Improving Email Conversation Efficiency through Semantically Enhanced Email

Despite persisting in popularity email is still plagued with information overload, hindering the workflow of data the user has to handle. While the revolutionization of the Web by the semantic Web is underway, we aspire to use the same technology to enhance electronic mail with useful semantics. In so doing we will tackle one of the largest flaws of the email communication genre - the lack of shared expectations about the form and content of the interaction. This can be attributed to the lack of explicit semantics covering the context and content of exchanged email messages. Earlier research showed that email content can be captured by applying speech act theory. We will refine and extend this work to develop an ontology for email speech acts and outline non-deterministic models to support the user in deciding the best course of action upon sending or receiving an email.