Epideictic Rhetoric Born Digital

Abstract

The letter of recommendation (LOR) plays a significant role in the application process for many professional positions, offering descriptive rather than quantitative information from a third party about an individual’s potential fit within the hiring organization. Such letters, however, increasingly appear online, emphasizing existing problems within the genre and creating others involving trust, reliability, and confidentiality. Typically, the response has been that such digitization of the LOR minimizes its significance or standardizes it. This article analyzes the digital LOR genre as an exemplar of epideictic rhetoric situated within a Perelmanian framework and demonstrates how the digital LOR operates rhetorically, enhancing the adherence between candidate, writer, audience, and institutional values and providing a means of evaluating candidate fit. The article also offers a rhetorical heuristic that captures how audiences can more fruitfully read the epideictic, digital LOR, thereby demonstrating how to optimize the digital platform’s benefits and still use the LOR to its best rhetorical advantage.

Situating Evaluation and Authority: Direct Sponsorship in Letters of Recommendation

“…How writers situate an applicant's distinguishing traits, then, is not a purely evaluative exercise. Vidali's contribution highlights the rhetorical pressure writers face for effusive praise or hyperbole, a phenomenon that has elicited a number of studies concerning reliability and inflation (R. K. Miller & Van Rybroek, 1988;Rim, 1976;Ryan & Martinson, 2000;Tomlinson & Newman, 2018) and predictive capabilities (Aamodt et al, 1993;Dirschl & Adams, 2000;Kuncel et al, 2014;Loher et al, 1997;McCarthy & Goffin, 2001). And despite calls to standardize the genre (Girzadas et al, 1998;Kaffenberger, 2016;Liu et al, 2009), the narrative LOR-as opposed to a form with guided short responses-remains the norm as an application requirement for selective academic programs.…”

Agency, Authority, and Epideictic Rhetoric: A Case Study of Bottom-Up Organizational Change

“…To him, it is the rhetoric of the ceremonial speeches given at funerals, state functions, and celebrations. But as interpretation of the genre has evolved over the centuries, rhetoric scholars have come to understand its purpose to be less about the isolated celebration or denigration of specific individuals or events than about the building and shaping of communal values (Bizzell & Herzberg, 2001;Condit, 1985;Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969;Tomlinson & Newman, 2018). Condit (1985) claimed that epideictic rhetoric creates, communicates, and performs the shared identities of communities of individuals.…”