Handbook of Business Communication

Alexander Beer

8From business letters to email and mobile communication

1.Introduction

2.Definitions and statistics

3.Genre analysis

4.Orality vs. literacy

5.Degree of formality

6.Linguistic accuracy

7.Pros and cons of using email in business

8.Technological advances in business communication

9.Conclusion

1Introduction

The last few decades have seen a massive shift from paper-based communication to electronic mail and various related forms of communication. As a result, a sizable body of linguistic research on the peculiarities of such electronic communication has developed (Gains 1999; Gimenez 2005b; Frehner 2008; Gimenez 2009, among others), much of which focuses on the differences compared to written communication in its pure form (for the ...