Degree Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

2005

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

English

First Advisor

David Roberts

Abstract

Despite the prevalence of a belief in the importance of preparing students for work in a global economy, very little research into Spanish-language written communication practices exists. In this study, I formed hypotheses regarding Mexican business e-mails based on congruencies in the findings of previous Spanish-language writing research and US-English e-mail writing research and then tested these hypotheses against a corpus of 107 Mexican business e-mails. I employed both a qualitative rhetorical analysis and a quantitative feature presence/absence analysis. Of the eight hypothesis statements describing Mexican business e-mails, only two were affirmed. The hypothesis statements describing these workplace e-mail messages and the findings of this study are; (1) they are organized in a non-linear fashion---disaffirmed, (2) they are highly specific with a high level of detail---disaffirmed, (3) they are indirect in approaching the main topic---disaffirmed, (4) they contain "ornate and flowery" language---disaffirmed, (5) they address personal issues before work-related issues---disaffirmed, (6) they do not contain salutations---disaffirmed, (7) they do not contain signatures-affirmed and, (8) they are not written in all upper case letters---affirmed. The findings suggest a need for genre-specific research to take the place of research on under-defined documents and research that has perhaps been over-generalized.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31274/rtd-180813-15385

Publisher

Digital Repository @ Iowa State University, http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/

Copyright Owner

Therese M. Judge

Language

en

Proquest ID

AAI3200433

File Format

application/pdf

File Size

110 pages

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