EXAMINING LEVEL OF DIRECTNESS AND PERSPECTIVES IN AN IRANIAN AGRICULTURAL COMPANY ENGLISH REQUESTIVE BUSINESS E-MAIL INTERACTIONS

The extents to which textual and communicative complexities impact on international interactions have been the matter of great concerns to socio-pragmatists. This study aimed at investigating requestive business e-mail interactions sent to/ by Iranian business partners. To this end, 150 requestive business e-mail interactions were selected based on availability. The study examined requests as a realization of speech acts used in business e-mails by studying the level of directness and perspectives in business e-mail interactions. Descriptive statistics were used in order to calculate frequency and percentage. Then Chi-square tests were also used to analyze the data. The findings showed that there were significant differences with regard to the use of the level of directness and perspectives in business e-mail interactions sent to/ by Iranian business partners. The findings also showed that direct requests were used more by business partners. Hearer-oriented and second person-oriented were the two most frequently perspective used. This study could benefit ESP syllabus designers, ESP teachers and students, and international business partners. Being aware of the purposes for which businessmen make requests and communicate with their business partners through e-mail interactions would help ESP designers in the field to become familiar with the ways of writing requestive business e-mails and it would help them in developing books with appropriate contents. It would also help business partners to employ suitable strategies to teach the ways of writing appropriate business e-mails avoiding misunderstanding caused by cultural differences or decreasing the level of impositions.