Formal e-mails : the very difficult ones for university students

The aim of this paper is to train and acquire, in a reasoned and critical way, linguistic and communication skills, useful in the specific case in writing for the mail to professors, but indispensable for all the formal occasions that require it.


Introduction
In a solidly flattened society, at least as regards interpersonal relationships, a careful and indepth analysis of the computer mediated communication, especially the formal one, has become increasingly urgent between communication actors in an unbalanced relationship, which now reflects the confidence typical of real interaction between peers. In Italy the phenomenon of the downward calibration of asymmetrical communicative interactions is very widespread and you may well observe, at all levels, in everyday life, for example, in television talk shows, in the reports of journalists, which even when they are addressed to a high office of the State, probably to boast and exhibit familiarity, use tu: form very far from formal-institutional models. So, beyond those that are the common opinions, which attribute to the pervasive spread of linguistic structures of anglo-saxon use, for example, of the allocutive tu instead of lei, it is instead thought that the causes are due to an endogenous phenomenon, culturally autochthonous, as well as Italianas well as widespread in other linguistic realities 1the malpractice not to use Olhares & Trilhas | Uberlândia | vol.22, n. 3 | set.-dez./2020 - ISSN 1983-3857 352 attenuated formulas of courtesy in communicative situations in the presence of actors who play different roles. Often the causes are identified in the widespread use of the Internet and social networks, decontextualized virtual social environments, in which even the communicative registers are flattened, with a squeezing towards the pole of informality, which is the one known by most, also because recurrent and used in family daily life. An example of diaphasic deformation on the low registers is given to us by institutional, formal emails, which reveal on the part of the students a socio-pragmatic incompetence in the use of communication strategies appropriate to the different degrees of formality. Indeed, as Chen (2006) observes, "While people can write e-mails to peers in any manner they like, writing e-mails to authority figures requires higher pragmatic competence and critical language awareness of how discourse shapes and reflects power asymmetry in an institutional context " (Chen, 2006: 35).
For this research, we will study, in particular, about 500 emails sent by Italian university students to their teachers. The emails analyzed are related to different requests, among the most frequent: reception, registration for seminars, clarifications on the exam program, feedback on thesis papers.
From a first exploration it emerged that a lack of training in writing formal emails leads to the elaboration of texts that not only have the linguistic characteristics of poorly planned speech, but also denote a poor knowledge of both of the routine formulas of opening and closing proper to an official missive, and of the speeches of respect. There have been many studies in Italy 2 , since the advent of e-mail, but little has yet been done to stem and remedy this now urgent problem, to avoid a drift (already close). In this essay we will try to provide not simple analysis for insiders, but practical instructions that aim to make students acquire, in a reasoned and critical way, not only linguistic but also communicative skills, useful in this specific case in writing for the email to teachers, but also indispensable for all formal occasions that require it, in the name of an education flaunting the much program skills. As Joseph Defazio, Josette Jones, Felisa Tennant and Sara Anne Hook (2010: 35) observe, "Faculty members must balance the provision of content while modeling professional communication skills using efficient tools.
However, writing skills must be addressed if faculty members are to adequately prepare students for jobs that involve more than minimal levels of responsibility. "

Courtesy adjectives, appellatives and opening formulas
In general, students use professore / professoressa, in full or abbreviated form 3 , in free variation with regard to uppercase and lowercase 4 . With regard to the courtesy adjectives that accompany the appellation, the highest number of frequencies is recorded for gentilissimo (just under 50%). 30% of occurrences are registered for the gentile. Egregio has occurrence equal to 11%, while pregiatissimo 3%, spettabile, which in Italian, in business correspondence, precedes the name of a company, 3%, illustrissimo 1% and 2% the inadequate eccellentissimo. Yet, for our students, hyper-connected, digital natives, it would be enough to query the Internet, search on www.Treccani.it 5 to discover that " gli appellativi sono stabilmente associati a determinate cariche o figure professionali " and in the uses among other examples the following are given: "Chiarissimo (Chiar.mo, Chiar.ma): professore e professoressa universitari", now however obsolete, used exclusively on the title pages of degree theses.
For the opening formulas we find, in addition to these routine formulas, typical of the header of a letter, also the abused allocutive salve 6 (19 occurrences) in various contexts. Or, the e-mail is opened with salve, followed by a comma that marks the even intonative boundary, typical of the oral utterance, between the greetings and the content of the message, which in these cases is introduced by one's presentation "salve, sono nome +cognome" o "salve, sono uno/a studente del corso di laurea xxxx".
Much more frequent are the greetings associated with the moment in which the student writes: buongiorno, buonasera. The centrality of the ego and the anchoring to one's communicative situation prevent the writer from any kind of elementary abstraction.

The attenuative forms
As Sigrun Biesenbach-Lucas (2007: 61) observes "Typically, students must behave and use language in status-congruent, or status-appropriate, ways (Bardovi-Harlig & Hartford, 1990, 1993; that is, students must do the sorts of things students are expected to do and must use language that properly acknowledges their own lower institutional status and faculty's higher institutional status. For example, issuing directives, setting expectations, or determining whether or not work is sufficient are not examples of status-congruent language functions for students (Boxer, 2002a). In face-to-face encounters, traditional power routines tend to be 3 Only in a few cases do we find incorrect abbreviations: Prof.essa, instead of Professor; sometimes for the teachers there is also the name signora. 4 The Italian rule is capitalized only if the name is not followed by the name. 5 http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/appellativi-e-epiteti-prontuario. 6 As R. Setti observes: "la formula appare come risolutiva quando ci siano incertezze sul grado di formalità del registro da tenere con l'interlocutore (spesso più di uno e talvolta assolutamente sconosciuto) e non risulta vincolante rispetto al momento della giornata in cui scriviamo o in cui viene letto il nostro messaggio" (Setti, 2010).
exercised (Drake, Yuthas, & Dillard, 2000), but such routines may manifest themselves in different ways in email communication to authority figures, especially when the bulk of students' email experience to date has been among peers and equals. " In fact, even for this body of mail the range of choices available to the students is really limited.
Requestsregardless of their natureare usually made with vorrei (more than 50% of occurrences) followed by verbs that in some cases put in the foreground the ego of the writer iscrivermi, sapere, in others, they seem to ask for a permit poter sapere, poter iscrivermi, realized also with verbal categories, such as the adjective possibile preceded by a conditional se possibile, because of an unorthodox punctuation, modifies the conditional: vorrei se possibile, sapere/iscrivermi, probably the result of a reproposition of a speech tonic, which concentrates the attenuative formula in a segment distinct from the main nucleus of the illocution. Only 1% use the noun phrase after vorrei una informazione (usually spelling not elixo due to difficulty in applying the rule distinct from that of truncation), followed by a period with a direct query, the simplest and most immediate, precisely because it is also frequent in the oral speech: Per noi studenti del primo anno le ore di partecipazione al seminario verranno scalate 7 dalle ore di tirocinio del prossimo anno? The use of the conditional, however, is outclassed by the neo-standard use of the imperfect volevo: Volevo gentilmente chiederLe se i prossimi esami ed in particolare l'esame del giorno xxxx si svolgerà 8 in modalità telematica o se sarà possibile sostenerlo presso la sede universitaria.
The conditional is used, as a deontic function, avrei bisogno, followed by infinity.
There are those who, on the other hand, reproduce almost an inner-reflective discourse and after scusi per il disturbo, he continues mi chiedevo se fosse possibile iscriversi al seminario, with an impersonal indirect question, as if to recover a formal register that was not reached in the first place. In short, a kind of compensatory balance.
A little more than half of the students, on the other hand, prefer to use useless, ineffective, tautological: le scrivo, le mando questa mail -with obvious affection for the abused indexicality of speech -followed by: a) From an impersonal conative-telic affinché il mio nome venga inserito tra i partecipanti […] b) Implicit ending introduced by per chiederle/comunicarle/confermarle 9 , iscrivermiwith the use, here too, of conative verbs or nouns, l'iscrizione, la partecipazione. In these latter cases, nominalization is probably preferred to the difficult exercise of conjugations. c) From causal introduced by in in quanto, perché, or by the obsolete poiché, followed by the conditional vorrei d) From a complementary argument in merito a The use of chiedo variously combined with nouns is very bureaucratically peremptory: la partecipazione/l'iscrizione/la correzione/un appuntamento; with implicit propositions: di potermi iscrivere/partecipare/di essere ricevuto. The administrative formula is corroborated by the opening prepositional phrase (very formal use): con la presente, instead of con questa mail.
While 20% uses desidero followed by the main verb in the infinitive: desidero iscrivermi, sapere, avere un suo riscontro. A limited range of choices, but all oriented on one's own needs, on the centrality of one's self, which overshadows the teacher's request for availability, almost denying or subverting role relationships, ignored due to the habit of scarce, if not totally null, training in communication strategies that require the observance of specific socio-pragmatic norms.

Courtesy in the body of the message
A few lines, often syntactically twisted that someone to simplify makes in a sort of pointed lists, with direct interrogatives typical of the conversational style face to face: Come si svolgerà l'esame?Si manterrà la modalità del test a risposta multipla?Per accedere all'esame, bisogna prenotarsi online?
Or indirect elliptic questions of regent: Se gentilmente mi può dire gli appelli per luglio e il programma da studiare.
Typical phrases that can be found in speech in real communication situations, where the lexical void is filled with extralinguistic features (facial expression, gestures) that co-occur in the transmission of the message. Here the student clumsily repairs with the adverb gentilmente.
The juxtaposed use of propositions, an indication of inability to process a text, albeit short, is another escape, perhaps more refined, less sloppy and colloquial than the previous one, even if the use of emphatic punctuation resembles that of Facebook 10 , thus making mail enter among A particular case is the student emails sent during the Covid-19 period. In particular, the requests were introduced by clichés, not at all consistent with the requests, and more than to courtesy, they were aimed at moving the teacher to compassion always by virtue of the protection of their own interests: Vista la grave situazione di emergenza che affligge il nostro Paese e giacché avrei dovuto sostenere l'esame In merito al periodo disagioso e particolare che stiamo attraversando avrei delle delucidazioni da chiederle Sono non frequentante ma la mia situazione ora è come le mie altre colleghe vista la situazione che stiamo vivendo.
11 As Chen notes in his study, where he analyzes the emails in English L2 of taiwanese, Ling (pseudonym) moved to the United States to obtain a Ph. D.: "From Ling's perspective, she chose this inductive structure intentionally for the sake of indirectness. She explained, "I'm an indirect person, and I don't feel comfortable saying my purpose right at the beginning. I like to explain my reasons first and then I feel ok to ask them to do things for me." With such a strong sense of "indirect self," she usually chose a "reason + request" sequence and used some other moves to gradually steer her request while demonstrating her indirectness. Moreover, she also thought this sequence beneficial to her e-mail interlocutors as it allowed them to be prepared for the ensuing request but not to get a request abruptly, which she considered a way to show politeness as well." (p. 42). However, given the brevity of the emails in our corpus, you do not run the risk warned by Crystal (2001: 109), so the information put in the end could be lost.

Courtesy in the farewell
Thanks are managed with the routine formula la ringrazio (28%), followed by anticipatamente/in anticipo, per l'attenzione variously declined as gentile, cortese. In 10% of cases, on the other hand, the interjection is grazie, this too either necessary alone or intensified by: mille, per l'attenzione, in anticipo. Sometimes someone apologizes per il disturbo, l'eventuale disturbo arrecato, mi dispiace averle arrecato disturbo. Furthermore, thanksgiving followed by a routine farewell formula linked to real communication interaction is not uncommon, as is recorded for the opening greetings: buongiorno, buonasera. But greetings, usually, for about 70% of cases, are preceded by the adjective cordiali, 20% prefer to qualify them as distinti, 3% egregi.
And also in this portion of mail, next to acceptable formulas, respecting the attenuations that are agreed in asymmetric interactions, such as those between teacher and students, we find direct peremptory formulas, almost response solicitations: attendo una sua risposta, rimango in attesa di una sua risposta.

The use of vocabulary
The reason for the failure in the rendering of formal emails, in addition to the lack of knowledge of morphosyntactic structures, is to be found in the poor richness of the vocabulary available.
See some examples. If a student to enroll in a seminar writes: le confermo la mia iscrizione, it means that he does not know the semantics of a verb that is from the Basic Vocabulary (VdB) 12 , an AU (High Use) 13 lexeme.
In fact, the noun indicates the validation of something that has been said, written before, in previous situations. In contrast to what the student tries to ask or communicate.
The lack of familiarity with formal Italian is also evidenced from the use of bureaucratic expressions, such as rimarranno in essere by analogy with porre in essere 'realizzare, attuare':

se la modalità d'esame subirà una variazione o rimarranno in essere i due consueti test scritti?
Again, the disastrous use of sostenere mistake for conseguire: 12 Designed by de Mauro (2003 12 ), the VdB refers to the approximately 7000 words that we should all know, because they have a high frequency of use in everyday life. Cfr. also Ferreri 2005: 86-89. 13 It is the lexemes that in any text have frequency equal to 6% of the total of words used. The VdB also includes the Basic lexicon (FO), about 90% of the words of the words that are needed in a text and the High Availability (AD), corresponding to the words we know, but do not use daily.

Le scrivo per chiederle quali sono i primi appelli disponibili per sostenere l' idoneità.
A recurring error, this: the assessment confused with the test, probably due to the common use of do, verb passepartout, for the occasion replaced with lemmas with which students have little confidence. In fact, someone does not care about synonyms, as well as does not care about punctuation and writes: Avrei bisogno di un chiarimento per quanto riguarda i testi da utilizzare per l'esame di xxxx del primo anno. Lo scorso anno il volume per l'esame era unico, mentre quest'anno sono due, avendo già acquistato il volume dell'anno scorso l'esame si può fare con quello?
Just as sometimes, instead, the other verb, grimaldello at every opportunity, say, is not replaced and in a request similar to the one that is formulated on the street to a passer-by, the student asks the teacher: mi può dire il programma da studiare?
To this are added bureaucratic formulas c. a. (current year), c. m. (current month) and expressions entirely borrowed from administrative texts: siamo state esonerate dalla frequenza obbligatoria del laboratorio in oggetto in quanto, nel periodo di svolgimento dello stesso, eravamo in astensione obbligatoria per maternità.
From the economic field, someone mutates scaling by adapting it with a generic sense of detrarre da una quantità: le ore di partecipazione al seminario verranno scalate dalle ore di tirocinio del prossimo anno?
Not to mention disagioso, an uncommon adjective, used instead of the more common difficile, pieno di disagi: to be checked if the use is contaminated by the most recent petaloso. What about the euphemism used about the corrections that the teacher made on the thesis? The student writes that he has integrated the thesis chapter "con le informazioni che mi aveva indicato".
The semantics is compromised, and here it almost seems that the student wants to minimize the corrections with informazioni that is certainly not indicated, but given or provided.

Job proposals
The panorama outlined with the analysis so far conducted makes us reflect on the "different types of email require different levels of formality and different vocabularies, as well as different attention to their grammar. The number of types of email is tremendous, and each has its own set of unwritten rules. " (Lanchaster 2011: 75-6).
Therefore, to remedy this problem it would be appropriate to start reflecting gradual on the lexicon in all types of schools, not to neglect the basics of grammar, on a global vision of the grammar of the text, as a product of different, co-occurring and simultaneous linguistic processes. The realization of this project can be entrusted only -or preferably -to laboratory paths, with works centered directly on real texts, to be written keeping in mind not virtual but real recipients, thinking of functional texts, so neglected by Italian teaching, still faithful to recognize as a text par excellence the literary one. From primary school, students should be trained to write e-mails, for example, to the head teacher, to the secretary of any office, to the mayor, to the councilor, to the brigade commander: these are activities that can be carried out whenever you plan outings in the territory. It should be essential to make students reflect on the text of the same email sent to different recipients (by age and status), with different purposes in situations with different degrees of formality. Group teaching methods could lead, at first, to collective writings and corrections, motivating and not very frustrating, and then to the elaboration of individual texts. In fact, skills cannot be expected without the activation of knowledge and skills that are acquired only under a motivating impulse.
You will refine communication skills, gradually, through the different orders of schoolthe practice and exercise are essentialuntil you get to university, that will (should) prepare for the world of work; and this requires the competence to orient oneself in the different contexts with the appropriate modulations of rhetorical strategies and the appropriate linguistic registers.
It will be adequate, from the beginning, to provide models to emulate, templates, so that students can start the slow and difficult process of acquiring writing skills and not sterile exercises, the result of a teaching based on blocks of rules, universal precepts, detached from the communicative context. Because what is always lacking is the exercise of reflection and elaboration, which presupposes slow and complex, holistic cognitive processes, which operate simultaneously on all levels of the language and its varieties, even in very short texts such as those of e-mails. It will always be necessary to insist on the fact that the linguistic choices are not "neither incidental nor accidental, nor optional extras. Lexicogrammatical features of various genres are integral to those genres, for it is through the lexicogrammatical choices that meaning is built up in a text. Different genres deploy the resources for meaning making through the grammar in different ways. " 14 . In addition, attention should be paid to the process, and not to the product, in order to sensitize students to the verification of the functioning of sentences or periods, by considering that the verbal expression is similar to a numerical or algebraic expression: as it takes place, it is necessary to ensure the correctness of the procedure. As in mathematics, even in Italian it is enough to mistake a constituent of the expression or an operation (for the language a function word) to compromise the goodness of the result. And, moreover, always remember that linguistic choices, at any level (lexical, morphosyntactic) compromise the linguistic act at a socio-pragmatic level.
Unfortunately, many of these problems do not dwell enough at school and, above all, there are few teachers who dedicate hours to give instructions for writing emails, but this does not happen only in Italy. As Lancast had found in a study of 11 Midwestern university teachers. who had been given a questionnaire, 6 of the 11 teachers responded -to the question no. 1 Do you teach students about email writing specifically, in lessons only on email, or in general, such as when questions arise, or both? -" that they did teach specific lessons on email writing, but only when the content of the course was appropriate for such a lesson, for example in an upper-level writing course or a computer skills course. Otherwise they only taught email writing if students had questions about it. On the other hand, 5 of 11 teachers had never specifically taught an email writing lesson at all." (Lanchaster 2011: 78).
Therefore, when enrolling in the university, regardless of the type of address, it would be necessary: * organize preparatory workshops to refine the skills on language varieties and above all on diaphasic ones. * To train in communicative competence (they are supposed to have a solid linguistic competence) starting from the appellations, to continue with the adjectives of courtesy that should accompany them. * Activate the awareness of a morphosyntaxis (often turned out to be ungangerated, neglected) that realizes any expected attenuative construct, as the norm wants, and not with surrogates proper to the tendential use, tolerated in informal speech.
To raise awareness and to leave a reminder to those who are enrolled, it would be useful to give practical instructions on the websites of universities, as is the case, for example, on the The appropriateness of the form must be understood, as Fairclough (1995) notes, "an 'ideological' category, which is linked to particular partisan positions within a politics of language" (p. 234), which cannot be neglected, otherwise the acceptability of the message by the recipient. The pragmatic-communicative competence in the virtual environment, often neglected, is, instead, decisive and fundamental to avoid abrupt interruptions in the interactional exchange, an objective already difficult to achieve even at the linguistic level, precisely because one moves in an environment without socio-spatial coordinates within which to orient oneself.
If the basic socio-cultural norms are then trampled on, the failure is assured, and you risk incurring annoying "diplomatic incidents".