E-politeness in Iranian English Electronic Requests to the Faculty

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a study designed to investigate English e-requests<br />of Iranian EFL postgraduate students (i.e., nonnative speakers of English) made to<br />their professors during their education at Islamic Azad University, Najaf Abad<br />Branch, Isfahan, Iran, to find out types of politeness features employed in the students'<br />e-mails and the extent to which these features might influence the degree of politeness<br />of the students' e-mails to the faculty. To that end, both quantitative and qualitative<br />approaches were employed to investigate 60 English e-mails composed by the<br />participants. The findings revealed that the Iranian students' English e-mails were not<br />overly adorned with politeness features. The results also indicated that such direct and<br />unmodified e-mails failed to create e-polite messages to the faculty and, therefore,<br />were capable of causing pragmatic failure.