In chapter 4, Wallace describes how e-mails tend to follow a norm of informality. In terms of the earlier days of e-mail, I believe that this would have been considered true. But as e-mail becomes an increasingly prevalent communicative form, I believe that the conventions of informality described in chapter 4 become a little more accurate in some regards, and a little less accurate in others.
One of the ways in which I believe e-mail is less informal than it is described to be in chapter 4 is when the subject of the correspondence is business-related. I know that when I e-mail people at my summer jobs I stick to a much more formal style than I would if I were writing to my sorority chapter through a listserv. And the writing style I employ when writing to my sorority would still be more formal than if I were telling my best friends from home a story over an e-mail chain.
When it comes to knowing and understanding the norm in an online setting, it helps to consider Virginia Shea’s first basic rule of “netiquette,” which is to “remember the human” (p. 64). When I first contacted a possible employer about a summer job, I was not sure exactly how to address her. She instructed me to e-mail her, and before this instance I had only used e-mail for informal correspondence. When I wrote my first e-mail to her, I assumed that it was safe to stick with a formal writing style because I was hoping to make a valuable business contact. I was slightly surprised to see that her response was much less formal than my initial e-mail, but it was still appropriate for a business interaction, nonetheless. In this case it certainly helped to remember that a human was on the other end of this online interaction.
The Leviathan of e-mail is difficult to pinpoint because individual relationships can vary very much from correspondence to correspondence. There is no actual enforcement of standard e-mail practice. I would have to say that, at least in my personal experience, I am my own Leviathan, and that my tone and approach to each e-mail I write varies depending on who is behind the other computer screen, reading.
comments:
http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/10/assignment-6-my-safe-word-is-code-blue.html
http://comm245green.blogspot.com/2007/10/61-hunting-leviathan-on-ebay.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
It is really interesting to think about how we decide what format to email someone in because I encounter that problem every day. Although in the end, I am the one that decides what style to use, I think there is some outer force telling me what I should do and what is appropriate for the situation. I also do think it depends a lot on how formal the person on the other end of the email thinks it should be and I tend to be more formal in the beginning to people older or that I don’t know and wait until their response to see how to continue the emails. In that sense, these people I am corresponding with are acting as the leviathan and determining what I should do. Great post!
This is actually an interesting approach to the whole leviathan search. I wouldn’t have thought much about Email’s leviathan but reading your blog had me thinking. I agree in the sense that we become our own leviathan in where we monitor how we want to come across to the person reading our email. With that said, I can see the other person being our email leviathan. We conform to norms to an extent depending on how we wish to come across toward that person. Either professional, informal, personal or romantic; each one carries its own set of norms that we conform to depending on which we wish to depict. I see myself in many different forms now that I think about the emails I send and I see a pattern in them depending on whom the email is being sent to.
Post a Comment