To close read this email may requires a little background. Due to a snafu regarding a lack of computer access during Spring Break, I did not get an add code I needed for a class. Despite a waiting list I was given the code anyway, but when I tried to use the code a day and a half later, it was rejected by the system. An email to the advising office yielded a rather terse response, the important parts of which follow.
“Haylee,”- This form of address struck me at once. Usually letters/emails begin with a rather general greeting (“hey” or “hello”) or some sort of modifier (“dear” or “to whom it may concern”). In this case the sender could have used the informal and all-encompassing “hello”, a more hands-off approach, or a modifier to soften and make friendlier the blunt beginning of only using my name. However, by simply choosing to use my name, the sender gave the email a direct, pointed, and almost unfriendly beginning, but also a sense of familiarity, almost as if they were a mother about to lecture a child.
The email body- The first sentence of the email seems almost condescending; the line “Yes…unfortunately,” begins by answering my question as to possible reasons the code didn’t work. However, the syntax of the sentence strikes me as odd. Instead of starting with “unfortunately”, the word is tacked on to the end, almost as an afterthought about the situation, and thus the sentiment is lacking.
“In the future… for you.”- This sentence embodies the spirit of cooperation. Interchanging the actions each party will take (“if you need”, “we’ll hold”) suggests working together for a common goal.
“We send out… from happening.”- This portion of the email had a tone of near rebuke. The section “we can prevent this,” seemed either an embodiment of Smokey the Bear or a momentary channeling of royalty and their use of “we”. In total, it seemed like another attempt to suggest that mutual support is occurring, but in fact, the problem that occurred is solely mine to prevent in the future, as implied by the beginning of the sentence which details the preventative measures taken by the Honors office.
The closing- This gave the information I actually needed (the lecture’s resolution) and a standard, and probably default, closing which wished me the “best” of something. Tradition leads me to believe this applies to me and is shorthand for “best regards” or perhaps the best for my future, and does not apply to the sender as the “best”.
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Haylee,
Yet again, the issue of salutation emerges! (Several of our other class members analyze this aspect of their emails; you may wish to peruse our community.). Email etiquette as you outline it here suggests that a salutation stripped of an adjective like "dear" connotes an atmosphere of unfriendliness. This is contextual—all etiquette is—and for very immediate pedagogical reasons I would volunteer that it is not necessarily so (see above, dear Haylee). That said, it is incontrovertible that the salutation dispenses with any characterization other than your name—in that it is direct—and that in dispensing with the traditional "Dear" the email separates itself from the norms of epistolary (to do with letters) relations. Be care to distinguish closereading details with interpretation—they're difficult to unthread, but it's worth the effort.
You do very well in singling out quotations which testify to the fact that the email uses words emphasizing union ("we") and mutual cooperation. Your reading of the email's words about preventative measures is funny—in the years I've been reading close readings, Smokey the Bear has never once emerged. Is the "we" in this instance an instance of the royal we (also funnily phrased)? You might provide a more sustained reading of that—it's a compelling idea, insofar as it would seem to involve the abdication of one form of responsibility (the plural as a smokescreen for the singular), at the same time that it cagily foregrounds the subject's/recipient's responsibility. Your reading of "best" as a compressed form of something, decipherable by tradition, is terrific. Fiefdom aside, a compelling reading of the movement between bureaucracy / systems and individual agency.
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