,Taichung,
Taiwan
e-mail:[email protected]
D.-H.V.Rau
InstituteofLinguistics,NationalChungChengUniversity,Chiayi,Taiwan
G.Rau
Chiayi,Taiwan
©SpringerScience+BusinessMediaSingapore2016 1
Y.Chenetal.(eds.),EmailDiscourseAmongChineseUsing
EnglishasaLinguaFranca,DOI10.1007/978-981-287-888-5_1