Communication has evolved over the years. The advent of technology has mediated communication thus bringing about new media such as emails. This computer-mediated communication has continuously gained the attention of language scholars, and, more recently, most of the studies on emails analyzed politeness and impoliteness as marked by the appropriateness of the sender’s language in various contexts. However, there seems to be a dearth of literature which analyzes emails in the workplace, especially in the Philippine setting. Hence, this study examined the presence (or the absence thereof) of Brown and Levinson’s (1978, 1987) positive politeness strategies and/or negative strategies in 86 emails sent by the employees to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a higher education institution. This study employed a quantitative-qualitative research design, and the findings indicate that there is preponderance of opening and closing moves, which reflects positive politeness strategies, and a salience of conventional indirectness with query preparatory, which demonstrates negative politeness strategies. In conclusion, this eclectic use of politeness strategies in workplace emails is not just a linguistic act, but, more significantly, it is a social act which depicts power relations among interlocutors. Accordingly, the discursive social practice such as writing emails is not just about exchanging information. More importantly, it reflects (re)negotiating communicative intentions within a continuum emphasizing solidarity and desirability on one end and mitigating impediment and imposition on one’s act on the other.
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