Product presentations: a multimodal genre to be disclosed

Abstract

Although there are many definitions of genre, virtually all of them include the ideas of ownership by a discourse community and social acceptance by this community. Modern genre theory emphasises the role of genres in social interaction. Genre is seen as a multidimensional phenomenon. Paré and Smart believe genres must be defined taking into account not only textual features but also the processes involved in producing and interpreting the texts. Berkenkotter and Huckin note down five basic features in the concept of genre: dynamism, situatedness, form and content, duality of structure, and community ownership. They refer to genres as dynamic rhetorical forms developed by actors' responses to recurrent situations within social communicative activities. All these features are central to understanding the nature and redefinition of existing genres or emergence of new genres. In this sense, Kress emphasizes the need to move from a theory that accounts for language alone to “a theory that can account equally well for gesture, speech, image, writing, 3D object, colour, music and others” (Kress 2003). In addition, since media technology has multiplied text and image capabilities, it is also necessary to analyse the effect of non-linguistic features on how meaning is constructed. The specific purpose of this paper is to make a literature review on the concept of genre to reflect on the innate multimodal nature of product presentations. Further research will aim at presenting a model of analysis of product presentations which will provide insights into the nature and evolution of this genre. Non-linguistic features will be analysed from a multimodal perspective in order to find out to what extent they add meaning to the expression of persuasion and therefore contribute to the description product presentations as a genre.