Across the Pond: Comparing e-mails from students in Britain and America

The 21st century has become a technological age that is constantly changing and redefining communication across continents. In university settings, e-mails currently play a huge role in how students communicate with academic staff - whether that is to (inter alia) raise queries, make requests or to apologise. Recent research on variation between the cross-cultural nature of Englishes in e-mails by Merrison et al (2012) suggests that cultural and situational contexts play a significant role in how academic hierarchy is built within cultures in Australia and Britain. The current study used a small corpus of undergraduates' emails to investigate the ways in which students in America constructed their institutional identities. Results suggest that in most ways, American students most resembled the British rather than the Australian. Merrison et al's study reported British students displayed an orientation towards deferential dependence, and this was emulated in the current findings of the Americans through their use of titles, syntactic contingency in the prominent use of 'just', and the nature and high proportion of requests and apologies. However, there were also similarities to the interdependent egalitarianism found in the Australians, particularly in cases where students used "just so you know". While further research would be needed to assess the generalisability of these comparisons, these findings could have valuable implications in educational institutions; with regard to appropriate teaching styles across countries, as well as the opportunity to improve integration of international students in new institutions.