ENGL 4740: Computer Applications in Language Studies

Dr. Rozina bt Abdul Ghani

Assignment 2

Section 1

Siti Hajar bt Ibrahim 0725600

Fatin Hanani bt Mat Radzi 0724040

Nurul Farhana bt Mohd Salim 0729742

Research Objective

Electronic mail or commonly known as email (or e-mail), is a method of exchanging

digital messages from a sender to one or more recipients. Nowadays, email has become a

preferable means of communication between persons or members of a network community.

Members of a network community will receive email which notifies any updates, usually to

share and exchange information. This feature allows students and lecturers within a network

community for example, to make announcement and requesting for information effectively

because of its ease. Thus, this paper intends to identify requests in email messages in

Dellirium, a network group established for students of English Language and Literature in

International Islamic University Malaysia. Requests become the feature chosen to look for as

this network group serves as a means of communication between lecturers and students.

Therefore, it is expected that requests for action, information and permission may occur in

this kind of communication context. This paper will identify requests in email messages of

Dellirium and then classifying them according to the functions they serve. The purpose of the

classification is to determine certain features that can be used to detect request in emails.

Literature Review

In an article entitled Conversation Analysis of E-mail Requests by Second Language

Speakers by Aki Imuro (2006) from University of Hawai‘i, the researcher examined the

speech act of requests in e-mail interaction within the university context by Japanese second

language (L2) speakers of English. The aim of this study is to understand the placement and

function of “accounts” in requesting e-mail interactions from a conversation analysis (CA)

perspective, and to explore how the requesting features of L2 speakers understood from the

CA perspective are different from the result found in previous studies in the field of speech

acts. The analysis was conducted by observing the participants orient to “preference
organization” in their requests by using accounts and hesitations to delay the dispreferred

request act. The study is focus on accounts for requests in the three different placement

patterns of pre-request, post-request, and pre-and post-request. The findings demonstrate that

the participants display their orientation towards “preference organization” delaying the

dispreferred requests by using accounts, “written pauses” and boundary markers.

Meanwhile, the article entitled The Nature of Requests and Commitments in Email

Messages by Andrew Lampert, Robert Dale, and Cecile Paris (2008) presents precise

definitions for classifying requests and commitments in email, based on the concepts of

Speech Act Theory, and informed by the results of two independent manual annotation

experiments using data from the Enron email corpus. The specific surface realization of

requests and commitments in email are also considered, with the aim of clarifying how a

range of potentially difficult cases should be dealt with. Both requests and commitments

should be classified as conditional or unconditional, to emphasize the inclusion of conditional

requests and commitments. Annotators are asked to mark requests and commitments as either

implicit or explicit, hoping to encourage more careful consideration of implicit speech acts.

750 sentences are marked from 350 email messages. Agreement increased for both requests

and commitments, particularly for commitments. Definitions of requests and commitments

are separated from aspects of their surface realization, and thus are able to neatly capture

distinctions between alternate renderings of the same underlying request or commitment act.

Lampert, Dale and Paris (2010) also developed a method of classifying emails

containing request in order to improve the accuracy of message-level automated request

classification. In their research article, they stated some of the problems an automated

classifier system may encounter when extracting requests from messages. Firstly, typical

emails contain extraneous material that makes it difficult to isolate the content that is directed

to the recipient of the email. Secondly, sender might use variety of linguistic forms in the
emails, thus making possibilities for indirect speech acts to be used. This phenomenon is a

major difficulty faced to determine whether an email has one or more request. Whether or not

a request is directed to the recipient of the email message is another situation that must be

filtered and may become a problem if the classification uses automated system. Lampert et.al

also explores the use of requests in messages, whether they are directive or commissive in

nature. In their model of classification, they applied certain features such as the presence of

sender or receiver in the email, marker of email (eg. To:, From: or Fwd:) the use of modal

verb, question words, and question mark to identify requests in messages. Lampert et.al also

mentioned on 3 classifications of request made by Khosravi and Wilks (1999) which are

Request-Action, Request-Information and Request-Permission.

Methodology

A few samples of email sent to and from Dellirium group were collected to be

analysed. These data then were analysed according to the use of modal verbs, WH-questions,

question mark and exclamation mark. In doing the data analysis, certain words that might

signal request such as “please” and “need” were also included in the data analysis. Data were

further classified according to types of request: “Request-Action”, “Request-Information”,

“Request-Permission” and “Not a Request”. Finally, the frequency of occurrences according

to their categories will be tabulated.

Data Analysis and Discussion

Features Frequency Percentage (%)

Modal Verb 10 62.5
WH Question 1 6.25
Question / Exclamation Mark 7 43.75
Request for Action 9 56.25
Request for Information 4 25
Request for Permission 1 6.25
Not a Request 2 12.5
Other Words 10 62.5

From the corpus, we have found 16 sentences that have features of request. Under the

other words column, there are 10 sentences using words like ‘please’ , ‘are’ and ‘need’ to

signify request.. While in modal verb column, there are 5 sentences using ‘can’, ‘do’ and

‘would’. However, there is only one sentence using WH-question for the purpose of request,

that is “How much’s the ticket Dr.?” which can be found in email number 7 (Corpus). For

question or exclamation mark column, there are 7 sentences altogether, but there is only one

sentence ends with an interjection while the rest use question mark. There are three types of

request identified in the selected Corpus. Firstly is the request for action which has nine

sentences, compared to request for information with only 5 sentences and one for permission

form of request. Meanwhile there are 2 sentences that fall under not request column.

Since our research objective is to classify request in email group namely Dellirium, so

we will focus on types of request, which are action, information, and permission in this

analysis. We have found that request for action is dominantly used in this email group

because basically the main users of this kind of corpus are between lecturers and students.

This is largely due to the reasons the lecturers’ use of Dellirium are to spread news,

announcements, programs and anything related to learning and course works. Thus, the

students are expected to participate, perform or respond to the respected messages by the
lecturers. For that matter, it is not surprising that this corpus heavily contains request for

action.

For information type of request, it is less than request for action as all sentences under

the information type are constructed by the students. In this email group, students usually use

it as a medium of interaction with lecturers and peers. For this reason, they are able to gain

information and guidance from lecturers and other members of the email group. Normally,

the information they demand is related to their lesson as well as course works.

While the last type of request that is permission is the least use in the corpus. This

type of request was use by students to ask permission from lecturers. But, they tend to not use

it in this email group frequently as to directly asking permission from the lecturers would be

more effective. This also is an attitude of showing the respect to the lecturers as the students

meet the lecturer face-to-face.

For the other words column, it has the highest number of sentences. This is because

most requests are made by using the word please. This is a ‘short-circuit’ of request where

the person whose make the request does not cushion his request as he wanted the message to

be clear and grab the attention of the particular person.

References

Iimuro, A. (2006). Conversation analysis of e-mail requests by second language speakers.

Second Language Studies, 24(2). Retrieved from
http://www.hawaii.edu/sls/uhwpesl/24(2)/Iimuro%20Aki.pdf
Lampert, A., Dale, R., and Paris, C. (2008). The Nature of Requests and Commitments in
Email Messages, AAAI workshop on Enhanced Messaging.
Lampert, A., Dale, R., & Paris, C. (2010). Detecting emails containing requests for action. In
Human Language Technologies: The 2010 Annual Conference of the North American
Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (HLT '10). Association for
Computational Linguistics, Stroudsburg, PA, USA, 984-992.
 APPENDIX

Modal WH- Question/ Other Word Request Not

Email Verb Question Exclamation (eg: Please, Request
Mark need)
Action Information Permission

(a) Please spread the word. / /

(b) Please announce the following to your classes on Monday. / /

(c) Please note that the movie screening applies to ALL / /

sections.

(d) Can we meet either on THURSDAY, 25th Feb or / /

TUESDAY, 24th March after 1pm.

(e) Please let me know what time you can make it. / /

(f) I would like to have all students attending at the same time. / /

(g) I need ur contact number and email asap so that we can / /

organize a meeting for the project either f2f or networking
based.

(h) Plz send ur details to my email shikeen_raz@yahoo.co.uk / /

 Modal WH- Question/ Other Word Request Not
Email Verb Question Exclamation (eg: Please, Request
Mark need) Action Information Permission

(i) Do you think I should change my registered subjects, / / /

which are core courses, to the specialization ones?

(j) If yes, are there any available sections left? / / /

(k) Please share this with your friends! / / /

(l) Please see the attachment. / /

(m) How much's the ticket Dr.? / / /

(n) Can we organize a bus? / / /

(o) Pls announce when the bus will be available ok k tj? / / /

(p) Do we have to pay? / / /

Total 5 1 7 10 9 4 1 2