Self-promotion in job application letters Moves, rhetorical pattern, ideational content, and linguistic features

This study is about self-promotion lines found in job application letters. Moves are determined, hand-tagged, and analyzed guided by Swales’ (1990) notion of moves. The writers mutually share five-part structural description of a job application letter – greetings, intention, educational qualification, working experiences, and gratitude. In addition, self-promotion lines were explored in the text and writer have two approaches – deductive and inductive. Results suggest that rhetorical patterns of writers’ self-promotion lines can potentially strengthen (or weaken) their profile. In terms of ideational content and linguistic repertoires, self-promotion in job application letters of the writers are interestingly not matching because writers appear confident and straightforward in presenting their qualifications but utilized the language indicative of weak modal and mental verbs. Implications to teaching business writing and shedding light to cultural and social factors in writing are discussed towards the end of the study.

Keywords: rhetorical pattern, moves, self-promotion