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Library's collection Library's IT development CancelThis thesis discusses about electronic mail discourse analysis. Electronic mail or e-mail
is a form of information interchange, in which messages are sent from one personal
computer to another via modems and telecommunication system. Electronic mail
discourse is a relatively new form of discourse with its own peculiarities. Thus, it rises
the writer's curiosity on the characteristics of the electronic mail discourse in the e-mail
of Petra Christian University's Webmaster, the characteristic of the electronic mail
discourse that mostly occurs in the e-mail of Petra Christian University's Webmaster, and
the type of discourse that is mostly performed in the electronic mail discourse
characteristics.
In order to come to the findings, the writer uses the theory of Brown & Yule (1983),
McMurdo (1995), Krol (1994), Sims (1996), Goodman & Graddol (1996), Hightower &
Sayeed (1996), Jacobson (1996), Cicourel (1973), and Ong (1982), that are about
electronic mail discourse. The writer's research uses both descriptive and qualitative
method in analyzing the data. The writer uses both methods, since she wants to find out
and describe the characteristics of electronic mail discourse. The data she used are
English e-mails that are sent to Petra Christian University's Webmaster. Then, the data
are categorized based on the characteristics of written and spoken discourse.
The writer analyzes the postings and finds that there are eleven characteristics that
are complete sentences (47), syntactic devices (26), incomplete sentences (24), lower-case
letters (24), incomplete words (18), misspelling words (15), upper-case letters
(5), emoticons (4), repeated letters (3), explicit statements (2), and filler (1)
appearing at electronic mail discourse. The total number above is not a definite
measurement in indicating the position of electronic mail discourse characteristics. The
position of electronic mail discourse characteristics above may happen only in the
analysis of postings that are sent to Petra Christian University's Webmaster. This may
change in different analysis. The message of e-mail, that carries the characteristics of
spoken discourse and written discourse, represents the electronic mail discourse. The
result shows that the features of spoken discourse manipulate more than the features of
written discourse in the characteristics of electronic mail discourse.