Email in the academic field: General characteristics, dialogic potential, specifics of functioning

Vollständiger Abstract

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The article is based on the analysis of electronic correspondence within a number of Russian universities and deals with the specifics of electronic business writing in its academic form. The article outlines the differences between a traditional business letter in its paper version and an electronic business letter and characterizes the functions of electronic academic letters: informational, organizational, contact-establishing and contact-supporting, educational. The exchange of business correspondence by e-mail is considered as a communicative situation of dialogical interaction between the addressee and the addressee. The article establishes the correlation of initiating e-business letters with stimulating lines, and reacting ones with reacting lines of natural (primary) dialogue. The dialogic nature of an electronic business letter is manifested through the special importance of the addressee factor, the specific tonality of epistolary texts, the alignment of initiating and reacting emails into dialogic unities or expanded chains, as well as the action within these unities and chains of rules for syntactic and pragmatic coordination of dialogue lines. Through a survey of professors of a number of Russian universities, the author establishes the degree of activity in their using e-mail and the intensity of their business correspondence using this resource, as well as the attitude of members of the academic community to the studied professional communication tool.