Abstract

There is a considerable amount of research and literature on “de-anonymization” of anonymous authors’ texts in linguistics and other fields. But what about research on “anonymization” of authors’ names? This paper, as a pilot study, wants to fill a gap by looking at an example of “real life” and providing an empirical analysis of “anonymization” of authors’ names of letters to the editor (LTE) in daily papers. The main working hypotheses are: (1) Anonymous vs. non-anonymous (indication of) authorship represents a continua rather than a dichotomy in real life everyday communication. (2) The continua are governed by a set of text type-specific rules. (3) They are to be described as culture-specific entities. (4) There are structural differences in the form of continua of “anonymization” of male and female authors’ names in LTE in a culture different from our own.