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.

Keywords

letter of recommendation epideictic rhetoric LinkedIn digital profiles Perelman personnel selection

Traditionally, the letter of recommendation (LOR) plays a significant role in the application process for many professional positions as well as for academic study and advancement. Procedurally, and with other materials, the LOR represents candidates before they make a face-to-face case for their credentials to decision makers and thus facilitates that event. To that end, the traditional LOR (TLOR) works with other materials such as transcripts, application forms, and résumés to represent the candidate. But the TLOR differs in several key ways from these other materials, which provide primarily quantitative information regarding the individual’s experience and skills. The TLOR offers more descriptive information about the candidate—information that reflects on that individual’s potential fit within the institutional culture’s values and that renders such reflections as a third party.

Given these differences in character and goals, the TLOR calls for different writing and reading strategies than do the other materials. In general, the reader verifies or assumes that the content of the TLOR and other materials is accurate. But with the TLOR, trust between all parties is a significant issue. For instance, candidates depend on their recommender to follow through in writing the letter that will reflect positively and accurately on them as a candidate. In turn, the audience may be skeptical about positive references because the recommender might shape the TLOR in overly positive ways to avoid “diminished rapport with supervisees, retaliation, or legal repercussions” (Grote, Robiner, & Haut, 2001, p. 655).

Literature on the TLOR has historically focused on these issues of trust and frequently represented the genre as troubled and unreliable (Grote et al., 2001; Madera, Hebl, & Martin, 2009; Miller & Rybroek, 1988; Nicklin & Roch, 2009; Rim, 1976). Although the TLOR remains ubiquitous in its singular role involving candidate fit, concerns about trust are exacerbated by the increasing presence and significance of the digital letter of recommendation (DLOR).

The digital letter of recommendation (DLOR), for the purposes of this article, is a recommendation for an individual that is composed and displayed publicly on a Web site, particularly LinkedIn. These digital recommendations commonly constitute a part of job seekers’ online profiles. The DLOR differs from the TLOR in several fundamental ways. First, the DLOR is publicly displayed rather than privately exchanged. Second, it is typically written to characterize an individual’s employability in general rather than the individual’s suitability for a particular position.

As part of a candidate’s digital profile, the DLOR plays a critical role in hiring within the contemporary business world. Hughes (2016), a LinkedIn profile optimization specialist, explained that “one of the best ways you can position yourself as an expert is to include testimonials on your LinkedIn profile” (p. 3). Indeed, some experts recommend having at least one LinkedIn recommendation per year of employment (Prodromou, 2015). According to Prodromou, “recruiters and hiring managers at large companies do read recommendations and take them into account…. Recommendations add value to your overall LinkedIn profile…. Some recommendations are so powerful they can influence a manager’s decision to hire a person” (p. 83). Further, LinkedIn rewards individuals who include recommendations on their profiles; key words from recommendations used in LinkedIn searches are included among the elements that factor into determining a profile’s completion level. In addition, Prodromou (2015) noted, the more recommendations candidates have on LinkedIn, the higher that person is ranked in LinkedIn searches.

Career counselor Susan Robison (personal communication, June 29, 2016) reported that most of the recruiters with whom she works found their current jobs through connections on LinkedIn; among career counselors’ best practices, then, is introducing students to LinkedIn. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) is a network of career services professionals that nearly 2,000 colleges and universities use. Throughout its career counselor training materials, NACE reiterates the critical role that the digital profile plays in graduating students’ job searches. Based on a survey of 43,864 students, NACE reports 87% of graduating seniors used LinkedIn to facilitate their job search; these seniors also reported that only LinkedIn worked effectively as a social networking site in the job-search process (NACE, 2014). As part of the candidate’s online profile, however, the DLOR brings a new set of issues to bear beyond those associated with the TLOR. Specifically, besides heightening trust issues, the DLOR raises other concerns about the genre’s value in this medium, among them, the identification and presumed credibility of the DLOR writers, the highly variable types of connections between recommenders and those they recommend, and the overall lack of clear-cut standards (Maurer, 2015) for what the DLOR should contain, when it should be used, and who should compose it.

Given such concerns about the LOR, many researchers and practitioners encourage the use of a standardized LOR. Trust and format issues aside, the genre remains ubiquitous in its singular, individualized role of representing candidate fit within the hiring process. This ubiquity, these traditional and online problems, and the genre’s increasingly significant online presences led us to question what, if anything, the emerging DLOR genre offers hiring organizations and to consider how it might be conceptualized or refigured to enhance its success as it is relocated in a more public, fluid setting.¹ Accordingly, our study asks the following questions:

What are the components of the DLOR genre?

In what ways does the DLOR act as epideictic rhetoric; specifically, what rhetorical patterns does it display?

What techniques can readers apply to potentially discern the trustworthiness and increase the usefulness of the DLOR?

The findings we detail suggest that the DLOR can be at least as, if not more, important to hiring than is the traditional version. But to use the DLOR to its fullest potential, the unique characteristics of the LOR genre and the assets associated with its manifestation within a digital platform merit further investigation. To those ends, we highlight the capacity of the DLOR to create community; seen this way, the DLOR becomes a gauge of how a candidate will fit within a particular organization, a significant qualitative rather than quantitative measure.

To begin, we review the existing literature on the TLOR and on the digital spaces open to the DLOR and then situate the DLOR within this context as a form of epideictic rhetoric. Next, we present our two-tiered methodology designed to analyze the DLOR and its rhetorical components as an exemplar of epideictic rhetoric situated within a Perelmanian framework (see Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958/1969). To actualize that epideictic perspective, we close by offering a rhetorical heuristic capturing the ways audiences can more fruitfully read the DLOR in this epideictic form. This approach will allow readers to understand the rhetorical elements of the DLOR in terms of trust—that is, as ways to secure or determine adherence between candidates and hiring institutions (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958/1969). According to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, argumentation is intended “to induce or to increase the mind’s adherence to the theses presented for its assent” (p. 4), and association refers to how an audience might pull together “separate elements…and establish a unity among them, which aims either at organizing them or at evaluating them, positively or negatively, by means of one another” (p. 190). In the physical absence of the candidate, then, the DLOR measures characteristics that numbers alone cannot convey. By emphasizing this epideictic capacity of the DLOR, our rhetorical turn challenges hiring managers’ and authorities’ call for quantifying and measuring candidates exclusively in standardized ways (Walters, Kyllonen, & Plante, 2006). Thus, the DLOR will serve in the best, distinctive, and intended capacity of the LOR and, at the same time, be responsive to changes in the online platform itself. In sum, the approach and analysis that we offer here might enhance the DLOR’s role in decision making about candidate fit within the broader act of hiring.

To the best of our knowledge, this research represents the first analysis of the DLOR and a rare rhetorical analysis of the LOR genre in this or any form. Accordingly, we make the following key contributions: a theoretical approach to the LOR, a rhetorical approach to the DLOR, and a means for hiring personnel to uncover the potential usefulness of the DLOR.

Assets and Limitations Associated With Letters of Recommendation

The TLOR represents a well-established genre (for a history of the LOR, see Cotton, 1981; Vidali, 2009) that typically contains three key segments: an opening section explaining the relationship between the writer and the candidate, a main body listing “academic traits and achievements,” and a conclusion containing the recommendation for or against the candidate (Trix & Psenka, 2003, p. 198). Bruland (2009) provided additional details and, to our knowledge, is the only extant rhetorical analysis of the TLOR; unlike our study, Bruland focused on an academic setting. She examined a series of graduate admissions letters within an English department. In that setting, she found that letters typically opened by naming the candidate explicitly, “announcing the letter’s purpose, and qualifying the writer’s intensity of support” (p. 411). Superlatives appeared frequently, and letter writers tended to portray letter writing for the particular candidate as pleasurable, which she defined as a rhetorical move to establish the writer’s ethos (p. 412). In Bruland’s analysis, the body of the letters dealt primarily with logical appeals related to the three key areas of academic life: scholarship, teaching, and service. Bruland found that TLOR closings within her research context tended to summarize the candidate’s potential, predict the candidate’s success, and provide a closing offer for additional service (p. 417). In the nonacademic TLOR, this material may be conceptualized as references to the candidate’s skills and behaviors (Farkas, 2003); particularly, the business LOR may include descriptions of the candidate’s job responsibilities, dates of employment, and on-the-job accomplishments.

Despite the TLOR’s well-established genre structure and lengthy history, professionals report mixed feelings about the TLOR’s usefulness. For instance, Robiner, Saltzman, Hoberman, Semrud-Clikeman, and Schirvar (1997) found that the majority (78%) of internship supervisors they surveyed assumed that the TLOR would be biased toward overly positive candidate reviews. Similarly, Nicklin and Roch (2009) surveyed 575 individuals in personnel selection and found that TLOR recipients believed that the letters generally exaggerated the candidates’ positive qualities. This finding supports research demonstrating that TLOR writers will often avoid disclosing negative information (Grote et al., 2001). The TLOR has historically been plagued with overly vague language and recipients have difficulty comparing the metrics that different TLOR writers use. For example, one person’s “hardworking student” could be another person’s average student (Walters et al., 2006). Perhaps because of these concerns, practitioners tend not to value the TLOR as much as do academics (Nicklin & Roch, 2009), thus prompting our reconsideration of the genre.

Biases and inconsistencies could also play problematic roles in the TLOR. For instance, research has identified gender biases in letter writers’ word choices (Schmader, Whitehead, & Wysocki, 2007), and research has demonstrated that recipients confer greater value on such letters based on their perception of the prestige of the writer and the writer’s affiliation (Nicklin & Roch, 2009; Sheehan, McDevitt, & Ross, 1998). Even human resources professionals have demonstrated inconsistent approaches when asked to analyze TLOR sets (Tommasi, Williams, & Nordstrom, 1998), again demonstrating questions about the genre’s usefulness.

Despite ongoing questions about its validity and reliability, the TLOR remains an important part of the profile a candidate presents to a potential employer. It provides opportunities for letter writers to address candidates’ motivation and creativity as well as their key personality traits (Walters et al., 2006). It also serves as an additional screening method, particularly when substantially more applicants than positions exist (Keith-Spiegel, Tabachnick, & Spiegel, 1994). Indeed, the TLOR might fulfill a human capacity to use vivid narrative information to guide decision making and to offer a tool for evaluating whether an individual could help or harm an organization (Colarelli, Hechanova-Alampay, & Canali, 2002).

While some scholars have addressed the TLOR’s assets and limitations, other scholars have pointed out how the TLOR might be improved. Grote, Robiner, and Haut (2001) suggested that increasing the effectiveness of the TLOR might require a “culture change” in which a TLOR would remind readers that all applicants are imperfect in some ways and have areas that they need to work on (p. 660); currently, the mention of a negative attribute is often the death knell for an applicant’s candidacy. Also, Knouse (1983) posited that organizations, in requesting a TLOR, should encourage writers to focus on key applicant attributes. Specifically, scholars have suggested that letter writers can enhance credibility by providing detailed examples of candidates’ performance (Cutler & Haggerty, 1991; Knouse, 1983). Others have suggested that TLOR writers should carefully attend to their composing processes (Vidali, 2009) or emphasized the importance of confidentiality in the LOR process (e.g., Ceci & Peters, 1984).

To improve recommendation writers’ reliability and the genre’s potential usefulness, several groups have advocated greater standardization within the genre (Nicklin & Roch, 2009; Tommasi et al., 1998; Walters et al., 2006). Walters, Kyllonen, and Plante proposed a standardized LOR that became the Educational Testing Service’s (ETS) Personal Potential Index (PPI; e.g., ETS, 2010).² Although they framed the original proposal as a replacement for the TLOR, ETS (2013) spoke indirectly to the staying power of the TLOR when it claimed on its Web site that “the ETS PPI and the letter of recommendation have important but distinct roles to play in your graduate admissions process.” Walters et al. and several groups of scholars in medical fields (e.g., Girzadas, Harwood, Dearie, & Garrett, 1998; Liu, Minsky, Ling, & Kyllonen, 2009; Perkins et al., 2013) have argued for using templates to standardize the form, emphasizing that a standardized LOR form would be easier to use, especially in evaluating candidates for potential medical internships and residencies (Girzadas et al., 1998; Liu et al., 2009; Perkins et al., 2013). In such cases, scholars question whether the narrative TLOR is worth the extra time required to write and read it. Walters et al. indicated that academic and business hiring committees preferred the standardized LOR:

A majority of respondents agreed that the SLR Web site is quicker, easier and more convenient for the letter writer. Moreover, a majority agreed that the Standardized LOR Report provides a useful summary of the evaluators’ assessments, reports more useful and reliable information about the applicant, and ultimately promotes fairer comparisons. (p. 8)

Others have resisted standardization by citing the TLOR’s narrative flexibility as a strength and source of its value (Colarelli et al., 2002; Vidali, 2009).

In sum, despite suggestions for creating a more usable TLOR, reliability, trust, and credibility remain salient concerns, particularly as the genre shifts to online locations.

Moving Into Digital Realms

The DLOR has acquired significant status as part of a candidate’s online profile (Hughes, 2016; Prodromou, 2015). Like the TLOR, the DLOR provides evidence from a third party about a candidate’s fit. But the DLOR contains an additional source of information about candidates: It displays the various connections that they have made across their career path. At the same time, its very public digital location heightens trust concerns and thereby calls for standardization. TLOR is typically exchanged privately, and the candidate waives access to the materials whereas the DLOR is solicited in advance of specific applications and not necessarily aimed at particular jobs. On LinkedIn, the requester maintains the right to review the DLOR and to either post or remove it from the profile. Also, in contrast to the TLOR, the DLOR is typically written by people who have a broad array of possible relationships with the candidate. For instance, candidates may display recommendations from former employers, classmates, professors, friends, and colleagues. The online platform also affects the DLOR’s content and arrangement, as we will detail. Because the DLOR appears on screens and digital files rather than on physical pages, it is also likely to be read differently (see Margolin, Driscoll, Toland, & Kegler, 2013). Given the digital location and the different standards that writers might choose, little uniformity exists in these digital letters despite the somewhat formulaic interface in which they are created. Thus, the DLOR might indeed appear to be less trustworthy in its public presentation. Our Perelmanian framework deals with this problem involving trust.

Although the LOR increasingly appears online and is gaining status, the extant scholarship is scant. The existing material is not directed specifically at the DLOR but considers it when dealing with other concerns involving digital platforms, such as LinkedIn. Some authors have indicated that the recommendations used on LinkedIn can be helpful to recruiters but will not typically serve as a determining factor in hiring. Employers, however, might use online recommendations as a tool for searching out new candidates; in addition, the DLOR might expose a potential connection point between the candidate and the organization, particularly if the recruiter or admissions group knows the person providing the recommendation (Adams, 2012).

Indeed, while the DLOR factors into the selection process, it might be viewed as contributing “displays of connection” (Donath & Boyd, 2004) to important persons or institutions rather than providing clear-cut analyses of the candidate’s values and organizational fit. Although Adams (2012) noted that excessive LinkedIn recommendations can be read as display rhetoric in its worst form, turning off some hiring or admissions personnel, recruiters have indicated that LinkedIn recommendations can help “identify a candidate’s unique selling proposition” and brand or “simply reinforce a candidate’s skills and experiences” (Maurer, 2015, p. 2). Further, Prodromou (2015) explained that

people want to read relevant recommendations that are clear, concise, and add value to their assessment of a person’s professional skills and capabilities. Recommendations are a form of social proof that expresses your personal and/or professional opinion of the person you are recommending. (p. 86)

Recruiters also have indicated that LinkedIn recommendations are useful for ensuring the candidate is consistently represented across materials (Robison, personal communication, June 29, 2016)—an assertion that we will later demonstrate.

Other scholarship addresses online platforms in ways that connect with our research, especially in how such platforms accommodate the shifts inherent to the digital environment. Specifically, Van Dijk (2013) examined the shift from traditional to online representations using Facebook and LinkedIn as exemplars (her interest, however, was not in the DLOR or hiring per se). She identified the following three shifts from traditional to online social media sites: self-expression to self-promotion, connectedness to connectivity, and database to narrative (p. 202). As she put it, “key terms denoting routine human social activities—terms such as ‘friending,’ ‘liking,’ ‘connecting’ and ‘following’—rapidly penetrated the discourse of platforms” (p. 202). These shifts have brought about equally new relationships between audiences and authors, as our study also shows.

Given its associated assets and limitations, then, the DLOR might not seem to be readily useful for recruitment and personnel selection; however, practitioners indicate it is indeed tapped because of its singular capacity to provide information about fit. Our study attempts to accentuate the online platform’s positive elements, mitigate the negative, and improve the LOR genre all around.

Letters of Recommendation as Epideictic Rhetoric

The DLOR is typically constructed for two related purposes: to represent a candidate within a particular value system and to analyze the candidate’s fit with the letter writer’s perceptions of the community in which the candidate hopes to gain access. Given these purposes, the genre is a form of epideictic rhetoric, the celebratory rhetoric of praise or blame (Chase, 1961). In certain respects, the public online platform takes advantage of this celebratory character and, we suggest, enhances the degree to which the DLOR can serve its specific purposes. Indeed, epideictic rhetoric regularly appears in digital settings, particularly when commemorating others (McGuire, 2013). To that end, the DLOR harnesses the capacities of the digital medium for connecting individuals within and across communities.

Epideictic rhetoric originated in the display of rhetorical skill, as in the case of Gorgias (Consigny, 1992), as well as in celebratory situations. The genre’s celebratory purpose is retained and extended in contemporary understandings to community shaping and values building (Condit, 1985; Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958/1969). In this contemporary capacity, epideictic rhetoric also involves education, legitimation, and values intensification (Lauer 2015; Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958/1969; Sullivan, 1991).

We are drawn to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s (1958/1969) vision of epideictic rhetoric for several reasons. First, their New Rhetoric (NR) offers a theory unto itself (Gross & Dearin, 2002), providing appropriate grounding for our emerging theory of the DLOR. Second, according to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, and in contrast to its typically minimalized role, epideictic is the preeminent rhetorical means of attaining community adherence to certain values or presumptions:

The epideictic genre is not only important but essential from an educational point of view, since it too has an effective and distinctive part to play—that, namely, of bringing about consensus in the minds of the audience regarding the values that are achieved in the speech. (pp. 35; 52–55).

And third, as a theory, the NR seeks to bring about or understand adherence to community values based primarily on presumptions rather than truth (p. 70).

As Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958/1969) and others have shown, epideictic rhetoric has unique characteristics that distinguish it from the other two classical forms of rhetoric, forensic and deliberative; these characteristics, moreover, prove useful for building communicative bridges across people and groups with different views (Agnew, 2008). Although Aristotle (n.d./2010) downplayed the epideictic, he recognized how time, vividness, and argument worked together in such speeches and “suggested [epideictic’s] rhetorical force was achieved primarily through ethos (Rhetoric 1.9), amplification (3.17), and narrative (3.16)” (Lauer, 2015, p. 4). Contemporary understandings emphasize that epideictic discourse has its own temporal, visual, spatial, and argumentative dimensions. According to ancient temporal divisions of classical rhetoric, forensic is strictly associated with the past, epideictic with the present, and deliberative with the future. While Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958/1969) acknowledged that epideictic rhetoric originates in the present, they also recognized that the form enables and provides the ground for future decision making (p. 1388).

In addition to this temporal element, epideictic discourse prompts adherence through its visual characteristics. To engage its audience, effective epideictic rhetoric uses especially vivid language. The notion of vivacity is rooted in the classical connection between understanding and seeing (Aristotle, n.d./2010, 3.2, 3.10); as Aristotle and others have “seen” it, the most effective rhetorical language has energia, a kind of potentiality. When the proper words are selected for a specific situation, they “bring before the eyes” insights for the audience (Newman, 2002). In a contemporary sense, where language constructs meaning, this vivid language enhances the connections between audience, speaker, and content (Condit, 1985, p. 292; Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958/1969, p. 52). As Condit put it, “To ensure the power of this shared experience, the speaker must create a vivid picture of the shared definition, not merely a clear and rational case, and so the epideictic speech may have more pronounced stylistic display than deliberative or forensic addresses” (p. 291). For Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, epideictic rhetoric in particular can actualize this potential to instill or teach values because of its vivid performance. Successful epideictic rhetoric is based on building shared presumptions between audience and rhetor, which leads to a kind of heightened, visual presence that unites all members and elements of the message involving the community’s values. As they put it, epideictic “oratory has significance and importance for argumentation because it strengthens the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds” (p. 50).

To those temporal, visual ends, the Perelmanian perspective focuses on how a message connects writer, reader, and audience through its presence. This outcome of adherence—presence—occurs when certain lines of argument link with community values, associating them with the audience, speaker, and discourse: “Whereas quasi-logical arguments lay claim to a certain validity owing to their rational appearance…arguments based on the structure of reality…establish a solidarity between accepted judgments and others which one wishes to promote” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958/1969, p. 261).

Thus, these argument patterns establish the ethos of the writer (and, in the DLOR, of the writer as proxy for the candidate) and enhance adherence between writer and audience. To create such presence and association, epideictic rhetoric employs distinctive argument patterns (Lauer, 2015, p. 10) aimed at praise or, less commonly, blame. As the NR details, the associations necessary to secure praise are provided most notably in patterns based on metaphor, amplification, probabilities, and repetition. In contrast to creating association, certain links of argument tend to break down solidarity between individuals and values (p. 52). Patterns based on contrast and difference (e.g., antithesis and litotes, or understatement) can be used to dissociate, as can metaphors.

Thus, epideictic discourse requires the audience to judge the orator’s skill in terms of decorum, appropriateness, and content (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958/1969, p. 52). In so doing, the Perelmanian perspective incorporates an explicit concern with audience. In some cases, the discourse is focused on a universal audience—an imagined, unknown, or general audience—and, in other cases (e.g., the DLOR), it is focused on a particular audience that attempts to establish solidarity among particular audience members. Regardless of the audience, particular or universal, epideictic rhetoric, according to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, is the type of rhetoric that most brings about adherence to values by presenting choices, visually as well as temporally and spatially. In its focus on the content, reader, and writer of epideictic discourse, the Perelmanian approach provides an appropriate and much needed holistic treatment of the DLOR.

Seen from this epideictic, Perelmanian perspective, DLOR writers craft statements based on values that they deem appropriate to the context and relevant to the candidate. A recipient who is convinced by the persuasive demonstration of the fit between candidate and the organization’s values—who is able to see the fit, as it were, from the language—might be more likely, then, to move the candidate to the next stage of the selection process.

When DLOR writers compose for a specific situation, they might tailor the letter to the values that they deem relevant to that context. For instance, if the writer knows or presumes that the hiring office at a particular institution values individuals interested in social media, marketing, or finance, that writer might focus the letter on the candidate’s qualifications that relate to those aspects and not cover those that seem less important for the context. When writing a generalized DLOR, writers are more likely to present values according to their own judgments about which candidate qualities are most important. A supervisor writing a letter at the request of a former employee might emphasize the values that were most important in their particular shared workplace rather than focus on the employee’s future ambitions. That is, the writer would argue that the candidate was a good fit for the institution and the particular audience; however, if adherence and presence are secured, the reader is more likely to consider that candidate further.

In sum, we chose a Perelmanian epideictic approach to examine the DLOR because that perspective addresses our concerns: how readers understand applicants’ capacity to fit within an institution and how the DLOR can contribute to this understanding. In its rhetorical epideictic capacity, the DLOR provides materials that better complement the rest of a candidate’s (typically more quantitative) application package than does the standardized LOR. The DLOR, then, is significant to the application process. The temporal, spatial, and visual characteristics of the digital environment enhance its capacity to be effective, to capture those elements of candidate fit that the standardized LOR and even the TLOR cannot embrace with the same immediacy. The next section describes our methods for analyzing the genre’s digital emergence.

Method

We turned to LinkedIn for this project because of its prominence in the business community, which follows from its mission “to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.” LinkedIn, launched in 2003, is a publicly held professional networking site that claims over 400 million members. The site’s business model generates revenue through offering premium subscriptions and marketing and hiring solutions (“About,” 2016). Perhaps because the LOR is so deeply entrenched within the hiring process, LinkedIn allows users to include recommendations within their digital profiles.

To begin answering the research questions, one of us, Tomlinson, collected a corpus of publicly available profiles on LinkedIn.³ Dividing the United States into four geographic regions (Southeast, Southwest, Midwest, and East coast), Tomlinson searched LinkedIn for publicly available profiles within each region, collecting 64 public profiles across these regions. She charted the corpus characteristics into these initial categories: presence of summary statement; number of specialties; experience; skills, honors, and awards; interests; and recommendations. She also noted whether the profile added details in each category. The initial analysis demonstrated that many of the profiles were relatively incomplete. In many cases, recommendations actually provided richer descriptions than what writers offered about themselves. Twenty-eight profiles included recommendations, yielding a total corpus of 128 recommendations. The number of recommendations in each of these 28 profiles ranged from 1 to 20, with an average of 4.57 recommendations per profile. The average word count for recommendations was 73.97, ranging from 15 to 348 words. The word counts for our corpus were quite different from those reported in TLOR studies. In her admission letters corpus, Bruland (2009) reported a range from 139 to 1,023 words (p. 408), and in her cross-cultural study of the TLOR, Precht (1998) reported an average of 454 words across her U.S.-based corpus.

To analyze our corpus, we developed a two-tiered methodology. In the first tier, we employed open coding using constant comparison (Strauss, 1987) to uncover the basic categories within the DLOR genre as manifested on LinkedIn; based on these categories, we moved to a fine-grained analysis to uncover what kind of rhetorical patterns or arguments functioned within the DLOR. Tomlinson initiated open coding (Strauss, 1987) and composed memos while progressing through the data, sharing these with her coresearcher, Newman, as the project unfolded. The unit of analysis was the individual recommendation, broken down into t-units. The first round of coding was purely descriptive, based on the data themselves. As the coding moved into the second round, we began reading in the personnel literature more deeply to make sense of the data. This deep reading prompted us to rename several categories according to terms already substantiated in the personnel literature and to complete a third round of coding with the new codebook. The four categories of statements, which we detail in the Results section, were skills and noncognitive behavioral traits, relationships, recommendations, and forecasting. During these early rounds of coding, as the categories were further dimensionalized, we observed certain rhetorical patterns of argument within them and began to note these key characteristics of the LinkedIn DLOR genre.

In the second tier of our methods, Newman further identified and delineated the rhetorical patterns across the entire data set. First, she read through the recommendations guided by Tomlinson’s initial categories and our understanding of DLOR as epideictic. On that basis, Newman identified overlaps between Tomlinson’s coding of the DLOR and the lines of reasoning apparent within those categories. Working within our Perelmanian framework, Newman characterized these overlaps as the starting points of arguments presented in the DLOR. From those starting points, she identified lines of reasoning aimed at achieving adherence between content, writer, and reader or presumed institutional values. These arguments structured the reality of institutional values within lines of reasoning to demonstrate the candidate’s fit (or lack of it) within that set of values.

In unpacking the argument, Newman identified the following rhetorical figures: amplification, antithesis, litotes, metaphor, part to whole, loci, and repetition. Following Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958/1969), we understand each figure as the framework for a particular kind of argument. As Table 1 illustrates, amplification connects values within one DLOR or across semantic fields by gradually and steadily increasing linguistic effects. The comment an “incredibly adept and proficient teacher” refers to only one candidate and thus moves in one domain. This amplification enhances a reasonable fact or opinion by heightening or lessening its impact (Fahnestock, 2012, p. 117). Amplification’s most extreme manifestation, superlative, is expressed in the comment “one of the most motivated and remarkable students I have ever known.” This amplification moves across semantic fields, or domains, to compare the candidate with other people. Accordingly, the opposite of amplification, litotes, or understatement, moves the argument within one domain; when arguing that the candidate “does it as best as he can,” the writer suggests that the candidate does not actualize everything that the situation demands. Antithesis also moves within one domain but shows a difference in the candidate’s own traits, stating that the candidate is “academically wise and street-smart.”

Table 1.

Rhetorical Figures Used in the DLOR.

Rhetorical Figure	Description	Example
Amplification Enhancers Superlatives	Connection within one DLOR or across semantic fields	“incredibly adept and proficient teacher” “one of the most motivated and remarkable students I have ever known”
Antithesis	Difference within one DLOR	“fully grasp subject material and have fun at the same time”; “academically wise and street-smart”
Litotes	Understatement within one DLOR	“He is a smart worker that thinks through a situation and then does it as best as he can.”
Loci of quality Example Story Recommendation	Probabilities involving character/action A characteristic indicating a quality of a candidate A narrative about a candidate Probabilities of success	“responds thoughtfully and thoroughly to those she works with, motivating students to be curious and learn” “In fact [candidate’s] last assignment, a feature-length radio report on the pollution dumped in [local river], still, several semesters later, remains one of the best stories.” “Any school would be quite fortunate to have him working for them”; “she will be a tremendously invaluable asset.”
Loci of quantity Time Amount	Probabilities of magnitude Increase in work efficiency Reference to quantity	“strives to make large sales daily” “and learned a lot from him”
Loci of communion Testimony Authority	Probabilities of accord Sharing ethos by referring to an institutional value system Speaker’s credibility stems from personal experience with candidate	“She was a pleasure to work with.” “shortly after she completed my course in spring 2008”
Metaphor	Substitution between semantic fields	“his thirst for knowledge”
Part/whole	Substitution within semantic field/within the DLOR and across file	“a pleasure to have in a working environment”
Repetition	Repetition within one DLOR and across DLOR file	“was able to quickly understand the technologies driving our project…and could rapidly produce accurate documents”

Note. DLOR = digital letter of recommendation.

In Perelmanian epideictic terms, the part-to-whole argument either praises or blames individual applicants by including them in a particular group or dividing them from presumed institutional values, whereby “the whole is treated as similar to each one of its parts” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958/1969, p. 231). The loci of quality, quantity, and communion present arguments about probabilities, and each of these loci had several forms contained within them. Loci of quality involve character or action, represented by examples, stories, and recommendations. Loci of quantity are probabilities of magnitude, divided into time and amount, whereas loci of communion are probabilities of accord, presented in authority and testimony.

Both metaphor and part to whole argue by substitution. Metaphors make substitutions between semantic fields, thereby facilitating comparisons, whereas part-to-whole arguments move within a semantic field (i.e., within a single DLOR) and across multiple letters. Finally, repetition repeats words or synonyms rather than substitutes within one DLOR and across the applicant file.

Based on these patterns, as Table 1 illustrates and our following analysis will describe, each of these rhetorical figures establishes a particular kind of argument that in turn represents an argument linking components of the discrete codes within the individual DLOR and across these letters within the candidate’s profile as a whole.

Having identified the argument’s starting points and located the associated reasoning patterns, Newman then mapped these patterns within and across Tomlinson’s first set of coding categories, linking the two methodological tiers, as we illustrate in the following discussion. Thus, we applied our Perelmanian framework to the DLOR in our data set within a process that allowed us to develop a robust theory of the DLOR; that theory includes both the initially coded categories and the rhetorical lines of argument that constitute the genre’s epideictic function. Finally, based on our analysis of the results, we designed a heuristic for profile readers.

In sum, the first analytic tier identifies the typical DLOR components, and the second tier engages the interaction between these components, pointing to a heuristic for readers. Thus, our methods map the uncharted terrain of the DLOR and offer rhetorically sound means for reading both within and across all these letters in a candidate’s profile.

Results

To guide readers through our results, we first focus on the major categories of statements identified in our first tier of analysis. According to this analysis, the DLOR typically contains several primary categories of statements: skills and noncognitive behavioral traits, relationships, recommendations, and forecasting. After discussing these categories and developing our DLOR theory more fully, we turn to the lines of arguments that emerged within and across those statements. While we have organized this section according to the frequency with which each of these statement types occurred, such frequency does not necessarily correlate with rhetorical significance; a statement type that is uncommon in the genre might potentially be more significant to a reader than one that occurs often. Still, the absence of a statement type that is seen often within the genre can similarly trigger the reader’s notice. Hence, it is critical to understand the types of statements that appear and how they accomplish their rhetorical work.

Skills and Noncognitive Behaviors/Traits

Recruiters have described the DLOR as serving merely to “reinforce a candidate’s skills and experiences” (Maurer, 2015). Indeed, within this corpus, some letters were fairly generic and focused on recounting candidates’ skills and noncognitive traits and behaviors (Farkas, 2003). Across the corpus, references to skills—“verbal, reading, and writing abilities, as well as those in mathematics, science, music, and art” (Farkas, 2003, p. 543)—occurred frequently, 511 times. The corpus also contains noncognitive behavioral traits, which might be defined as “conscientious work habits” (e.g., effort, enthusiasm) and “other behaviors and traits,” such as leadership, self-confidence, and creativity (Farkas, 2003, p. 544). For example, DLOR writers stated that candidates “displayed great leadership” or were “tremendously kind, giving, and thoughtful.” Such references to noncognitive behavioral traits appeared 213 times in the corpus.

We then examined how letter writers wrote about these skills and noncognitive behavioral traits as part of a larger rhetorical process. In coding the statements as lines of reasoning, patterns aimed at linking three parties (reader, writer, and candidate), we found that the skills and traits operated together as arguments rather than separately as discrete pieces of evidence. Links occurred both within an individual candidate DLOR and across all of those letters in a profile. Thus linked, skills and traits established the following lines of argument: part to whole, amplification, loci of quality (example, story, and recommendation), and loci of quantity (both time and amount).

For example, using part-to-whole reasoning, one letter asked the reader to “keep in mind that all of these panelists were graduate students and [candidate] was in his junior year as an undergrad. I think this speaks to the gravity of [candidate’s] intelligence, and the quality of his knowledge about communications.” In the initial coding, these statements indicated that this candidate has each of two separate traits, that is, the candidate is knowledgeable and intelligent; in so doing, these statements typify the LOR genre as data based. Represented as an argument, these statements indicate that this candidate is part of the institutional whole of his class but superior to the other students in his class. Presumably, the candidate could perform well in a business institution’s working environment, where being knowledgeable and smart are valued; however, understood as an instance of narrativity (Van Dijk, 2013), these statements indicate that the candidate’s skills and traits, institutional values, cannot be separated but link across domains.

Moreover, this argument cannot be separated from statements using amplification and loci of quality and quantity. Amplification belongs to the argument as evident in the enhancers, “gravity” and “quality.” These amplifications reinforce the candidate’s quality and fit. The latter term, quality, links the argument to the associated loci, again linking the candidate’s skills and traits with presumed values of the hiring organization. Thus linked, amplification and the various loci operate as evaluative tools designed to represent the candidate’s future potentialities.

Relationships

Relationship statements function within the digital format much as they do in TLOR (Bruland, 2009) and as such are linked within a DLOR and across a candidate’s profile. Such statements help readers contextualize the connection between the recommender and the recommended individual. Some letters included explicit statements about relationships. For instance, one recommender stated, “It was my great pleasure to have him in class,” and another noted, “I studied with him in [particular course] at __ University.” Relationship statements occurred 125 times in the corpus.

From a rhetorical standpoint, relationship statements, like skills and traits statements, tended to argue by means of part-to-whole strategies. A DLOR writer stated, “I have never had any doubts about sending [candidate name] on assignments representing our office when meeting with students, alumni, donors, and campus guests because of his friendly, yet professional personality, dedication, and intelligence.” This type of rhetorical pattern provides a connection point between the candidate and the writer but also describes the relationship’s character. This statement offers testimony, a loci of communion involving shared ethos, by referring to the common background that the writer and the candidate have, in this case, the locus “our office.” The other locus of communion, authority, is evident when the writer indicates knowledge of the candidate based on personal interactions with that candidate. Here, the writer is represented as a supervisor with the power to send the candidate off on behalf of the office.

Rhetorical figures that overlap and suggest relationships are the loci of communion, quality, and quantity. When tiers of the loci overlapped, the hierarchies within them emerged. In the case of communion, the same statement coded across testimony and authority. More specifically, these two hierarchical loci of communion were the primary means of invoking the character of the candidate’s relationships. In addition to the loci of communion, the loci of quantity, amount, and time are evoked, often linked, and bring the temporal element of epideictic rhetoric to the forefront, especially when a writer discusses the relationship’s duration. References to longer relationships signal the writer’s greater depth of knowledge of the candidate and increase the recommender’s ethos as well. For example, here the loci of quantity join forces to characterize the candidate in terms of the relationship: “We had almost every communication class together and spent endless hours in the library working on the same project.”

Closing the LOR: Recommending and Forecasting

Actual statements of recommendation (e.g., “I recommend B without reservation”) occurred occasionally, typically as summative statements at the DLOR end. In the TLOR, these are often found in the closing (Bruland, 2009; Trix & Psenka, 2003). Recommendations maintained an important role in our DLOR corpus and served as a strong closing for 37 recommenders. In any case, they amplified the writer’s praise of the candidate. In some instances, DLOR writers chose other concluding moves, indicating a shift from the TLOR’s traditional closing.

Forecasting provided an alternative closing for DLOR writers. Forecasting statements were defined as instances when the writer made a prediction about the candidate. For example, “I know that he will succeed in whatever avenue he pursues” and “He is the type of person who will succeed with any challenge that is placed in front of him” are forecasting statements. In our corpus, forecasting occurred 35 times, nearly as often as did strong closing recommendations. Rhetorically, forecasting statements operate as loci of quality and, to that end, perform on a temporal level as they address candidates’ probabilities of future successes. These statements provide temporal evidence of the candidate’s past fit with an institution; this evidence then suggests the likelihood of future success based on past performance.

Both recommendations and forecasting statements link with the locus of quality as well as with amplification, often connecting via superlatives. These links between recommendations, forecasting statements, and examples add specific evidence of candidates’ practices and actions. Superlatives suggest how the candidate is prepared to begin the job and to improve within it. These temporal aspects increase the candidate’s presence, in a sense helping the reader visualize that individual, and thus contribute to the argument for the candidate’s institutional fit; if all minds adhere, the candidate will likely be hired.

Reading Across a Candidate’s Recommendation Letters

While we have now established the DLOR genre’s typical components, in many of the cases, a candidate has multiple recommendation letters, and the audience must read critically across those materials. This extended example will further illuminate the ways these letters function as epideictic rhetoric to help make or break the candidate—the latter through dissociation. The degree to which the arguments in these letters create the presence of institutional values—in word, time, and image—is the degree to which the minds of reader, writer, and candidate adhere; conversely, dissociation softens the sense of adherence. By presenting this fuller portrait of the candidate, these letters within the profile allow readers to unveil subtle but significant elements of candidate ethos that are critical to the genre.

When reading across a candidate’s recommendation letters in the profile, particular lines of reasoning come to the fore and allow a broader sense of the candidate as both employee and colleague (see Figure 1). This rhetorical approach enhances the visual element and helps the reader see the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, the appearance of these lines of reasoning reveals the presence of a specific individual, rendered in graphic terms by increasing that individual’s rhetorical presence.

Figure 1.

Rhetorical reading across a candidate’s digital letter of recommendation profile.

This reading moves across letters rather than within one, fostering connections between statements and associated rhetorical figures (i.e., lines of argument). For this analysis, we draw attention to several noteworthy patterns involving superlatives, repetition, litotes, antithesis, and metaphor. In addition to the figures we discuss, the loci of quality and quantity throughout the letters emphasize amount and duration. Overall, the candidate’s determination or drive appears in most, if not all, letters across his profile. These statements characterize Jacob (a pseudonym) as an intense person. At the same time, the reader sees this characterization across the profile in conjunction with other statements of dissociation, ones suggesting that he may lack subtlety, control, or self-reflection.

As Figure 1 indicates, the writers’ consistent use of superlatives (in bold) praise Jacob for his intense thinking and behavior. Adding to that effect, key words or synonyms are repeated: “focused,” “drive,” “will stop at nothing,” and goes “over the top.” The metaphorical character of these repetitions helps the reader visualize the extent of Jacob’s efforts to perform tasks whereas the antitheses in this profile (e.g., “balances his professional…lives”) mitigate that extreme sense of drive by showing more “balance” in his thoughts and actions.

This picture is further complicated as the reader moves across and between letters in the candidate’s file. Even while these rhetorical figures offer praise, these and other figures call into question aspects of Jacob’s drive. The metaphors—he “jumps” at opportunities and “thirsts for knowledge”—suggest a pattern of more extreme behavior that is not mitigated by his apparent friendliness and balanced actions. These metaphors’ visual character, moreover, emphasizes the extent of his tendency to “go over the top.” Further, the number of superlatives might raise questions about the candidate’s ability to stop and think and perhaps collaborate and lead. The litotes suggest that the writer is trying to soft-pedal certain negative characteristics or subtly indicate those aspects of the candidate’s performance that are not as strong as his drive.

Together, the many statements draw attention to Jacob’s strengths and weaknesses, creating a more holistic picture of Jacob than what could be offered through a traditional, stand-alone LOR. Beyond a simple listing of skills or traits, the DLOR profile helps readers imagine the candidate working at specific points in time and performing specific actions. On the one hand, the cumulative effect of the superlatives and repetitions within letters connects Jacob with very positive workplace characteristics. On the other hand, that positive sense is contradicted by rhetorical figures of difference and contrast. The repetition of these superlatives amplifies Jacob’s characteristics while the contrasts break the flow, prompting the reader to ask questions.

In sum, the nuanced picture of the candidate that emerges greatly enhances the potential for rhetorical presence. If hiring personnel take the time to read carefully and strategically across the DLOR profile, they can acquire a much more nuanced and rhetorically sound understanding of the candidate as a co-worker and employee; they can see the candidate’s potential for success in their organization.

Discussion

Having coded discrete characteristics and mapped them onto reasoning patterns, we examined and analyzed these reasoning patterns as they pertain to and fulfill the LOR genre’s epideictic function; from there, we developed a theory of the DLOR. More specifically, we considered the ways in which the arguments in the DLOR portrayed a fuller narrative about the candidate as an individual who possesses the values the potential hiring institution appears to espouse. As we demonstrate, this perspective and the particular lines of argument engaged the emerging digital format’s key elements, including both visual and temporal elements; in so doing, these elements amplified, often through repetition, the best characteristics of the digital platform and revealed potential problem areas within the candidate’s file. Thus, the digital iteration of the LOR genre retained and enhanced the key capacity of the LOR to show fit. First, we summarize our response to our research questions, and then we pull our responses together to introduce the heuristic.

What Are the Components of the DLOR Genre?

Our theory posits that the DLOR typically contains several primary types of statements: skills, noncognitive behavioral traits, relationships, recommendations, and forecasting. Lines of argument within these statement types establish rhetorical presence, within and across a candidate’s recommendations, and enable readers to “see” candidates and their potential fit within an organization. That is, repetitions, amplifications, and metaphors conjure up the candidate in several dimensions.

Within this corpus, skills and noncognitive behavioral traits appear to have superseded the traditional opening statement of relationship. Because the genre is highly condensed online, as indicated by the word counts discussed earlier, DLOR writers seem to advance the candidate’s characteristics and reduce the traditional level of formality associated with TLOR openings. This result may also stem from LinkedIn’s prompt asking recommenders to identify their relationship with the candidate in what essentially becomes a signature line for the recommendation’s closing. Although relationship statements continue to have a role in recommendations, such statements appear to be less prominent in this version of the genre. Nevertheless, such statements belong to argument patterns operating within recommendations and across the DLOR profile.

Moreover, in the DLOR, closing with an overt recommendation becomes optional. Forecasting statements replaced recommendations in some cases. This shift in the genre’s closing might reveal in part the decreased formality associated with this digital form, itself associated with spatial constraints imposed on the genre. In addition, through the links between recommendation and forecasting, one implied in the other, a sense of deliberative choice is provided within the DLOR across the profile.

Accordingly, other differences between the digital and the TLOR emerge when considering their role within the rhetorical triangle. The TLOR connects the writer and the candidate through relationship statements and is typically composed because the candidate has asked the writer to create a letter for the purpose of applying to a specific position or type of position; the writer needs to acknowledge a connection to the applicant in order to establish credibility in addressing the candidate’s capabilities for the position. While particular relationship statements retain a role in the DLOR, adherence better characterizes how reader, writer, and candidate come together in this platform. Adherence operates as readers look across the entire profile, reading a story that can include highly varied recommendations across the candidate’s life and career stages instead of recommendations tailored specifically to applying to just one position or type of position.

In so doing, the DLOR’s visual element of epideictic rhetoric emerges; the candidate’s qualifications, both specific skills and patterns of behavior, are brought before the readers’ eyes on and across screens and materials. Moreover, showing the existing arc of the candidate’s career as a potential for future adherence engages the genre’s temporal element. Taken together, the DLOR moves that candidate from the past to the present, setting up the choice about the individual’s future employment. This kind of reading, incorporating temporal, spatial, and visual elements through lines of argument, is difficult and likely impossible with standardized, quantified information.

Accordingly, the DLOR provides a story about the candidate, but that story appears not so much by relating specific events as by linking various characteristics. These linked entities coalesce into the larger story of the candidate as represented visually, temporally, and rhetorically in the candidate’s entire digital profile. The larger story rendered via reading across the DLOR can then be viewed in conjunction with other application materials. Perhaps a single DLOR is shorter than a single TLOR as it tends not to present explicit stories about the candidate, but we suggest that the broader narrative appears when candidates have multiple recommendation letters, and the audience reads across the file while questioning the possibility of rhetorical adherence.

In What Ways Does the DLOR Act as Epideictic Rhetoric; Specifically, What Rhetorical Patterns Does It Display?

Together in one space, the DLOR profile presents a story about a candidate, prompting the reader to visualize that individual as an employee and co-worker; it celebrates the candidate as it promotes the candidate’s fit. Relying on emphases, actualized though repetition, amplification, and various kinds of probabilities and recommendations, this profile offers several discrete categories joined through lines of arguments both within a DLOR and across the profile; as such, DLOR provides a timely picture of the potential for a candidate’s institutional fit. Unstated, those values both underpin the argument and are the target at which the argument aims. The DLOR demonstrates the candidate’s ability to adhere to those values and thus creates presence between candidate, writer, and reader, prompting the organization to make a choice about that individual. This storytelling, with its predictions and past examples, creates a temporal, visual picture of the candidate that reveals the epideictic operation of the LOR genre.

In contrast to its frequent overt praise, and typical of epideictic genres, the DLOR provides little overt blame. Still, problems can be read within a DLOR and inferred when reading across several. As our example indicated, key moments occur when contradictions, often emphatic, appear within the file. These contradictions break the effect of the repetition and amplification, causing the reader to pause; when possible alternative arguments surface, the apparent contrast dissociates candidate and institutional values and, for the reader, stirs up questions.

Contradictions might also emerge within a DLOR, through actualized rhetorical figures that reveal difference, such as antithesis and litotes, which differentiate and underplay rather than connect or substitute. Because these figures substitute elements within semantic fields rather than provide links, their presence and the contrasts they suggest raise questions about the candidate. These questions are in turn supported by another kind of figure —extreme amplification, or superlatives. Instead of drawing attention to ways in which the candidate might adhere to institutional values, the contradictions and amplifications prompt questions and, as a result, might even weaken or dispel the audience’s adherence with the letter. These figures of contrast provide a way of reading for discrepancies between the praise the writer provides and the negatives that are typically excluded from the TLOR and the DLOR; while no candidate will be a perfect fit, some will certainly work better than others, and the DLOR profile provides a way to read between the lines.

Lacking explicit stories and blame, the candidate’s presence, evoked through their DLOR profile, calls on readers to actualize the visual and temporal epideictic elements of the DLOR. That is, reading multiple letters across a profile allows readers to visualize individual stories over time; in that way, the apparent looseness of the online genre allows the DLOR profile to say quite a bit about the person as a potential member of a culture. Reading the profile in this way can mitigate trust concerns, but it can also provide a way to uncover blame.

What Techniques Can Readers Use to Potentially Discern the Trustworthiness and Increase the Usefulness of the DLOR?

The DLOR provides reading patterns that connect characteristics within it and across a candidate’s file. To complete our theoretical model, we developed a heuristic (see Table 2) that might help guide the reading of the DLOR profile. By using both tiers of our analysis to ground this way of reading, we also complete our theory of the DLOR. The heuristic encourages readers to ask key questions about how the DLOR works both independently and together with the other letters in a profile. Simultaneously, the heuristic notes argumentative techniques associated with its various questions in order to identify key moments within the DLOR. Readers can use the heuristic’s questions to guide how they interpret recommendation letters. The lines of reasoning are cues to help readers notice rhetorical figures within the recommendations; these rhetorical figures were defined and exemplified in Table 1.

Table 2.

A Heuristic for Evaluating the DLOR Profile.

	Temporal	Visual/Spatial	Argumentative	Overall Level of Adherence
Epideictic dimensions	What is the breadth of the DLOR profile (e.g., multiple institutions, multiple types of relationships, and length of time)	Presence of the candidate: Where is the language most vivid in describing the candidate?	What arguments about the candidate are most salient?	Considering the responses in the prior categories, how well do the values attributed to the candidate mesh with the hiring institution’s values?
	Where do silences occur within a DLOR that might merit further discussion?	What repetitions and metaphors are most salient (through either positive buildup or dissonance/contrast) across the profile?	What relational qualities and connections do the DLOR writers prioritize in describing the candidate?
	Where do temporal silences occur across the candidate’s profile? Has the candidate provided other evidence from these time periods?	What values are most often associated with this candidate?	How do these arguments and connections compare with those being put forward for other candidates?
Lines of reasoning to consider	Loci of quality, Loci of quantity	Amplification, Antithesis, Litotes, Metaphor, Part to whole, Repetition	Loci of communion, Loci of quality, Loci of quantity

The DLOR is now considered a significant element of a candidate’s digital profile. As part of its importance, the DLOR profile provides the opportunity for many more recommendations than do traditional application processes (Prodromou, 2015). In contrast, the TLOR profile, which is generally limited to three or four such letters, is also more selective in that the candidate is asked to provide these letters in response to specific positions. As such, the DLOR profile offers a potentially broader picture of the candidate across a longer period of time. The absence of recommendation letters in a DLOR profile constitutes a silence that can be indicative as well; accordingly, the heuristic encourages readers to notice where a DLOR appears as well as where it does not appear within a candidate’s profile. While we designed the heuristic with the DLOR in mind, we believe it could also be useful, to a lesser extent, with the TLOR. The heuristic’s primary purpose though is to allow readers to unpack the larger story being crafted across a candidate’s DLOR profile. In crafting the heuristic, we also sought to keep the questions open-ended enough to accommodate the continued evolution of the sites where DLOR are composed.

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research

While we have offered a theory of the DLOR as well as a heuristic, our study has several limitations. Primarily, in gathering our corpus, we focused exclusively on the United States. It is likely that other cultures have different approaches to a DLOR; as Precht (1998) has shown, cross-cultural influences change a TLOR. Also digital interfaces change rapidly; the DLOR form is likely to continue evolving as the LinkedIn interface and other online locations continue to emerge and develop. In addition, the heuristic is most useful when applied to candidates with multiple recommendation letters in their profiles. Those with only one letter will not offer as robust a picture. We suggest that future research should consider whether the LOR that admissions offices use is developing an online presence as well. Future research might also investigate the relationship between testimonials and recommendations and ways that these genres might overlap, particularly online.

Closing Thoughts

Our study has offered a theory of the LOR to confront the real and significant challenges that the genre faces as it emerges online. These challenges, which include credibility issues associated with the TLOR, are exacerbated by other concerns particular to the digital platform. For example, the DLOR is not created with the assumption of confidentiality and is not necessarily composed as a written response to a candidate’s application for a particular job. Because of these factors, the DLOR is seemingly constrained in its ability to accurately and fully describe a candidate’s potential for success. Nonetheless, the analysis and heuristic we have offered allow readers a path to interpreting the DLOR and a means of reading between and across the digital lines. We hope that our study will indeed provide hiring personnel with a way of using and interpreting the genre, using the possibility of rhetorical adherence to better determine a candidate’s potential fit. Indeed, digital profiles with a broad array of recommendation letters present a visual intensity that might offset some of the aforementioned challenges by offering a more diverse, nuanced picture of the candidate. By offering our rhetorical approach to the LOR and the heuristic, we have responded to the call for a theory of the LOR and opened the door to further rhetorical inquiry into the DLOR. Our work contributes to a better understanding of how the DLOR works from a rhetorical standpoint as epideictic rhetoric, as well as how it can be used pragmatically.

In closing, we offer a few creative suggestions for job seekers that might allow them to use this vexed genre to its full potential and perhaps even move beyond the TLOR’s capabilities. For instance, job seekers can weave excerpts from recommendations into their résumés or cover letters as testimonials or display them in portfolios when relevant to the field. Also, when used in conjunction with LinkedIn’s Skills and Endorsements section, these excerpts can add visual impact to profiles, creating the opportunity for enhanced rhetorical presence and adherence between all parties. In addition, job seekers should investigate recommendations written by those hiring at the organizations where they seek to work. These recommendations, especially when read carefully from a rhetorical perspective, could yield a wealth of insight into the types of traits and environment valued at the target workplace.

Finally, for both those hiring and those seeking positions, the DLOR offers valuable “displays of connection” (Donath & Boyd, 2004) that improve our understanding of the complicated paths professionals have taken to arrive at their current positions. This type of information, which entails both the candidate’s and the hiring organization’s perspective, should prove especially useful for those moving between fields and those considering long-term career ambitions. We encourage other scholars and practitioners to think creatively about the role of the DLOR with an eye toward the epideictic rhetoric unveiled in digital locales. As the hiring world moves increasingly online, the DLOR can indeed provide new ways for recruiters and hiring managers to develop fuller, more nuanced understandings of the candidates they seek.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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