Language and the Internet

100 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET

do not usually greet, though the range of auto responses received
by my son include:

Dear BEN CRYSTAL

Dear [email protected]

Dear bcrystal

Within institutions, e-mails can be mainly used for the sending
out of information and instructions to all members of staff, in
the manner of a traditional memo, so that a personalized greeting
is unnecessary. A general enquiry posted to a group of recipients
(in the manner of an asynchronous chatgroup, p. 11), where the
aim is to obtain information for the benefit of all, is also unlikely
to be opened with a greeting (unless it is of the ‘Dear all’, ‘Dear
List Member’ type) and just as unlikely to generate personalized
responses.
Between people who know each other, greetingless messages are
usually promptly sent responses, where the responder sees the mes-
sage as the second part of a two-part interaction (anadjacency-
pair), for which an introductory greeting is inappropriate. For
example:

Arriving message: David, will 7.30 be OK for the talk? Colin

Response message: Fine

where the following would be unlikely:^8

Response message:∗Colin, Fine.

or, even less so:

Response message:∗Dear Colin,

Fine.

The longer the delay in responding, the more likely the response
will contain a greeting, if only an apology for the time-lag.
By contrast, two-thirds of a sample of 500 e-mails in my Deleted
folder from people who know me contained an introductory

(^8) Here and below, this use of the asterisk indicates an expression considered to fall outside
the rules governing usage in a variety.