capturing reader perceptions of writer character (was: self-promotionn in written discourse)

[Jennifer Hrazdil]

Dear Dr. Maalej and Discourse members,

I am very interested to read your paper and would appreciate a hard-copy.
How to gauge a reader's perception of a writer's character is indeed a
difficult task.

I have come across quite a few studies measuring reader/listener perceptions
in the Impression Management literature of social psychology. From what I
can gather, these studies tend to involve administering empirically valid
and reliable questionnaires to research participants in an effort to gauge
their perceptions of the writer's character. The texts on which the
perceptions of the writer are based are specially designed for the
experiment, and variation between texts tends to be restricted to isolated
variables. (For example, in studies on reader impressions of resumes, a base
resume might be created with one variable, in say Educational Background,
manipulated from resume to resume while everything else remains the same.)

I am interested to know whether any Discourse members are familiar with, or
interested in, research gauging the reader's perceptions of the writer's
character in longer texts that have not been 'experimentally-modified'
(i.e., on authentic texts from multiple writers - where many, many variables
differ from text to text)?

Thank you,
Jennifer



----- Original Message -----
From: Zouhair Maalej <zmaalej at GNET.TN>
To: <DISCOURS at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 01:15
Subject: Re: self-promotionn in written discourse


> Dear all,
> I have published a paper on self-promotional written discourse, with
special
> reference to dating ads or lonely heart ads:
>
> Maalej, Zouhair (1999). "Interpersonal Perception in Self-Promotional
> Discourse." The Tunisian Review of
> Modern Languages 9, 155-174.
>
> I was more interested in perception of males by females and vice versa. If
> you are interested, I can send you a hard copy by snail-mail.
>
> I hope this will help you.
> Kind regards
> **********************
> Dr Zouhair Maalej,
> Department of English, Chair,
> Faculty of Letters,
> University of Manouba,
> Tunis-Manouba, 2010, Tunis, Tunisia.
> *********************************************
> Office phone: (+216) 1 600 700  Ext. 174
> Office Fax: (+216) 1 600 910
> Home Telefax: (+216) 1 362 871
> E-mail: zmaalej at gnet.tn
> URL: http//: simsim.rug.ac.be/ZMaalej
> **********************************************
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