SILVIA ARI KRISTANTI W, 7125990013 (2006) THE ESTABLISHMENT OF INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS IN E-MAIL BUSINESS CORRESPONDENCE. Masters thesis, Universitas Negeri Semarang.

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Abstract

As an order of discourse in a business institution and a manifestation of a discursive practice, e-mail business correspondence must have its own sets of convention which determine the type of interpersonal relations that the interactants may establish since any act of writing, whether personal, academic or workplace, is embedded in wider social and discursive practice which carry assumption about participant relationships and how these should be structured and negotiated. This study aims at describing the interpersonal relations that the interactants in e-mail business correspondence under study establish and explaining how the selections of mood realize the speech function choices in e-mail business correspondence under study. Ten pairs of e-mail business correspondence, each of which consists of an initiatory e-mail and its reply, were analyzed with reference to the speech function and mood choices. The speech function analysis was conducted in order to capture the interactants’ interpersonal relations while mood analysis was conducted in order to find out patterns of congruent and incongruent in the realizations of the speech function choices as well as to find out choices in modality. From the analyses it is found out that the interactants prefer choosing questions and statements of fact than those of opinion, that most of the extending speech function choices are used to show appreciation to the e-mail recipients, that they prefer choosing supporting replies than the confronting ones and that rather than choosing rejoinders, the interactants prefer responding speech functions. These findings suggest that the interactants in the e-mail business correspondence under study construct interpersonal relations with a low degree of involvement. Furthermore, it is also found out that out of eighteen full declarative mood choices, twelve of them are used to incongruently realize commands and some reacting speech functions such as answers, withholding, disagreeing and non-complying ones, that out of eleven elliptical declarative mood choices, six of them are used for the incongruent realizations of statements of opinion, command and pronging speech function and that out of thirteen imperative mood choices, eight of them are used for the incongruent realizations of open questions of fact and compliances, suggesting that most of the speech function choices in the e-mail business correspondence under study are incongruently realized. These findings suggest that teachers of English for Business should include in their teaching materials various strategies, formulas and expressions which may be used to perform a particular speech function and give emphasis on the teaching of incongruent realizations of speech functions.

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