A Corpus Study of Canned Letters: Mining the Latent Rhetorical Proficiencies Marketed to Writers-in-a-Hurry and Non-Writers

D. Kaufer; S. Ishizaki

doi:10.1109/tpc.2006.880743

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication Sep 2006

A Corpus Study of Canned Letters: Mining the Latent Rhetorical Proficiencies Marketed to Writers-in-a-Hurry and Non-Writers

D. Kaufer ; S. Ishizaki

Abstract

Corpus studies are revolutionizing the study of language practice, including professional communication, by substituting actual examples of practice for prescriptive intuition. Corpora are often put together by researchers who exert much care in what goes into a corpus. Yet professional communicators also experience corpora as commodities in the marketplace, bundles of "writing models" for sale that cross genres of professional and personal communication. When writers purchase these bundles, what are the latent rhetorical strategies they are purchasing? A corpus study of 728 canned letters across 15 genres taken from a best-selling trade book was undertaken. The texts were tagged for rhetorical features and factor analyzed for latent rhetorical dimensions of proficiency. The study concludes that the latent rhetorical proficiencies brought into evidence are heavily weighted on skills of collecting or raising money. While this study requires replication over a wider sample, it illustrates how corpus approaches can help us rigorously retrieve latent rhetorical skills across a collection of rhetorically diverse texts. It further helps us see how corpus studies allow one to maintain close ties between the avowed standards of communication practice and the close description of the practices themselves

Journal: IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Published: 2006-09-01
DOI: 10.1109/tpc.2006.880743
CompPile: Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access: Closed
Topics: rhetorical criticism genre theory professional writing quantitative research
Export: BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (4)

Lang et al. (2023)

Computer-Assisted Corpus Analysis: An Introduction to Concepts, Processes, and …

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Boettger et al. (2018)

Introduction to the Special Issue: Data-Driven Approaches to Research and Teach…

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Laursen et al. (2014)

Using an AD-HOC Corpus to Write About Emerging Technologies for Technical Writi…

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Lee (2011)

Using the Dialogic Communication Model to Teach Students to Write a Report Intr…

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

Cites in this index (0)

No references match articles in this index.

Also cites 11 works outside this index ↓

10.1002/pf.2202

↗
10.1075/ijcl.7.1.04upt

↗
connor (2003)

linguistic dimensions of direct mail letters

Corpus Analysis Language Structure and Language Use ↗
hart (2001)

redeveloping diction: theoretical considerations

Theory Method and Practice in Computer Content Analysis ↗
10.1017/CBO9780511606311

↗
10.1075/scl.6

↗
10.1017/CBO9780511621024

↗
10.1017/CBO9780511804489

↗
10.1093/llc/5.4.257

↗
10.1515/ling.1989.27.1.3

↗
10.1093/llc/8.4.243

↗

CrossRef global citation count: 14 View in citation network → Build reading path →

A Corpus Study of Canned Letters: Mining the Latent Rhetorical Proficiencies Marketed to Writers-in-a-Hurry and Non-Writers

Abstract

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (4)

Cites in this index (0)

Related Articles