I meant it, but I was also reaching out after months without any communication between us. “I really do hope you are well,’ I overemphasized in my email to Urciuoli. But you’re not ever really going to know that for sure. “Some people do want those who work with or for them or do business with them to see them as caring, even if that really is pretty fake - think Michael of The Office.” And there is, of course, the very real possibility that the person you’re emailing with does genuinely care that you’re okay and doing well and staying sane and that you’ve got enough beans in your kitchen. “Not everyone is equally formulaic,” she added. And also, more important, that you know how to read the room. ![]() Bronislaw Malinowski, often hailed as the father of modern anthropology and a man with a name I have always found very satisfying to write out in cursive, would call them “phatic communion.” “They signal that the channel is open and that you respect the person you’re writing to,” Urciuoli explained. “If people respond by actually telling you how they are, they’d better keep it short unless you make it clear you want details,” Urciuoli said. It’s all variation on form, a slightly tweaked version of the lines you were probably already using in your emails, modified for these markedly darker days. Urciuoli brought up another example for me to consider: the classic, “Hi, how are you?” question when you don’t actually give a damn about the answer. Hope you’re doing okay, opens up a dialogue, and it also tells the person you’re emailing that they’re about to engage with a person who understands the conventions of how to interact with another person. “There’s a long history of work correspondence using formal greetings involving quasi-personal formulae such as ‘Dear - or ‘Esteemed -’ along with closings like ‘sincerely’ or ‘cordially.’” They’re signposts, things that guide us through polite conversations. “When you start off an email with, ‘Hope you and your family are well,’ it’s not bogus,” Urciuoli said when I asked her about our new, seemingly obligatory catchphrases. Something clicked into place in my head that day, and I left the classroom with my brain buzzing in the way that brains do that when you’re 18 and a basic discovery makes you reconsider every sentence you’ve ever uttered. Austin would categorize as a perlocutionary act, an instance where your speech is judged not on its literal content but on the response it garners. This, we’d later learn, is what philosopher J.L. But it could also mean, “Go open that window for me,” an indirect request. It could be, sure, a literal commentary on the temperature. “It’s so hot in here,” Urciuoli said, asking us to explain what she meant. A lesson from an early day in her introductory course surfaces in my mind, one where we were learning about speech acts and the ways in which what we say doesn’t always mean what we’re saying. ![]() I’m reminded of this when I email a favorite college professor, Bonnie Urciuoli, who teaches linguistic anthropology. Everything I try to type in response feels transactional and hollow.Ĭommunication, though, is always about transaction. Last weekend, I got an email from my landlord’s son-in-law that my landlord had died of “COVID complications.” I had planned to email him Monday to settle some minor lease issues. ![]() Stay safe! As if you have much control over that. Maybe there’s someone you care about who is working a high-risk essential job. Hope you’re well! How could anybody possibly be “well” right now? Setting aside whether you’re actually infected, the likelihood of your knowing somebody who is increases daily. The wording has tightened since then, culled to just a “ Hope you’re well!” or, in the case of email chains, a quick “Stay safe!” tossed in before my signature, which includes the cell phone number I’m hoping you’ll call so I can ask you my questions and you’ll tell me what I need to hear so I can continue doing my job. (I’m sorry that it wasn’t a special-just-for-you line and that you have to find out this way.) It signaled, I hope, that I wasn’t a heartless bitch out of touch with the fact that a merciless virus is killing people around the world and here I am sending emails about movies and memes and could your client do a 20-minute phone interview? If you received such an email and chuckled even a little bit, thank you. Hope you are doing as well as one can be amidst Only then would I begin to ask about the thing I actually wanted. ![]() In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic - which is to say three weeks ago - I started sending out emails that all opened with roughly the same line. (Really though, Tom, we are all so glad to hear you and Rita are feeling better.)
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