Status Analysis

In regards to our semantic analysis, our high status emails contained an overall feeling of excitement, topics about education, and an “expected” quality. This is most likely due to the fact that our high status emails were to individuals regarding job searches, and perhaps emails to strangers as well. The words that came up in our high status emails frequently, were: “-ing” words, or action verbs, “was” and “am”. These results are concordant with our semantic analysis results as well. For the most part, I believe when we were crafting our high status emails, we wanted to create a positive perception of ourselves when addressing these high status individuals. Enthusiasm, through the use of “-ing” verbs can help to create a feeling of excitement and interest in either the potential job, mentor, or advice the student is seeking from the high status individual. By using words such as “was” and “am” we are describing ourselves and activities to the high status individual. It also makes sense that these words would be seen less in the low status emails because most communications with low status people are usually to delegate tasks or to maintain a relationship. The student also might not have met the high status individual yet. This could shape the tone and content of the email to include background about themselves in the emails, which would help explain the “am” words as well as the “expected” tone and education topics that were mentioned.

On the other hand, our low status emails covered topics of personal belongings, army/warfare, and people: male and female. Words like “you” were used frequently, and single letters of the alphabet were used more frequently in low status emails. The students who crafted the low status emails might have served as an authority figure over the low status individual. As explained before, "you" words were probably used more to help with the delegations of tasks. This could explain the frequency of the “you” words, which are can be commanding and authoritative. Another take on the frequency of “you” could be the fact that individuals crafting low status emails are more interested in having a rapport and “you” is more conversational. Emails written to lower status individuals might be more playful, and less serious, therefore topics about belongings and gossip (people: male/female) might be mentioned more than they would be in a more serious, high status email. It is interesting to note that weapons came up in our semantic analysis, and when I looked through our emails, I couldn’t find anything that matched up, until I realized Christine is a Film major and used the word “shoot” and “shooting” frequently. This was probably directed towards underclassmen and has nothing to do with weapons, but it is a semantic misunderstanding of her use of “shooting”.