Authorial engagement in business emails: A cross-cultural analysis of attitude and engagement markers

Abstract

The objectives of this chapter are to contrast the ways in which businesspeople communicate according to their linguistic background and to analyse how writers with different cultural environments transmit information to readers. The specific focus will be on whether writers in a business context use strategies originating from their cultural/linguistic background or they try to adapt to their readers in order to engage and persuade them. To this end, I compiled a corpus of a hundred and fourteen emails written in English by two groups of business managers, one Spanish and the other Chinese. After the analysis of the data, I found that the Spanish writers of English used more attitude and engagement markers in business emails than the Chinese writers. It may be concluded that authors with different mother tongues use different attitudinal and engagement strategies in English as a lingua franca.

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