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The main objective of the research was to analyse how Czech students of the Faculty of Education at Charles University in Prague formulate requests for information in e-mails to their lecturer and in contributions posted on the student information forum SIS helpdesk. In this final section, final review of research questions will be presented. 1) How do students initiate contact? What forms of address or greetings do students employ in the e-mail requests for information? What introductory formulas (if any) are employed in requests posted on the internet forum? Analysis showed that opening and closing sequences were pervasive in both types of communications. In e-mail requests for information, the recommended form of address is formal address including professional title (vážená paní doktorko / *esteemed Mrs. doctor). Students, as I was told in the class, perceive this form as too formal, creating distance between the interlocutors. However, using informal forms of address such as first names to lecturers is extremely unusual approach in the Czech universities, and it was not encouraged by the addressed lecturer either; therefore, this form did not appear in any e-mails under analysis. Formal form of address including surname without academic title is considered impolite if the addressee has an academic title, and this form occurred extremely rarely. Students tried to choose a form of greeting or form of address that would be seen as appropriate but not too formal. Less than half of them employed a formal greeting only (dobrý den / good day), which is closer to a positive politeness strategy than the formal form of address, which shows deference. This form is not recommended by the Academic handbook of Czech language (Pravdová a kol., 2014) in the institutional context. Also many members of academic staff perceive it as not sufficiently deferential and thus impolite. “There is often (if not always) variability across individuals with regards to their evaluations of certain instances of behaviour as im/polite” (Haugh 2010: 11). Some students tried to combine greeting and honorific form of address (dobrý den, paní doktorko / *good day, Mrs. doctor) which makes a more polite impression, and this form of opening may possibly replace the formal form including honorific vážená / esteemed. It must also be noted that all students employ V-forms in the e-mails. The shift from recommended formal form of address to
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a less honorific form of opening may suggest that students tried to balance the asymmetry and lessen the distance between interlocutors; similar findings were discussed in students’ e-mails containing strong requests for action (Chejnová, 2014). The greeting dobrý den is the most common formal greeting in oral face-to-face communication, and its spread in computer mediated communication supports its closeness to speech21. However, the fact that the opening is always present in an e-mail also reflects its closeness to written epistolary communications. As Crystal states, e-mail is formally and functionally unique (Crystal, 2001: 125), and moreover, its style is constantly developing, so that it will soon change from its current form (ibid.: 127). In students’ requests for information posted on the SIS helpdesk, opening sequences were also pervasive. Students primarily employed the formal greeting dobrý den / good day, which is appropriate when the addressee is anonymous, but at the same time, his higher status is acknowledged. No rules of netiquette are available to students, and they probably began formulating their contributions using the same structure as e-mails. Students who posted their contributions later were thus influenced by previous contributions, and the greeting dobrý den became the default form to begin the contribution – anything more or less formal would be a risky novelty which would not pass unnoticed. 2) What is the degree of directness in the head act? The findings in both studies support the suggestion that in Slavic cultures, requests are formulated more directly than in, for example, British culture (Obenbergerová, 1992; Ogiermann, 2009; Wierzbicka, 2003). In e-mails to their lecturers, the students employed direct strategies in 77.5%, and the most frequent was a hedged performative (chtěl bych se zeptat… / I would like to ask…). This form is also recommended in Czech language textbooks and handbooks. Hint, the most indirect type of request, occurred only once. Students were aware that their e-mails should be written clearly and unambiguously, and hinting strategy could also be interpreted as impolite because it requires the recipient’s mental energy. In the rest of the e-mails (22.1%), conventionally indirect forms were employed (mohla bych se zeptat…? / could I ask…?). Conventional indirectness is considered more polite but, as a native speaker of Czech and also the addressee of the e-mails under analysis, I interpret the illocutionary force and also level of imposition of requests with hedged performatives and query preparatory as very similar and appropriate in both cases. Nevertheless, when imposition increases, the conventional indirectness is used more frequently, as suggested by the finding of Chejnová’s previous study. When formulating a strong request for action in their e-mails, students employed direct strategies in only 57.3% and conventionally indirect strategies in 39.6% (Chejnová, 2014: 182).
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In a traditional letter, an anonymous addressee would be addressed vážená paní, vážený pane / esteemed Madam, esteemed Sir.
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Analysis of the level of directness in students’ requests for information posted on the SIS helpdesk showed a different distribution of strategies. Direct strategies were employed in 70.4%, and the most frequent strategy was again a hedged performative. In contrast to e-mail requests, students employed a number of indirect strategies; hints were employed in 21.2%. The context of the internet forum provides the necessary information for the recipient to glean that a contribution is a request for information. Students are entitled to post requests, and members of the schedule planning board are obliged to reply. A simple problem description is thus sufficient for the addressee to interpret the request and is not inappropriate in this context. However, conventionally indirect requests appeared only in 8.5%. Students probably consider this strategy as overly polite in the context of services available to them. In summary, the findings indicate that Czech native speakers use direct strategies (hedged performatives) in correspondence with epistolary tradition. Performatives prosit, žádat, ptát se / to beg, to request, to ask are polite because they emphasize the addressee‘s superior position. Showing deference (Leech’s approbation maxim) seems to play a greater role than level of imposition (Leech’s tact maxim, Leech, 1983). Nevertheless, if imposition is higher and the producer is not sure if he/she has the right to request, conventionally indirect strategies occur more frequently. Hints occurred only in the context of the SIS helpdesk, which provided necessary cues for interpretation itself. 3) What is the amount of syntactic, lexical/phrasal modification employed in the Czech students’ requests to faculty? Czech is a grammatical language, and Czech native speakers prefer to express meanings by grammatical means if possible. The research findings support this tendency. In students’ e-mails, only 11.7% of requests for information were without any syntactic modification; the most frequent were modals and conditional mood (mohl bych požádat…? / could I request…?). However, although it has been suggested that Czech speakers display communicative pessimism in their requests, negation was rarely employed (Obenbergerová, 1992). In contrast, 67.3% of students’ requests for information posted on the SIS helpdesk contained no syntactic downgraders, among the most frequent again were modals and conditional mood. The most influential factor is probably the level of imposition, which seems to be higher in e-mails because the sender enters the lecturer’s private sphere, whereas the students enter a public discussion forum when posting a contribution on the helpdesk. The power factor is similar in e-mails and the SIS helpdesk because the addressees are academic staff in both cases22. Distance is probably greater in the SIS helpdesk context because the addressee is anonymous, although the answer could be posted by a person who is simultaneously a student’s lecturer.
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On the SIS helpdesk also administrative staff.
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