This paper investigates communication between speakers with different first languages in a business setting, referred to as BELF, Business English as a lingua franca. The present paper investigates politeness strategies in BELF e-mail correspondence, and the interplay between them. Politeness strategies play an important role in e-mail correspondence, and this has been identified through studying formality in greetings and closings, and directness in requests. The dataset consists of 46 naturally-occurring e-mails, which have been grouped into internal or external correspondence to accordingly answer the research question, which aims to investigate whether or not there is a difference in the communicative approach depending on who the receiver is. This has been analysed in terms of the politeness strategies formality and directness, and the results show that the internal and external correspondence are very similar to each other, hence the level of formality and directness rather appears to depend on the sender him/herself. The results furthermore present that greetings are mainly informal, closings mainly formal and requests predominantly direct, for both internal and external correspondence. This would conventionally indicate that the e-mails are impolite; however, in accordance with some recent scholars it has been agreed that, along with the development of e-mails, the requirements for politeness have changed, and the e-mails in the present study are primarily considered polite.

La décennie 1994-2004 est d’une importance majeure pour l’Afrique du Sud nouvellement démocratique. Au cours de cette période, le pays jette les bases de sa reconstruction à travers la mise en place de réformes politiques, économiques et sociales afin de combattre les méfaits de quarante années d’apartheid et de poser les jalons de son développement. Dans ce contexte, les médias internationaux ont porté une attention particulière à ces nombreux changements, plus spécifiquement la presse écrite canadienne et britannique, en particulier le Globe and Mail et le Times. Notre mémoire s’intéresse donc au traitement fait par ces deux quotidiens, l’un torontois l’autre londonien, de la reconstruction sud-africaine et ce, à travers l’analyse de thèmes précis et de ses réformes marquantes. Il sera plus spécifiquement question des réformes politiques et constitutionnelles avec la figure de Nelson Mandela, héros de la lutte contre l’apartheid, père de la « nation arc-en-ciel » ainsi que celle de son successeur à la présidence sud-africaine en 1999, Thabo Mbéki. Aussi, la Commission Vérité et Réconciliation et la nouvelle Constitution, toutes deux mises en place durant l’année 1996 sont majeures puisqu’elles dictent la nouvelle identité donnée au pays. Les réformes socioéconomiques de la reconstruction ont également attirés l’attention de nos deux journaux. Particulièrement, nous analyserons les points de vue de ceux-ci concernant le Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) ainsi que de la « discrimination positive » et du Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), deux mesures censées contribuer à l’amélioration de la qualité de vie de la population et à effacer les profondes inégalités socioéconomiques léguées par l’apartheid. Or, cet espoir d’une vie meilleure laisse rapidement place à un désenchantement. La forte criminalité et la dramatique explosion du VIH-sida dans une nouvelle Afrique du Sud qui cherche à se reconstruire a beaucoup retenu l’attention du Globe and Mail et du Times. Ces deux défis de taille s’avèrent être l’envers de la médaille du miracle sud-africain et ne manquent pas d’attirer l’attention des deux journaux, mettant clairement en évidence les « ratés » socioéconomiques » de la reconstruction.

In the present work we study possibilities of automatic sorting of incoming email communication. Our primary goal is to distinguish information about oncoming workshops and conferences, job off ers and published books. We are trying to develop tool to mine the information from data from professional mailing lists. Off ers in the mailing lists come in html, rtf or plain text format, but the information in it is written in common spoken language. We are developing the system so it will use text mining methods to extract the information and save it structured form. Than we will be able to work with it. We are examining the handling of the mails by user and apply the knowledge in the development. We solve the problems with obtaining of the messages, distinguishing language and encoding and estimating the type of message. After recognition of the bearing information we are able to mine data. In the end we save the mined information to the database, which allows us to display it in well{arranged way, sort and search according to the user needs.

We study possibilities of automatic sorting of incoming e-mails. Our primary goal is to distinguish information about oncoming workshops and conferences, job offers and published books. We are developing mining tool for extracting the information from data originated in profession-specific mailing lists. Offers in the mailing lists come in html, rtf or plain text format. The messages are written in common spoken language. We have developed the system so it will use text mining methods to extract the information and save it structured form. Then we will be able to work with it. We are examining how user handles the mail and apply the knowledge in the development. We solve the problems with obtaining of the messages, distinguishing language and encoding and estimating the type of message. After recognition of the transported information we are able to mine data. In the end we save the mined information to the database, which allows us to display it in well-arranged way, sort and search according to the user needs.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, School of Human and Community Development, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by coursework and research report in the field of in Organisational Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg September 2017 / Emails have become a fundamental computer application and business tool, in organisations across the global. This is because of the accessibility and convenience of emails which have generated an array of benefits to both employees and their organisations. However, this accessibility has led to an over-reliance on emails, which often has the negative consequence of email overload. Email overload continues to be a recurring issues experienced by employees universally, which research has found to have negative implications on employees’ wellbeing and productivity. Yet there has been limited research, particularly in South Africa, that aims to reduce email overload among employees. Thus, this research report investigated how the role of providing employees with a job resource (training intervention) could increase perceived productivity and eliminate email overload and change caused by the job demands (emails) on employees .In order to examine this effect, this research utilised a pretest post-test control group design on order to compare the impact of a training intervention in reducing email overload and increasing productivity. The quantitative results revealed that the training intervention contributed to a decrease in feelings of email overload among the participants. Additionally, focus groups were administered to determine participants’ experience with emails both prior to the training and after the training, to gain a clearer understanding of the best practices used to eliminate email overload. These findings observed that the participants transferred learnt contents from training into their working lives. Thus research both further contributes to other research currently associated with email and email overload, and also provides a greater understanding of the need to provide employees with job resources much like training intervention in order to counteract those job demands like emails, that are often ignored. / XL2018

The use, reuse and manipulation of information has become a key factor in the success of any organisation in an increasingly competitive and global business environment. Ensuring that employees are able to access (or are provided with) the right information in a timely manner is one of the key challenges facing organisations. Amongst the dominant communication methods email fills an important role in facilitating distributed communication and it is seen as a key target for improvement. Email is being used extensively and increasingly as a significant (and often dominant) method for communication within engineering organisations and projects and there exists significant opportunity and requirement to improve the use and reuse of email. This thesis contributes a rich understanding of the practise and perception of email use and reuse developed through a comprehensive review of the literature and three investigative studies: a study of the content of emails exchanged during an engineering project, a survey of practising engineers describing the role of email in supporting communication in projects and engineers perception of email, and a investigation of the information about the relationships between engineers participating in a project as represented by their exchanges of email. The second main contribution is a set of scenarios that were developed to summarise the understanding developed in the investigative studies, and form a core set of contextualised problems that can be used to communicate the research to industry and around which an holistic proposal is described to improve engineers use and reuse of email. The final contribution is an approach for supporting engineers in interpreting emails by the provision of additional contextual information, mitigating a core problem identified during the course of the research for which a well established information management solution does not already exist.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Komunikace je v dnešní době základním klíčem k úspěchu. Rychlost, dostupnost a kvalita předávaných informací je schopna ovlivnit nejen budoucnost firem, ale také jedinců. Cílem práce je poskytnout ucelený přehled o dostupných IT a SW prostředcích pro firemní komunikaci. E-mail, hlasová komunikace, videokonference, portály, ale také virtuální prostředí jsou postaveny proti klasickým formám komunikace jako je meeting a korespondence. V práci je vytvořena metodika umožňující srovnání jednotlivých forem komunikace z pohledu jejich vlastností, vhodností jejich použití pro různé modelové typy komunikace a možnosti jejich nasazení v interní a externí firemní komunikaci. Poslední kapitola práce demonstruje možnost aplikace zjištěných závěrů a získaných poznatků na středně velkou stavební firmu.

Student Number: 0216613T Master of Arts in Journalism and Media Studies. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences / This research examined the notion of liberal journalism in South Africa during apartheid as practiced at the RDM. It considered whether the paper, facing government scrutiny and restrictive laws, adhered to the principals of liberal journalism and how successfully it did so. The 1976 Soweto Uprising was used to assess the newspaper’s performance and the merits of arguments for and against the notion of it being a successful example of a liberal newspaper. Content analysis and interviews with RDM staff members, was used to assess the paper’s conduct. These primary sources were examined in conjunction with available literature and criticisms against the English press and RDM presented in testimonies at the TRCMH to assess the paper’s reportage and how valid criticisms against it were. The researcher concluded that, due to serious shortcomings, which included its reporting of the uprising, the RDM was not a successful liberal newspaper.

Electronic mail has become a widely used medium of communication in academia, government, and business. It is unique as a communication medium because it makes conversations across time, space, and organizational levels possible. The ability of electronic mail to "forward" a message allows for the creation of chains that preserve the entire conversation for each participant. This appears to be a new linguistic form in which the interactive features of spoken conversation are realized using electronically transmitted text. The purpose of the present study was to determine the extent of the similarities and differences between spoken conversation and electronic mail exchanges. The research questions addressed were 1) What techniques that occur in spoken conversations also occur in electronic mail exchanges?, and 2) How are the techniques used in spoken conversations modified or different in electronic mail exchanges? The data used in this study consisted of electronic mail text collected by the author in the course of her daily work in the data processing division of a large financial institution. The authors were computer technicians and middle managers with a wide diversity of educational backgrounds. Sixteen samples of message "chains" that contained at least three individual messages were selected for in-depth analysis. These samples were analyzed for conversational openings and closings, tum-taking mechanisms, adjacency pairs, and repetition. Of the structural features studied, repetition was used in ways most similar to its uses in spoken conversation. The feature having the most differences from spoken interaction was the tum-taking system. In the electronic mail exchanges there was more variation in the sender's selection of the next sender, including the option for multiple simultaneous replies. Openings and closings took many forms, some of them the same as in spoken conversation. Among the forms that differed were openings that resembled the salutation in a letter and closings that followed each individual message in a "chain." Adjacency pairs such as questions and closings were paired as in spoken conversation, while openings, thanks, and apologies occurred as single utterances.