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- Title
A Socio-Pragmatic Study of the Use of Email by NUL Students.
- Authors
Ekanjume, Beatrice
- Abstract
E-mail has firmly established itself as the most versatile and accessible means of communication and this has made it to become so popular. With the rapid uptake in mobile devices, which are becoming more and more advanced, email as a mode of communication will remain versatile and accessible for years to come and especially because email is free and unlike SMS and Instant Messaging, users are not limited to a certain number of characters in each message. This paper seeks to discuss the communicative function of email exchanges by students of the National University of Lesotho (henceforth NUL students) from a socio-pragmatic perspective. The findings of the study reveal that NUL students use email to communicate among themselves as well as with their lecturers, friends elsewhere and literate family members. The study shows that the email exchanges to friends, mates and family members are usually greetings oriented and for purposes of socializing. Those to lecturers and a few to classmates are information oriented geared towards academic issues. The paper offers an insight into how NUL students collaborate in sharing knowledge and information among themselves through the use of email. The findings equally reveal that emails are written in a mode different from that used in letter writing and other means of written communication. The study therefore argues that email messages have certain peculiarities based on this new medium of communication.
- Subjects
EMAIL systems in education; COMMUNICATION in higher education; COLLABORATIVE learning; LETTER writing; PRAGMATICS; NATIONAL University of Lesotho
- Publication
NAWA Journal of Language & Communication, 2010, Vol 4/5, Issue 2/1, p178
- ISSN
1993-3835
- Publication type
Article