Rhetoric of encomium

How do institutions form around notions of merit?

Me: what about blurbs as evidence of implied social networks? Who blurbs whom? How are these invitations sent/received and by whom?

diachronic: how blurbs evolve over time

Signals, can blurbs predict: - the field of the work - gender - other

Emergence or decrease of signals with respect to time

Imitation of styles and choices. - how does this happen? contagion - I'm reminded of George Mathew Dutcher admonition:

Imitation to be avoided. Avoid the mannerisms and personal peculiarities of method or style of well-known writers, such as Carlyle or Macaulay. (see: https://hypothes.is/a/ROR3VCDEEe2sZNOy4rwRgQ )

Systematic studies of related words within corpora. (this idea should have a clever name) word2vec, word correlations, information theory

How does praise work?

metaphors within blurbs (eg: light, scintillating, brilliant, new lens, etc.)