Description

Tags, Icons, and Headings

• RE: appears at the top of Mike Morgan's email
• embedded text follows
• date and time stamp
• subject line
• to and from lines in both Mike and Matt's emails
• Attachment icon and save button
• smilley face in Matt's reply to Mike

Salutations

• "Hi, Mike" begins the body of Matt's email to Mike. The saluation is not separated from the body.
• "Matt-" followed by a space between the salutation and the body begins the email from Mike to Matt.
• "Greetings" opens the original email embedded into Mike's reply email from Matt Barton on Aug 25,2005.

Length

• The embedded wiki from Matt Barton has the highest word count
• Mikes reply to Matt has two short paragraphs and a closer"We'll talk soon."
• Matt's reply to Mike has a large and dense paragraph at the begining.

Lexicon

• Original message uses "you guys"
• Call For papers is abbreviated
• Mike uses "What a deal!"
• term "scrimp" is used in Matt Bartons reply to Mike's reply
• SCSU, MN, abbreviations
• Matt's reply uses term "brew"

Analysis

Of course the RE: at the top of Morgans email means this is a reply to the text embedded below that, which is the original message from Matt Barton. It can also be assumed that the original mnessage was addressed and sent to multiple peaopl because of the collaborative nature of the request and the terms "you guys", and phrases like "our students work."

Matt Bartons first message is embedded into the reply from Mike Morgan. Mike replies to this message a day after it was sent. The original message was sent on August 5, 2005 at one minute to five pm, and Mike Morgan responded less than twenty-four hours later. When Matt replies to Mike's "reply" his tone becomes quite different than in the original message dealing with Wikis.

The attachment on Matt's final message to Mike may be related to the call for papers.

Interpretation

• Call for papers abbreviated makes me think that the group Matt Barton emailed the original message to had used the term on a regular basis.
• The lexicon variation from the original email Matt sent out to collegues and co-workers versus that of the reply to Mike's message is significant. Although the original email is not extremely formal, the language in Matt's message to Morgan alone is much more conversatrional and uses slang freely.
• It may be assumed these two know one another on a persoanl level as Morgan states "We'll talk soon" at the close of his email. Matt writes that the two will share a "brew", and it seems like they have indeed shared a brew before.
• The reply from Matt to Mike's reply is within twenty-two minutes of one another. I assume that both were on the internet at the same time. Probably both looking at Wikis within that session.