Irina Kotova
Lipetsk State Pedagogical University
Natalia Srebryanskaya
Voronezh State Pedagogical University
Irina Bakhmetieva
Voronezh State Pedagogical University
Natalia Ignatenko
Voronezh State Pedagogical University
Inessa Zlenko
Voronezh State Pedagogical University
This article presents a semantic, syntactic, and contextual analysis of the language means of self-presentation, conceptualized as the dominant speech strategy in the job-hunting discourse. The scope of our research is limited to the written variety of texts expressed via the genres of CVs/resumes and cover letters. The material was taken from English-language job-hunting resources: Balance, Career Addict, Career Blog, Indeed, Resume.io, StandOut CV, and Zety. It is stipulated that self-presentation can be viewed as a system of interrelated speech tactics: self-nomination, self-description, presentation of professional achievements, description of professional responsibilities, and identification with an ideal candidate type. Each tactic has its unique semantic profile. All self-presentation tactics roughly fall into two major categories—nominative and verb-centered. The latter category, which incorporates the tactics of presentation of professional achievements and description of professional responsibilities, was the primary focus of this research. A careful semantic and syntactic analysis revealed that active verbs with two-complement (in some cases, three-complement) valency are the core of the aforementioned tactics. This leads us to believe that the actant situation almost always includes the agent and theme, sometimes the benefactive. As a result of semantic analysis, lexical units were classified according to their sentimental modality—positive, negative, or neutral. Our research documented the prevalence of positive evaluation semantics in self-presentation units. A syntactic analysis was employed to identify the formal aspects of sentences containing self-presentation. The analysis showed that most sentence structures fall into three basic types of syntax reduction: a) subject omission ([I] perform regular check-ups); b) omission of the subject and the link verb ([I am] professionally trained); c) the omission of the subject and the verb of possession ([I have] numerous awards). The authors conclude that the self-presentation blueprint of verb-centered constructions identified in this article persists across all verb-centered tactics proving to be an effective means of constructing written job-hunting discourse.
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Copyright © 2023 Irina Kotova, Natalia Srebryanskaya, Irina Bakhmetieva, Natalia Ignatenko, Inessa Zlenko
This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
