Pragmatic Usage in Academic Email Requests: Comparing Written DCT and Email Data

This project investigated the authenticity of written DCT with request emails from students to faculty. The researchers collected 52 emails from 12 Chinese graduate students majoring in Engineering at a southwest university at the United States and categorized them into five settings (appointment, committee, registration, signature and updates). These 12 participants also took the written DCT that was designed by the researchers based on the real email data. This article compared the outcomes from the real email data and the written DCT in term of length, supportive moves, request perspective and request strategies. The results showed that participants produced longer request in real email than in written DCT. There was no significant difference between real email data and written DCT in terms of grounder and request perspective.

本研究以学生致教职人员的请求类邮件为效标，探究书面话语完成任务（Discourse Completion Task，DCT）的真实性。研究人员从美国西南部一所高校的12名工科专业中国研究生处收集了52封邮件，并将其划分为五类场景：预约、委员会事务、注册、署名与进度更新。该12名参与者同时完成了研究人员基于真实邮件数据设计的书面DCT任务。本研究从邮件长度、支持性言语行为、请求视角与请求策略四个维度，对比分析了真实邮件数据与书面DCT的产出结果。结果显示，参与者在真实邮件中产出的请求文本长度显著长于书面DCT的产出内容。在请求依据（grounder）与请求视角两个维度上，真实邮件数据与书面DCT的产出结果无显著统计学差异。