Verb-centered means of expressing self-presentation in the English-language job-hunting discourse

Abstract

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.