The Language of Email : A Hybrid Towards Standardization

As computers have become an integral part in the life of the societies all over the world , people are increasingly using computer technologies including the internet, and particularly the e-mail , to communicate encouraged by the easy access to these technologies and their lower cost . This, in turn, has led to a growing field of study which is Computer – Mediated Communication (CMC) part of which e-mail is expected to be the most familiar and the widely-used mode of communication exchange. Within the course of its relatively short time of use, e-mail has shaped its (approximately) regular format so far, but its language (English only for the purpose of this paper) has shown irregular manifestations in the message texts . This study tackles this issue of the characteristics of the language of e-mail including its format as compared to the conventional letter. It emphasizes the hybrid nature of the English texts of emails which is being under a process of linguistic systemization as an indication that it is on a way of standardization . Therefore , the scope of the study is limited only to email , and doesn t go beyond studying its language features .