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
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (7)

  1. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  3. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  4. Computers and Composition
  5. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Show all 7 →
  1. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  2. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

References (28)

  1. The International Corpus of English
  2. lexical behavior in academic and technical corpora: implications for esp development
    Language Learning Tech
  3. 10.1002/pf.2202
  4. 10.1075/ijcl.7.1.04upt
  5. Genre Analysis
Show all 28 →
  1. discourse in philanthropic fund-raising
    Written Discourse in Philanthropic Fundraising Issues of Language and Rhetoric
  2. linguistic dimensions of direct mail letters
    Corpus Analysis Language Structure and Language Use  
  3. Lifetime Encyclopedia of Letters
  4. The Power of Words Unveiling the Hidden Craft of the Speaker and Writer
  5. redeveloping diction: theoretical considerations
    Theory Method and Practice in Computer Content Analysis  
  6. complaints against debt collectors rise
    Denver Bus J
  7. Text and Corpus Analysis Computer-Assisted Studies of Language and Culture
  8. Occupational Outlook Handbook 2004&#82105 Edition
  9. Corpus Linguistics
  10. 10.1017/CBO9780511606311
  11. 10.1075/scl.6
  12. Looking Up An Account of the CoBuild Project in Lexical Computing
  13. 10.1017/CBO9780511621024
  14. An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics
  15. The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English
  16. 10.1017/CBO9780511804489
  17. The General Inquirer A Computer Approach to Content Analysis
  18. mining textual knowledge for writing education and research
    Writing and Digital Media
  19. category systems
    Text Analysis Info Page
  20. 10.1093/llc/5.4.257
  21. 10.1515/ling.1989.27.1.3
  22. Variations in written English Characterizing authors' rhetorical language choices across corpora of published texts
  23. 10.1093/llc/8.4.243