This email was not a reply directly to me, but rather, to one of my fellow committee members. A question asking for clarification regarding our upcoming monthly meeting date was sent out via the group mailing list, which is how I ended up with a copy of the email sitting in my inbox. The responding email is the one I will attempt to close read.
The email starts off with no “dear _____” or “______,” or anything of that sort. Being a response to a previous email, the heading seems unnecessary; all of us receiving the copy of the email would have received a copy of the email posing the question. The lack of a direct addressee also implies the email is for all of us. The clarification did regard something that matters to me and all the others that received it. Furthermore, the informal nature of the email is something that is present throughout the rest of the email, as seen in the tone, the punctuation, and the word choice present. Notice the apostrophe s, rather than spelling out “meeting is” and the use of “5-7” rather than adding the “:00pm.” The familiarity between the email sender and receivers is apparent in the omission of such detail since the meaning was assumed to be understood.
The second line was the reason I choose to close read this email. The use of parenthesis creates another separate sentence within, and in this case, with a completely different meaning, than the one spelt out excluding the parenthesis. “See you April fools there!” and “See you fools here!” are significantly different. Would the reader, being reminded it’s April’s fool day, take it to mean the meeting isn’t actually happening today? Or would they read it as a cleverly inserted joke, but realize the sender was serious and that the meeting would be happening at the stated day and time? The line following says basically, joke aside, the meeting is really happening. But it that truly clear to the reader? The line is set within parenthesis as well, just like the part of the April fool’s line, which associates this message with something less seriously and more as a joke. Even the word choice “but seriously” brings about skepticism.
To further understand the recipient’s understanding of this email, it is important to contextualize it. The steering meetings are regularly scheduled at 6pm. This very unusual time of 5pm would bring up doubts in those not aware of the reason why this one meeting would be held at 5pm rather than the typical 6pm.
The end result? Meeting attendance was significantly lower than usual levels. [Disclaimer: correlation, not causation. Many other unnamed factors also influence attendance levels.]
1 comment:
Fiona,
It is interesting how many of our class note in their close readings the lack of a salutation. (This may point to the emergence of an email etiquette, if only by way of noting its violations.) In any case, you have pointed to an absence, and this makes for strong close reading when it is anchored by concrete reasons why the absence is noteworthy. Here, the reading turns on the informal, and serial, nature of the email: it is a reply, rather than a beginning. Your noting of the apostrophe s as another sign of the contextual aspect of the message—the exchange occurs within an already established community—is acute. Perhaps best of all is the work you do around the line which made you want to read this email in particular: the joke about the joke, and how difficult it is to interpret that (or them). Another way to render your first interpretation (as "mean[ing] the meeting isn't actually happening today") is to render it as "See you (April fools) there!"—as two clauses: 1. See you there and 2. April fools! . The debate is whether the sentence is comprised of two clauses (as above) or one: "See you/fools of April there!" In the latter case, "April fools" would be another nominative term for "you" as in, "See you, kiddo." Regardless, the fact that you hit on a joke, and its difficulties, is perhaps the heart of what makes culture culture: how to read such embedded meanings. Your closing note that the meeting's attendance as lowered may be further testament to this, even with your very smart announcement of the disclaimer that distinguishes correlation from causation. The Latin term for this logical fallacy is Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: After this, therefore because of this.
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