A Genre Analysis of Reprint Request E-mails Written by EFL and Physics Professionals

The present study aimed to analyze reprint request e-mail messages written by postgraduates (MA students) of two fields of study, namely Physics and EFL, to realize the differences and similarities between the two email types. To investigate the purpose of the study, a sample of 100 e-mail messages, 50 Physics and 50 EFL, were analyzed according to Swales’ (1990) model for reprint requests and the modified moves, strategies and some microstructural features of the two corpora. The results showed that the two corpora were much alike at the level of move schemata while there were some differences concerning strategies and microstructural features. The e-mail writers within each discipline were affected by their previously learned texts and the Physics group was affected by conventions of Persian letter writing.