Lee, Seungyeon & Kim, Eunho. 2014. Politeness Strategies in Korean Email: Requests in business correspondence. Language Information. Volume 18. 113-136. This study examines the principles and practices of politeness strategies in email communications in Korean. Combining qualitative and quantitative method, the study analyzes forty four request made via email of two Korean workplaces: educational organizations and companies. The analysis applies Brown and Levinson(1987) and Blum-Kulka (1989)'s politeness framework to investigate the linguistic and stylistic features of the emails in two institutional situations. The study found a general structure of request email and a range of various politeness strategies employed for the writing of the correspondence. Result reveals the general structure of email as 'Opening - RSM1 - RHA - RSM 2 - Closing.' Also, it is found that far more requests are realized through conventionally indirect strategies as well as negative politeness strategies than direct and positive strategies. The study concludes that such a variety of politeness strategies in writing relates strongly to Korean politeness values and business etiquette.
Key words: E-mail, Request, Politeness strategies, Institutional communication