First Look at Email

Description

Mike's email:

• reply to Matt Baron
• title "RE: Wiki CFP
• all caps with SCSU and CFP
• about six sentences
• three paragraphs
• greeting is "Matt-"
• signing off is "-mike" lower case on "m"
• Not very complicated sentence structure
• abbreviatons with "SCSU" and "CFP"
• short reply
• not complex punctuation, for ex. semicolon, colon, dash, etc.
• exclamation point
• commas and periods
• nothing indented
• uses times new roman font

Matt's email:

• has an attachment
• is a reply to Mike
• goes straight into subject paragraph with greeting being part of it, "Hi, Mike--great hearing from you."
• uses abbreviations: AC, MN, and rhet/comp
• quotation marks, "retro" and "wiki writing text"
• more complex or compound sentences
• long sentences for most part
• times new roman font
• slang used such as "scrimp," "brew," "retro," and "stuff"
• uses smiley face
• Fall is capitalized
• uses kind of large words or formal words with informal speech "significant" "quite."
• doesn't sign off

Analysis

This exchange took place over a couple days: August 5-6. Matt and Mike are replying to eachothers' messages hence the RE: in the headings. Also it shows the previous messages pasted below their text. Matt responded to Mike in about 20 minutes so they must have been online around the same time. Both have checked their emails at least once a day for he past few days. You could also tell it was Matt in the reply because he started his paragraph out the same way in both emails: "Greetings--I had you guys..." and "Hi, Mike--great hearing..." Although in Matt's previous email he emailed many people at once hence the "you guys." Matt also the informal style in the second email that he used earlier in the first email's first paragraph. Both replies use a variety of sentence lengths and structure, but Matt's email does this more. Neither use any indentation.

Interpretation

It is implied that these two are friends or collegues that talk on a regular basis. This is because of the informal speech and slang used. For instance, you probably wouldn't talk about going out for a brew if you didn't know them decently well enough to provide that information. Also, Mike says, "Get your first book started before ou even started teaching" at SCSU. This suggests Mike has had previous conversations with Matt because Matt's email didn't provide that information.

You would think both are in similar fields of teaching since they both know the lingo like wiki, rhet/comp, and CFP.

Mike's email seems to a be a supportive email. He doesn't go on and on about what he wants to write; he only uses one sentence for that. The rest are devoted to Matt and how things are going with him at SCSU. For example, Mike says, "Looks like you're settling in," and "Hope they gave you a passable office and a big shiny new computer classroom." Those look like warm wishes. He also says to Matt, "We'll talk soon." This shows a possible interest on Mike's part to keep up with Matt's career.

The last paragraph suggests Matt is not sure about Mike's paper, but is noneless interested sine he says "you've got my attention."

It's not surprising that the bulk of Matt's paper is about his job and little about Mike's paper sinc Mike addressed those issues the same way in his reply.