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.)