8. State the FTA as a general rule The eighth strategy allows the speaker to imply that he does not wish to impinge on the hearer with an FTA, instead he states it as a general social rule or obligation hence making it seem that the FTA is merely forced by the circumstances. While personal pronouns are avoided in the utterance such as in (36), a schoolteacher might use pronoun we in referring to a child and further extending it as a classroom rule (37):
(36) Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilets on the train;
(37) We don’t sit on tables, we sit on chairs, Johnny.
9. Nominalize P. Brown and S. Levinson claim that by removing actor of a speech act and making them attribute, the utterance does not only become more formal but at the same time we lower the weightiness of the FTA towards the Face of the speaker as well as the hearer. They illustrate this situation with a scale of nominalization both in the noun and verb phrase in (38) to (40).
(38) You performed well on the examinations and we were favourably impressed/that impressed us favourably.
(39) Your performing well on the examinations impressed us favourably/was impressive to us.
(40) Your good performance on the examinations impressed us favourably/made favourable impression on us.
10. Go on-record as incurring a debt, or as not indebting the hearer In the final strategy, the speaker expresses his indebtedness to the hearer in order to redress an FTA. See (41) for an example of a request and (42) for an offer.
(41) I’d be eternally grateful if you would...
(42) It wouldn’t be any trouble; I have to go right by there anyway.
Email is one of the most important communication tools at workplaces today, and it might become as important for home usage in the future. However, as these studies show there is still room for improvements of email technology.
Email is still a young medium and the question whether it will continue to grow and how it will change interaction and communication among people is still in the hands of researchers, designers, and most of all: users.
