A significant amount of communication between lecturers and students takes place via e-mail. This study provides evidence that two types of cultural cues contained in the e-mail impacts lecturers' linguistic adaptation to, and appraisal of, the student. A total of 186 psychology lecturers from universities in Germany answered a fictitious student's e-mail inquiry and reported their perceptions of the student. The inquiry was manipulated with regard to ethnicity (German, Chinese) and communication style (direct, indirect). Further, the participants answered to one of two versions that differed in the wording. This was done in order to study lexical alignment. In the German ethnicity and direct style conditions, lecturers aligned more of their words to those of the students; in the Chinese ethnicity and indirect style conditions, lecturers' responses were longer and more polite. When ethnicity and style were congruent, fewer negative appraisals were produced.