This article examines the role of TPC professionalism keywords on early career scholars' disciplinary enculturation. The article reports on a collaboration between the article's authors that explored how the deployment of professionalism keywords in teaching and research created conditions for defining what it might mean to work as a TPC professional. The article offers insights into the challenges keywords pose to forwarding non-normative understandings of professionalism that enable broader inclusion and visibility for TPC stakeholders.

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 study finds five core moves expressed in its LOR sample: (1) sponsor positioning, (2) applicant performance, (3) applicant attributes, (4) future projection, and (5) audience appeals. Our discussion offers three key insights and provides macro-level takeaways in an effort to raise rhetorical awareness for LOR writers and requestors alike.