The presentation of self in résumés: an intercultural approach

Abstract

In this paper, résumés in two languages and two cultures, Peninsular Spanish and American English, are analysed. For this qualitative analysis, we have relied on the dual perspective proposed by Flowerdew (2005) which postulates a complementary usage of linguistic and ethnographic approaches to the study of genre. The analysis of discourse is based on tenets of genre analysis (Swales 1990; Unger 2007) which have traditionally constituted a substantial part of the theoretical basis of the LSP field. However, it also introduces tenets from sociolinguistics and pragmatics (Brown & Levinson 1987; Scollon & Scollon 2001) as résumés crucially involve the presentation of self – namely the construction of professional identity of candidates (de Fina et al. 2006; Dyer & Keller-Cohen 2000). The ethnographic approach consists of interviews of recruiters from both cultures to find out what their expectations are relative to applicants’ presentation of selves. The results, although tentative, indicate that cultural expectations in terms of what constitutes an adequate résumé vary between the two cultures, especially with respect to the type of personal information provided and the lexico-syntactic structures that candidates use to distance themselves from their achievements