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Email & Written
American English
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The enormous success of email as a technology reflects the on-going trend, at least in
American English, for writing to approximate the structure and conventions of speech
rather than functioning as a discrete form of linguistic representation. Yet when we
probe the linguistic character of email, the story becomes yet more complex. For email
has some characteristics of writing, some of speech and some emergent qualities that
belong to neither. Moreover, the formal properties of email as a system of linguistic
representation are sometimes at odds with the ways in which real-world email users
actually send and receive messages.
To understand the nature of email as a linguistic system, we need to answer three sets
of questions:
1) What are the commonly assumed characteristics of spoken and written language? Are these
characteristics reflected in actual spoken and written usage? 2) What are the commonly
assumed characteristics of email? To what extent are they like spoken or written language?
3) What presuppositions do users bring to sending and receiving email? To what extent do
these presuppositions derive from envisioning email as a form of speech, as a form of
writing or as a new genre of communication?
There isn't the opportunity here properly to
address these questions (see Baron in preparation; Herring, 1996). However, by highlighting
a few examples of "mismatches" between assumptions about traditional speech and writing on
the one hand and real-world email usership on the other, we can get a sense of why email
is frequently perceived as being more like speech than like writing.
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Paradigmatic characteristics versus real-world user presuppositions
The literature on the relationship between speech and writing is, like Caesar's Gaul,
divisible into three parts. One group of writers (see Coleman, 1996 for a good summary of
this approach) lays out paradigmatic sets of characteristics that distinguish spoken from
written language (for example, written language is more formal than speech; people say
more than they write; speech is ephemeral while writing is durable). A second group of
authors (e.g., Tannen, 1982) argues that the form and content of spoken and written
language are nowhere as discrete (e.g., under the right social circumstances, speech may
be much more formal than writing). A third group (e.g., Heath, 1983; Street, 1984;
Besnier, 1995) eschews the whole structural discussion and focuses instead on the
ethnographic conditions that lead speakers and writers in different societies to formulate
linguistic messages the way they do.
Whatever one's theoretical position, it is nonetheless true that most language users in literate
societies share certain assumptions about how they think writing differs from speech. These
assumptions, which were traditionally inculcated through formal schooling, roughly parallel
the analysis laid out by the first group of scholars, even though these same users may,
in day-to-day writing, produce language much more like that characterized by the second and
third perspectives.
The same dichotomy exists with regard to email. Paradigmatically, email is, for example,
a durable form of linguistic representation. Unlike speech, email is typed, can be stored and can
be printed out. Yet in actual usage, senders of email typically behave as if the medium is ephemeral
(i.e., like speech). The clearest evidence of this user presupposition is the writing style that
characterizes much of email.
Two examples illustrate this trend, at least in the United States, for email to follow the style of
speech, not writing. First, unlike off-line composition, emails typically undergo little or no editing. In fact, many otherwise meticulous writers send "written¾ emails without
rereading them, while they would never transmit the same information in a traditionally composed
letter or memorandum without review.
Second, most Americans readily adopt an extremely casual style in their email, more akin to the
informality of American speech than to the relative formality of writing. The relaxed tone of
emails is evidenced both in terms of address (users shift more quickly to first names - or no
salutations at all - than in off-line writing) and in the ease with which humor is incorporated
into communication with people whom you have never met or with whom, even in face-to-face speech,
you would likely be more reserved.
This last point highlights one of the emergent dimensions of email that transcends the dichotomous
speech-versus-writing discussion. Email provides a point of entree for communicating with
individuals with whom you would ordinarily have no contact or whom you would hesitate to
interrupt, e.g., with a telephone call. For instance, we send emails to heads of organizations
with whom we have little or no opportunity to air our concerns face-to-face and to whom a letter
would seem inappropriate or futile. Similarly, we email people with whom we have working
relationships but whom it would be an imposition to call and too cumbersome to write.
Why are emails not viewed as social intrusions, while either a knock on the door, the ring of a
phone or a letter in the box might be so perceived? Because email is more like the chime of a
clock reminding us of the hour than like a summons commanding our departure. We have some latitude
about when (or whether) to reply. As with written communication, we can choose the conditions
of our response. At the same time, though, the socially acceptable time limit on responding
is more akin to spoken language, since our interlocutor can be fairly certain that the message
arrived and knows the technology enables a swift reply, As David Kolb observed, "Email offers
focus and fast turnaround. A written letter unanswered for a month is not a serious matter;
an email message unanswered for a month may signal the end of a friendship" (Kolb, 1996:16).
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Implications for the effects of email on written American English
What impact is email having (and can we expect it to have) on the way we produce the
written word, at least in American English? As the number of email users continues to
grow (currently, exponentially), we should anticipate that the nature of writing used in
email will itself undergo evolution, much as word processing has (e.g., while an early
generation of users typed or handwrote drafts and only then input the text, today most
computer users compose on-line). While the eventual future of email is unknown, some
trends seem clear.
First, the amount of composition done at a computer - either as stand-alone "word processed"
documents or as messages designed for computer mediated communication (be it email or chat room)
- is increasing markedly. Since the same technology is used for composing all of this written
text, the possibility for stylistic influence from text composed as email upon text composed as
stand-alone word-processed documents is obvious.
Second, the move we discussed earlier towards group-oriented writing (either for peer review or
to create collective products) is greatly facilitated by computer technology. The common use of
email (or local networking) to transmit texts for comment or contribution also invites cross-over
influences of email writing conventions onto traditional off-line composition.
Third, it seems unlikely that the influence will work the other way. One might, for example,
be tempted to hypothesize that as formal editing tools designed for word processing (such as
spelling and grammar checkers) become increasingly available for email, at least the "mechanics"
of email will begin to look more like writing than like speech. The real issue, however, will
be one of motivation, not availability. Quite simply, why bother? Since the inception of
these tools for word processing, an astounding number of people doing word processing have
simply ignored the opportunity to do editorial cleanup on the computer, with the result
(as many composition teachers know) that papers prepared on computers are often editorially
inferior to those written longhand or typed, where students understood they were expected
to check their work.
What have we learned about the evolving relationship between speech, writing and composition
in America? In the nineteenth century, "composition" was typically oral, though modeled on
written standards. In the twentieth century, writing is the pedagogical norm, though increasingly
modeled on speech. Computer technology has influenced the teaching of writing, but generally in
the directions that composition theory and broader educational philosophy were already leading.
To the extent that composition is increasingly done on-line, it seems likely that the spoken-
language properties of email will reinforce the increasingly speech-like character of writing
that school and college pedagogy in the United States has been fostering since the late
nineteenth century.
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Writing in the Age of Email:
III E-mail & Written American English
