To Whom it May Concern: The Rhetoric of Recommendation Letters

Rebekah Logan

While letters of recommendation are an integral part of graduate school applications, not much research has been done as to the type and frequency of support for claims in these letters. This study examined the differences in type and frequency of support as relative to the letters’ rhetorical sophistication defined by length and grammatical correctness. A corpus of twenty-four letters was examined to categorize support for each claim. This examination revealed that letters with less rhetorical sophistication included both fewer claims and a higher percentage of unsupported claims. Additionally, in the letters with less rhetorical sophistication, some types of support were drastically lower, including supports that were coded as “definition,” “qualitative achievement,” and “witness.” These results suggest that writers with lower apparent general writing ability construct these letters in ways that are not only less grammatically proficient but also different in their argumentative structure.

• Rebekah Logan is a first-year student from Greenwood, South Carolina, majoring in biology and music performance.