词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Language of Electronic Mail

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER -- the language of electronic mail.

TAPE: CUT ONE -- NAOMI BARON¹

"As e-mail is developing more and more users, it's also developing more and more styles. There's one style that says be brief, be spontaneous, don't edit anything you write."

RS: But be careful -- that style is not always appropriate, says linguistics² professor Naomi Baron. She's head of the TESOL -- Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages -- program at American University in Washington.

TAPE: CUT TWO -- NAOMI BARON

"I receive all sorts of e-mails from people who are asking my help that say: 'Hi Naomi, how ya doing? Need help -- fast. Answer me now.' And I find this a little bit forward from people I've never met who are asking me to spend time doing research to help them out."

AA: But Naomi Baron says she gives the writers the benefit of the doubt when she gets pushy-sounding e-mails like that from people unfamiliar³ with American standards of decorum.

RS: After all, she says even a lot Americans are not sure what tone to use when sending an electronic message to someone other than a friend or loved one.

TAPE: CUT THREE -- NAOMI BARON

"E-mail is different from formal speech and from traditional formal writing, in that there really isn't anybody laying down the rules. What I would overwhelmingly recommend is that if you're introducing yourself to someone whom you would like to have hold you in high esteem⁴, read what you write, edit it, be polite, go ahead and don't care about whether or not you're too formal. Say 'dear mister, doctor, so-and-so,' sign it 'sincerely so-and-so.'

AA: Now let's say you've just gotten an e-mail, how soon are you expected to reply?

RS: Linguistics professor Naomi Baron has an answer.

TAPE: CUT FOUR -- NAOMI BARON/RS

BARON: "Interestingly when people first started commonly using e-mail -- oh, about ten years ago -- you could have two or three days before anybody would feel it's inappropriate not to have responded. But absolutely people have the assumption now if they haven't heard back within a day, you're being rude."

RS: "So tell us something about what you see in your crystal ball about the future of e-mail."

BARON: "In my crystal ball I see the possibility of trouble ahead for the written English language. For reasons that have nothing to do with e-mail, spoken language is coming to look closer and closer to written language, which really means writing is becoming much more informal, casual. What e-mail is doing -- and instant messaging after that -- is making that informal speech yet more informal. But I do believe that as we see a lot of the good things that carefully edited written language can do being jeopardized⁵, we'll stop and say no, that's not what we want to happen and we'll find there's certain things for which we use the telephone, certain things for which we use unedited e-mail, but there will also be a style of e-mail that is indistinguishable from more formal, traditional writing."

AA: And it is this kind of style that Naomi Baron would recommend for a situation like, say, writing to a professor you've never met, asking for help.

RS: I asked Naomi Baron if she saw a role for mail in the English as a foreign or second language classroom.

TAPE: CUT FIVE -- NAOMI BARON/RS

BARON: "Absolutely. We, for example, have many, many classrooms in the United States that are taking e-mail as a device for having students regularly send messages to their faculty⁶ members. So yes it is being used and I think will be a very productive part of practicing one's writing."

RS: "Finally, before you push 'send,' what would your recommendations be?"

BARON: "Take your hands off of your keyboard, and read. In fact, I strongly recommend reading every e-mail message not once but twice."

RS: "And would you recommend to read it out loud?"

BARON: "Actually I would. I find an enormous number of errors that I wouldn't have seen, but I hear."

RS: "That's what I tell my sons to do -- thank you! (laughter)"

AA: Naomi Baron of American University is author of the book "Alphabet to Email: How Written English Evolved and Where It's Heading."

RS: Now, speaking of evolution, this week Wordmaster launches a Web site! You can find most of our scripts from the last four years, along with recent audio files of our programs.

AA: Here's the address: it's................

RS: That鈥檚 voanews.com/wordmaster.

AA: Our e-mail address is still............And our postal⁷ address is VOA Wordmaster, Washington DC 20237 USA. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

MUSIC: "Digital Get Down"/N'sync

 

1 baron   

n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王

参考例句：

• Henry Ford was an automobile baron.亨利·福特是一位汽车业巨头。
• The baron lived in a strong castle.男爵住在一座坚固的城堡中。

2 linguistics   

n.语言学

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• Linguistics is a scientific study of the property of language.语言学是指对语言的性质所作的系统研究。

3 unfamiliar   

adj.陌生的，不熟悉的

参考例句：

• I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
• The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。

4 esteem   

n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• The veteran worker ranks high in public love and esteem.那位老工人深受大伙的爱戴。

5 jeopardized   

危及，损害( jeopardize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The soldier jeopardized his life to save his comrade. 这个士兵冒生命的危险救他的同志。
• The occasional failed project or neglected opportunity does not jeopardized overall progress. 偶然失败的项目或失误的机会并没有影响总的进展。

6 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

7 postal   

adj.邮政的，邮局的

参考例句：

• A postal network now covers the whole country.邮路遍及全国。
• Remember to use postal code.勿忘使用邮政编码。