Descriptive Study On Composition Features Of English Electronic Mail

Only within a half century, a new communication means, electronic mail system, is growing up along with the support of personal computers. Almost everyone knows the word e-mail and billions of billions of people use it for exchange information and deliver messages among them. The effective, instant and vivid visual advantages have turned e-mail to be a medium of communication we can hardly dispense with. As the popularity of the application of e-mail messages are composed in English, the issues about their styles and linguistic features cause the attention of many researchers. The author of this paper has done the present research on the composition features of English e-mail messages, to uncover those underlying features of composing an English e-mail message. This research was carried out from the perspective of description, the study followed many studies of the previous theories in communicative fields; the study on the research of definition of writing styles and linguistic features of e-mail composition writing. This paper is divided into six chapters. Chapter one introduces the design of the research, the setting of the problem, the purpose of the research, and the scope of the study. The significant meaning of the research is to help non-English users to understand the composition and linguistic features of English e-mail composition and can use it in a more effective and better way. Chapter two begins with an overview of the development of e-mail background, including its historical background and technical support. Two important principles applied in e-mail communication, the cooperative principle and Robin Lakoff's principle of Politeness are also reviewed. Chapter three is the study on the stylistic and linguistic features of e-mail composition, while in Chapter four, the unique visual features of e-mail composition was in the discussion. In Chapter five, we discuss the differences between e-mail composition and paper-based mail, including differences between their layout, visual design, and some aspect features. The last chapter is a conclusion of the study.