The institutional genre email in building a socio-rhetorical discourse community

Abstract

In this study we analyze the institutional e-mail, one of the most produtive genres in digital communications. The definitions of gender and socio-rhetorical discourse community are based on the studies of Swales (2008) and Freedman (1999). The data consist on 125 messages received by a service provider with requests for social activities related to the context of the tasks to be performed. The opening and closing patterns demonstrate the social function of this genre. The results show that the institutionalized talk, even with the presence of linguistic elements of synchronous genres, entails the formation of a socio-rhetorical discourse community, according to the assumptions that characterize it.