Politeness Accommodation in Electronic Mail

Politeness Accommodation in Electronic Mail
UUa Bunz Scott W. Campbell
Rutgers University Hawaii Pacific University
Email has become a common form of interaction between both individuals and
groups in the online environment. Based on Buzzanell et al.'s (1996) research of politeness
accommodation with telephone messages, this study has investigated politeness
accommodation in email. Response rate was high at 81% (n=121). Results indicated
that subjects accommodated to verbal markers in the body of a message, and to greetings.
Responses to those email messages that included either verbal politeness cues or
structural politeness cues were significantly more polite than responses to those email
messages that did not include such cues. This research provides a foundation for explaining
issues of relationship forming, communication accommodation in an electronic
environment, and discourse analysis in online interaction.