Situating Evaluation and Authority: Direct Sponsorship in Letters of Recommendation
Lauren Tuckley,
Catherine Salgado,
Jessica Edens McCrary
et al.
Abstract:The letter of recommendation (LOR) is a stylized form of direct sponsorship, a rhetorical appeal that confers favor on a person or object in keeping with the writer’s—or sponsor’s—character, authority, and expertise. In response to Swales’s call to “unveil” the rhetorical features of occluded genres, this research employs a move-step analysis to determine the rhetorical features of a sample of 83 LORs written by college faculty and administrators for a nationally competitive, postgraduate fellowship. This stud… Show more
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