ABSTRACT
This chapter examines one such channel, and genre, that of e-mail, which has come to prominence in the modern workplace as a major element in business information retrieval and use. E-mail has also been the object of non-academic research, in the educational guides which accompany the purchase of the Internet software, or are published for users by the trade. Both its primary purposes and the lack of education of its users have impacted on current e-mail practices. The chapter focuses on an investigation of a number of e-mail messages which were circulated as part of the preparation for formal meetings which took place within the administrative section of a university workforce. The project is an extended and focused application of Rice and Case's study of a very similar setting. The choice of e-mail as the channel for committee members' emendation and comment affects the document's rhetoric in another intertextual way.
