Discursive Practice and the Nigerian Identity in Personal Emails

As communication by the electronic mail spreads and becomes increasingly common, more and more people are taking the advantage of its flexibility and simplicity for communicating social identity and cultural matters. This chapter, focuses on how Nigerian users of the electronic mails, apply the medium for expressing their identity through discursive means. Data comprises 150 personal emails written and sent between 2002 and 2009 in Lagos and Ota regions of Nigeria by individual email writers, comprising youths and adults from a university community and the Nigerian civil service. Applying socio-linguistic approach and computer-mediated discourse analysis, the study shows that the most common discursive means of expressing the Nigerian identity are greeting forms and modes of address; religious discursive practices and assertions of native personal names. The data also show evidences of Nigerian English in the email messages

The Discourse of Digital Deceptions and ‘419’ Emails

This study applies a computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) to the study of discourse structures and functions of ‘419’ emails – the Nigerian term for online/financial fraud. The hoax mails are in the form of online lottery winning announcements, and email ‘business proposals’ involving money transfers/claims of dormant bank accounts overseas. Data comprise 68 email samples collected from the researcher’s inboxes and colleagues’ and students’ mail boxes between January 2008 and March 2009 in Ota, Nigeria. The study reveals that the writers of the mails apply discourse/pragmatic strategies such as socio-cultural greeting formulas,self-identification, reassurance/confidence building, narrativity and action prompting strategies to sustain the interest of the receivers. The study also shows that this genre of computer-mediated communication (CMC) has become a regular part of our Internet experience, and is not likely to be extinct in the near future as previous studies of email hoaxes have predicted. It is believed that as the global economy witnesses a recession, chances are that more creative and complex ways of combating the situation will arise. Economic hardship has been blamed for fraud/online scams, inadvertently prompting youths to engage in various anti-social activities. K E Y W O R D S : computer-media communication, deceptions, discourse, email, ‘419’, fraud, hoax

Using Picture-Based Task-Analytic Instruction to Teach Students with Moderate Intellectual Disability to Email Peers without Disabilities

This preliminary study investigated the effects of using picture-based task analyses and an iPad to teach students with intellectual disability how to send and reply to emails. Three middle-school-aged students with intellectual disability as well as three peers without disabilities participated in this investigation. The intervention consisted of two 15-step task analyses: one for sending an email, and the second for replying to an email, least to most prompting, and constant time delay. Results showed students’ improved ability to send and reply to emails on an iPad with the support of picture-based task analyses. Implications for practice and future research are discussed

The Pragmatics of Hoax Email Business Proposals

This study applies the speech acts theory to the study of discourse strategies and functions of hoax email business proposals otherwise known as "419 emails" – '419' being the Nigerian term for all forms of online/financial fraud. The hoax mails are in form of email 'business proposals' involving money transfers/claims of dormant bank accounts overseas. Five types are identified namely: (i) money transfers, (ii) next-of-kin claims, (iii) fortune bequeathing, (iv) charity donations and (v) investment opportunities. Data comprises 52 email samples collected from the researcher's inboxes, colleagues and students' email inboxes between January, 2008 and March, 2009 in Ota, Nigeria. The study reveals that the business proposals perform speech acts such as expressive, representative, commissive and directive acts; the most frequently used being representative as the proposals are structured as narratives. The expressive act is used in form of greetings and polite address forms in order to win the interest of the receiver. The commissive act is used as a persuasive strategy while making unrealistic and suspicious promises to the receiver, while the directive act is used to urge the receiver to act promptly. The study also shows that this genre of Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has become a regular part of our internet social life, and is not likely to be extinct in the near future as previous studies of email hoaxes have predicted, since economic hardship being witnessed by the world today can force people to criminal activities

Technologies for Writing at the Private Sector Workplace

Peer reviewe

Critical Language and Discourse Awareness in Management Education

Communication and, through it, language have become key elements of business and organizational life. How organizations interact within their walls and with the outside world fundamentally affects business processes, creating organizational culture, shaping public perceptions, and influencing consumer choices. This essay calls for a greater acknowledgment of language and communication and suggests that management educators may want to review how they are incorporated in management education curricula. Expanding on the skill-based approach typically adopted in business school classes, the essay points to the utility of exposing business students to the dual function of language as a means of doing work and as a social action that constitutes social reality. Drawing on examples from scholarship in linguistics and discourse analysis, the essay demonstrates that the ability to notice, identify, and reflect on linguistic and discourse practices is a crucial managerial skill. Nurturing such analytical and thinking skills enables people to become not only better communicators but also critical thinkers able to understand and challenge when social control, power, or injustice is enacted in organizations

Communicating Content Through Configurable Media

We studied how project groups in a pharmaceutical organization configure a new Web-based communication medium to communicate project content. The project groups are geographically dispersed and operate in different time zones. In such environments, synchronous or geographically bounded modes of communication (e.g., face to face meetings, telephone) are not always viable options. As such, computer-based communication media become surrogate conduits for day-to-day project communication and exchange of project-related content. In the study, content communicated via the Web-based medium varied between different projects groups in the organization. To explain these variations, we develop a theoretical framework based on genre theory and augment this with perspectives from media richness theory. We illustrate how the augmented framework can explain the variations in communication within two project groups. We find that substantive medium use is likely when there is a fit between an institutionalized communication genre, perceived nature of content, and medium configuration. When there is a poor fit between genre, content and medium, we find evidence that communicators seek to achieve a better fit by manipulating one of these three constructs. We also outline some practical implications for the configuration of Web-based media that support dispersed project groups

Email adaptation for conflict handling:A case study of cross‐border inter‐organisational partnership in East Asia

This paper explores the context of email-based communication in an established but fragile, inter-organisational partnership, which was often overlain with conflict. Drawing upon adaptation theory, this study explores how participants adapt to the use of email to handle conflict. Extensive data were obtained during a 6-month field study of a case of cross-border inter-organisational collaboration in East Asia. We observed that the individuals involved in the cross-border partnership used email as a lean form of communication to stop covert conflict from explicitly emerging. In contrast to prior research on the leanness of email in managing conflict, we found that under the described conflict situation the very leanness of email was appreciated and thus, exploited by those concerned to manage the conflict situation. Specifically, we identified 4 key conflict-triggered adaptation strategies, namely, interaction avoidance, disempowering, blame-protection, and image-sheltering that drove the ways in which email was adapted to maintain organisational partnerships under conflict

Language use as an institutional practice: An investigation into the genre of workplace emails in an educational institution

Past studies that examined the genre of email regarded genre as a model by focusing on the content and form alone. However, this study examined the genre as a resource by analyzing the knowledge producing and knowledge disseminating that makes the genre possible in its socio-rhetorical context. The study, in line with critical genre analysis, examined the text-internal and the influences of the text-external elements on language use in email communication at a private higher educational institution in Kuala Lumpur. Using 378 emails, participant observation and interviews, this study analyzed the genre from the ethnographic, textual, socio-cognitive and socio-critical perspectives. To conduct the analysis, a novel integrative methodology that included approaches to text, context and genre analysis was applied. The study revealed that the emails could be categorized into four types of genres that varied in their communicative purposes, intentions, goals of communication, register and generic structures. The discussion email genre, which was used to negotiate issues, mainly included involved production and overt expression of argumentation. Enquiry email genre, which was used as a request-respond strategy, included narrative and nonnarrative discourse while the delivery email genre, which was used to provide files, mainly included informational production and non-narrative discourse. Informing email genre, which was used to notify the recipients about general interest issues, mainly included abstract style and informational production. This study also revealed that the institutional practices and disciplinary conventions of the discourse community influenced language use in the emails. This was reflected in the strategies, mechanisms and linguistic choices made in the four types of genres. The study contributed to the socio-rhetoric perspective and critical genre analysis based on conventionalized practices and procedures in the community of practice in academic management. The integrative approach is also highlighted as an analytical method to examine language use in email communication

Samtaleanalyse som forskningsfelt i Norge

Dette temanummeret er viet samtaleanalytiske studier av språklig samhandling i ulike kontekster, både i privatsfæren og i ulike institusjoner, slik som helsevesenet, sosialvesenet og skolen. Det kommer tjuefire år etter det første temanummeret av NLT om samtaleanalyse (Lind & Svennevig 1999). Det var en av de første utgivelsene om samtaleanalyse på norsk, men siden den gang er fagfeltet blitt etablert med livskraftige forskningsmiljøer ved en rekke universiteter og høyskoler, særlig UiO, NTNU og USN. Feltet er også etablert som undervisningsemne på en rekke studier, og det foreligger en norskspråklig lærebok (Skovholt et al., 2021). I 2022 ble det arrangert et første nasjonalt møte for samtaleforskere, De norske interaksjonsdagene, som samlet rundt 30 deltakere. Dette temanummeret er et resultat av det andre møtet i denne årlige møteserien, som ble arrangert i Oslo i januar 2023. I denne introduksjonen presenterer jeg først hva samtaleanalyse som disiplin studerer, dens studieobjekt. Deretter beskriver jeg noen metoder som brukes i ulike typer studier, og til slutt presenterer jeg noen temaer som har vært sentrale i norsk samtaleforskning.publishedVersio