Virtual Office Hours: Negotiation Strategies in Electronic Conferencing

This study of electronic office hour consultations investigates the deployment of pragmatic elements associated with negotiating the completion and evaluation of course work as evidenced in e-mail messages of American and international students to an American professor. A total of 42 messages from 19 native-speaker and 9 non-native-speaker graduate students were analyzed. The relative occurrence, extent of development, and linguistic realization of various negotiation elements (e.g., proposal and justification) were compared to identify differences between native and non-native speakers. Findings indicate a lack of negotiation skills in the non-native students' messages, which might disadvantage them in terms of successfully completing course work.