Upcoming Colloquium - Department of Linguistics

Linguistics colloquium
Straub 145, 3-4:30pm, Friday, November 20.

Natalie Toogood, University of Oregon

Masters Thesis Presentation

Formality in emails from students to professors

This master’s thesis research examines manner of address by undergraduates at University of Oregon to their professors in emails, to see if there are any patterns in formality/informality that correlate to the gender of the student and/or professor, or the age of the student and/or professor, as well as other factors.

During spring term 2008, I collected emails from participating students in 12 undergraduate classes. The professors in these classes did not include "netiquette" guidelines in their syllabi, and did not ask the students in class to address them in a particular way, whether formally, such as "Professor Smith", or informally, such as "Robert".

Analysis is still underway, but will focus primarily on the first e-mail each student sent to the professor, before receiving any other emails from the professor, and secondarily on all other emails sent from the student to the professor. Preliminary analysis shows that the majority of emails from students to professors do include either a title or last name in the greeting, regardless of age or gender of the student or professor. Also, emails tend to be more formal at the beginning of the term and either remain formal, or become less formal as the term progresses.