Ideology of a Work Email

I hope this Substack finds you well

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Work emails are a genre in their own right — a typified rhetorical structure with conventions that have evolved to meet recurring situational needs.

They come as invitations, announcements, instructions, and queries, but one of the defining characteristics of the work email (as a genre) is that it makes a request. Generally speaking, the purpose of a work email is to solicit information or ask someone to do something.

Emails as Genre

Since work emails are a genre, they’re associated with certain expectations. These vary across cultures and professional contexts, but there’s a specific style, tone, and format associated with work emails. In fact, many of them have the same basic structure, which looks something like this:

Hello recipient,

I hope this email finds you well. I’m reaching out to ask about something or make a request (with a little bit of context or clarifying information inserted here). Here’s a sentence that does not convey much useful information, but softens my request and reminds you that I am also human.

Thanks!

Sender¹

The first line of the work email feels like a throwaway line. Many people don’t bother to include it, especially if they’re writing someone they know well. It doesn’t contain any information, but it doesn’t ask for any either. So why does this line invariably end up in so many emails?

It’s there because it serves a rhetorical function.

Ideology and Email Etiquette

The throwaway line reassures the reader that the message is a request and not a demand, since the difference between the two often boils down to tone and context. A request is polite, whereas a demand involves an element of urgency that’s often incompatible with courtesy. A speaker making a demand generally isn’t interested in exchanging pleasantries.

But there’s also a reason people write “I hope this finds you well” instead of asking people how they are. Work emails are often addressed to coworkers or strangers. Phrasing the statement as a question would invite a response. In a worst case scenario, this response could escalate into an exchange of emails that have nothing to do with work.

In other words, the line might not contain information relevant to the message, but it still has a couple of different jobs to do:

1. It humanizes the sender.

2. It helps distinguish between demands and requests.

3. It expresses concern for the recipient without committing to their well-being.

The last one is important because it helps illustrate how certain assumptions or forms of behavior get baked into any rhetorical structure that stabilizes over time. When we write in one genre — even one like theory,² which is supposed to foster critical thinking — we often internalize those assumptions and behavior. They become unconscious habits.

This means the genres we adopt aren’t just shaping how we write. They function as templates for how we orient ourselves toward one another in the real world. In other words, genres are inherently ideological.

A Disciplined Subject (Line)

When my students in my class write emails, they don’t always know the conventions of the genre they’re writing in. Instructors in other disciplines often seem scandalized by this. They’re supposed to be digital natives!

But this is kind of silly. All of us had to learn how to write a work email. Some of us did it through osmosis, or learned it so long ago that we don’t remember. But there was a moment when we successfully identified and started using the conventions of the genre.

If you teach first-year writing, you can actually watch students internalizing these conventions in real time, often without even realizing it. This is ideology at its finest. As a close friend remarked recently, students enter into academic disciplines and — for better or for worse — end up getting disciplined.

Good luck with your writing!

1. There’s a great tweet out there that makes a similar point.

2. Contrary to popular belief, reading theory does not make you any less susceptible to ideology than people who don’t. As Slavoj Žižek persuasively argues, ideology more often manifests as fetishistic disavowal. The true formula of contemporary ideology is “I know, but still…”

For example, “I know the first line of this work email doesn’t actually mean anything, but I still include it because investing time in workplace etiquette helps me remain productive.”