Effects of Status and Solidarity on Familiarity in Written Communication

The present study extended the investigation of the effects of status and solidarity on familiarity in spoken language to an analysis of written communication. Each of 48 upper-year undergraduate psychology students was required to write four letters — one to a university professor (higher status), one to a first-year university student (lower status), one to a friend (high solidarity), and one to an equal-status stranger (low solidarity) — requesting that the recipient complete a questionnaire. Letters were coded for degree of familiarity using Stiles' (1978a) Taxonomy of Verbal Response Modes (VRMs), which requires that the syntax and communicative intent of each clause be coded as one of eight modes. As predicted, letters to friends consisted of a greater number of more familiar modes, primarily at the level of communicative intent, than letters to strangers; however, contrary to prediction, writers did not use a greater number of more familiar modes in their letters to lower-status recipients. Possible problems with the operational definition of lower-status recipient and the possibility that the absence of solidarity may have been a more influential factor than status when writing to strangers of lower status were considered as explanations for the failure to find the expected results for status.