Relational practices in Norwegian students’ e-mail requests in English: A focus on openings and closings

The paper explores relational practices in openings and closings in Norwegian students' e-mail requests in English. It investigates the range of opening and closing sequences and the frequency of their occurrence as well as their variation depending on the level of request imposition and social distance between the e-mail writer and the lecturer. The very high frequency of occurrence of openings and closings, considered to be optional e-mail elements, in a small corpus of 109 authentic e-mails demonstrates a clear orientation to interpersonal aspects of communication. An orientation to familiarity was identified in the openings while a slight preference for deference was found in the closings. Social distance appeared to affect relational practices to a greater extent than the level of imposition.