Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Arts - Department of English

The present study purports to provide a linguistic analysis of ninety - eight initiatory email postings within two Internet discussion Groups (IDGs): (a) TESL - L whose members are teachers of English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) and (b) linguist list, whose members are linguists. The emails exchanged among the members IDGs result in a bond and the formation of a 'universal' discourse community whose chosen genre, email, has conversational features. The findings of the present study revealed that only move 8 : request for ingormation or help appeared in all the initiatory emails analyzed. Among interactive devices, transitions occurred most frequently. The most common interactional device of stance was self - mention and the persistent marker of reader engagement was the second - person pronoun, reflecting the instinctive perception of both TESL - L and LINGUISTList as discourse communities where the email genre as a 'typed' dialogue is exchanged

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