The need for identity construction in computer-mediated professional communication: A community of practice perspective

This chapter discusses the construction of personal identities by individuals of the same rank through the discourse they constructed while engaging in computer-mediated professional communication in the workplace. First, it discusses the need for the members of three different communities of practice to construct desirable personal identities via their daily computer-mediated professional communication. Second, it discusses how the members constructed these identities through the e-mail discourse they composed by exploiting various discursive strategies. Drawing upon systemic functional grammar, influence tactics, interdiscursivity, and rapport and rapport management, a total of 89 request e-mails were analyzed. The present study intends to bring to the fore the importance of the choice of language in professional communication in general, and in e-mail in particular, thereby enabling professionals to both encode and decode workplace communication in a more comprehensive manner.