ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the psychological dimensions that underlie the comments that editors provide for their authors. Previous literature has explored obliging comment structures, but no study has yet addressed how these comments, in their totality, reflect sentiment, cognition, and social order. For this study, I analyzed a 41,146-word corpus of graduate student editorial comments on four sentiment variables: analytical thinking, clout, authenticity, and emotional tone. A regression analysis also indicated if editors varied their delivery of these comments based on their own or their authors’ gender, college major, and native speaker status. Results showed a high percentage of clout, emotional tone, and analytical thinking. Few significant interactions within the social variables were identified. Technical editing students can benefit from learning more about these dimensions as well as how language markers (e.g., personal pronouns, positive language, function words) can improve future author–editor collaborations.
