Telling by omission
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Mohammed Albakry
Abstract
This corpus-based study explores some of the linguistic and discursive aspects of framing positive and negative information – mainly modals, evaluative adjectives, and mitigation strategies – in recommendation letters. The corpus is comprised of 114 letters of recommendation spanning three years of applications to an English Ph.D. program, approximately 46,000 words. The results reveal consistent patterns in the way different types of modals and their associated collocates are used to hedge predictions, and the analysis identifies the discursive frames of the most common mitigation strategies in presenting potentially negative information about applicants. The study illustrates the need to combine both corpus-based quantitative and qualitative methods for a more robust and fine-grained analysis of evaluative language in this occluded genre. Keywords: Recommendation letters; evaluative language; modals; negative presentation; mitigation strategies; occluded genres
Abstract
This corpus-based study explores some of the linguistic and discursive aspects of framing positive and negative information – mainly modals, evaluative adjectives, and mitigation strategies – in recommendation letters. The corpus is comprised of 114 letters of recommendation spanning three years of applications to an English Ph.D. program, approximately 46,000 words. The results reveal consistent patterns in the way different types of modals and their associated collocates are used to hedge predictions, and the analysis identifies the discursive frames of the most common mitigation strategies in presenting potentially negative information about applicants. The study illustrates the need to combine both corpus-based quantitative and qualitative methods for a more robust and fine-grained analysis of evaluative language in this occluded genre. Keywords: Recommendation letters; evaluative language; modals; negative presentation; mitigation strategies; occluded genres
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of Contributors vii
- Foreword ix
-
Introduction
- Douglas Biber and the Flagstaff School of corpus-based research xv
- A corpus-based analysis of linguistic variation in teacher and student presentations in university settings 1
- Telephone interactions 25
- On the complexity of academic writing 49
- Telling by omission 79
- Corpora, context, and language teachers 99
- The challenge of constructing a reliable word list: An exploratory corpus-based analysis of lexical variability in introductory Psychology textbooks 123
- Corpus linguistics and New Englishes 147
- Investigating textual borrowing in academic discourse 177
- Situating lexical bundles in the formulaic language spectrum 197
- Index 217
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of Contributors vii
- Foreword ix
-
Introduction
- Douglas Biber and the Flagstaff School of corpus-based research xv
- A corpus-based analysis of linguistic variation in teacher and student presentations in university settings 1
- Telephone interactions 25
- On the complexity of academic writing 49
- Telling by omission 79
- Corpora, context, and language teachers 99
- The challenge of constructing a reliable word list: An exploratory corpus-based analysis of lexical variability in introductory Psychology textbooks 123
- Corpus linguistics and New Englishes 147
- Investigating textual borrowing in academic discourse 177
- Situating lexical bundles in the formulaic language spectrum 197
- Index 217
