An analysis of requestive emails in Turkish to an academic advisor

Abstract

This study examines the requestive emails of Turkish students to their academic advisor over a 4-year period of time. The study focuses mainly on the speech act of requesting in the emails. This research further investigates the politeness strategies employed in the emails. The data consist of 200 authentic emails written by 45 students sent to the female academic advisor covering eight semesters. In the study, 217 requestive acts are identified, coded and categorized in terms of request strategies and request perspectives. The statistical analysis results indicate that when forming a request, students make use of indirect strategies, in particular preparatory and suggestory formulas, and speaker-oriented perspective at a significantly higher rate. Moreover, in regards to politeness strategies, it can be said that students employ various realizations of on-record, off-record, positive politeness, and negative politeness strategies. These findings reveal that students try to employ the most appropriate politeness strategy in order to maintain face in email messages.