Title: A walk through the multimodal landscape of university websites
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2015, vol. 41, iss. 1, pp. [77]-100
Extent
[77]-100
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2015-1-5
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/134765
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The study provides an insight into the ways in which universities employ multimodal elements to advertise the academic experience, research-informed teaching and research results, thus attracting prospective students. Anchored in the methodology of genre analysis and multimodal discourse analysis related to Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics, the research focuses on the contribution of images – photographs and pictures – to the ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings conveyed by the websites to prospective students. The corpus analysed includes the home pages and prospective students' web pages of British, North American and Czech university websites. The corpus design not only provides material for a case study of this web genre, but also enables a cross-cultural comparison to be made. The contrastive analysis revealed significant differences both in the form and the function of images between the British/American and the Czech sub-corpora suggesting the relevance of the social and cultural contexts for the realization and the establishment of genres. The development of web genres also seems to be significantly shaped by the progress of internet technologies and their growing affordances.
Note
The study is supported by the research project CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0222, "Posílení rozvoje Centra výzkumu odborného jazyka angličtiny a němčiny na FF OU" [Centre for the Research of Professional Language], funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.
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[2] Bateman, John (2008) Multimodality and Genre. A Foundation for the Systematic Analysis of Multimodal Documents. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[3] Bax, Stephen (2011) Discourse and Genre. Analysing Language in Context. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
[4] Bhatia, Vijay K. (2004) Worlds of Written Discourse. A Genre-Based View. London and New York: Continuum.
[5] Bhatia, Vijay K. (2005) Generic Patterns in Promotional Discourse. In: Halmari, Helena and Tuija Virtanen (eds.) Persuasion Across Genres. A Linguistic Approach. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 213–225.
[6] Domingo, Myrrh, Carey Jewitt and Gunther Kress (2014) "Multimodal social semiotics: Writing in online contexts". In: Rowsel, Jennifer and Kate Pahl (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Literacy Studies. London: Routledge. Pre-print version, retrieved from http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/3084/1/D4Writing_and_Multimodal_social_semiotics.pdf, March 3, 2014.
[7] Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga (2006) "Text Colonies Revisited: Clause Relations in Colony Texts". In: Discourse and Interaction 2. Sborník prací Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity v Brně. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, 43–56.
[8] Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga (2007) Cohesion in Colony Texts. In: Silesian Studies in English 2006. International Conference of English and American Studies (Proceedings). Opava: Slezská univerzita v Opavě, 51–61.
[9] Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga (2009) Analysing Genre: The Colony Text of UNESCO Resolutions. Brno: Masarykova univerzita.
[10] Fairclough, Norman (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
[11] Halliday, Michael A. K. and Ruqaiya Hasan (1989) Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-semiotic Perspective, 2nd ed. Oxford: OUP.
[12] Hoey, Michael (1986) "The Discourse Colony: A Preliminary Study of a Neglected Discourse Type". In: Coulthard, Malcolm (ed.) Talking about Text. Studies presented to David Brazil on his Retirement. Birmingham: Birmingham Instant Print Ltd., 1–26.
[13] Hoey, Michael (2001) Textual interaction. London and New York: Routledge.
[14] Iedema, Rick (1997) "The language of administration: organizing human activity in formal institutions". In: Christie, Francis and J. R. Martin (eds.) Genre and Institutions. Social Processes in the Workplace and School. London and New York: Continuum, 73–100.
[15] Kress, Gunther (2003) Literacy in the New Media Age. Abingdon: Routledge.
[16] Kress, Gunther (2009) "What is mode?" In: Jewitt, Carey (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. Abingdon: Routledge, 54–68.
[17] Kress, Gunther (2010) Multimodality. A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. Abingdon: Routledge.
[18] Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen (2006) Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design. Abingdon: Routledge.
[19] Lemke, Jay (2002) "Multimedia Genres for Science Education and Scientific Literacy". In: Schleppegrell, Mary J. and M. Cecilia Colombi (eds.) Developing Advanced Literacy in First and Second Languages. New York: Erlbaum. Retrieved September 2013 from http://www.jaylemke.com/storage/MultimediaGenres-Science-2002.pdf
[20] Lirola, María Martínez and Jan Chovanec (2012) "The Dream of a Perfect Body Come True: Multimodality in Cosmetic Surgery Advertising". Discourse & Society 23 (5), 487–507.
[21] Martin, James R. (1997) "Analysing genre: functional parameters". In: Christie, Frances and J. R. Martin (eds.) Genre and Institutions. Social Processes in the Workplace and School. London and New York: Continuum, 3–39.
[22] Santini, Marina (2006) "Interpreting Genre Evolution on the Web". In: EACL 2006 Workshop: NEW TEXT – Wikis and blogs and other dynamic text sources. Preface to the Proceedings. ERCIM news. Retrieved September 17, 2012 from http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/~Marina.Santini/
[23] Santini, Marina (2007) "Characterizing Genres of Web Pages: Genre Hybridism and Individualization". In: Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Retrieved on September 17, 2012 from http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Marina.Santini/HICSS_07.pdf
[24] Santini, Marina, Mehler, Alexander and Sharoff, Serge (2010) "Riding the Rough Waves of Genre on the Web. Concepts and Research Questions". In: Mehler, Alexander, Serge Sharoff and Marina Santini (eds.) Genres on the Web. Computational Modelsand Empirical Studies. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York: Springer, 3–30.
[25] Swales, John M. (1990) Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[26] Tárnyiková, Jarmila (2002) "From Mainstream Texts to Text Colonies: The Case of Personal Advertisements". In: Todenhagen, Christian (ed.) Text. Text Structure. Text Type. Festschrift for Wolfgang Thiele. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 269–278.
[27] Tomášková, Renáta (2011a) "Text Colonies or Hypertexts: On the Unified Discontinuity in Lifestyle Magazine Discourse". Ostrava Journal of English Philology 3 (1), 129–142.
[28] Tomášková, Renáta (2011b) "Advertising Education: Interpersonal Aspects in the Genre of University Websites". In: Hopkinson, Christopher, Renáta Tomášková and Barbora Blažková (eds.) Power and Persuasion: Interpersonal discourse strategies in the public domain. Ostrava: University of Ostrava, 44–73.
[29] Tomášková, Renáta (2012) "Writing the Prospective Student in the Text": On the Interplay of Monoglossic and Heteroglossic Elements in University Websites. In: Hopkinson, Christopher, RenátaTomášková and Gabriela Zapletalová (eds.) The Interpersonal Language Function Across Genres and Discourse Domains. Ostrava: University of Ostrava, 154–173.
[30] van Leeuwen, Theo (2008) Discourse and Practice. New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[31] Ventola, Eija and Guijarro, Arsenio J. M. (eds.) (2009) The World Told and the World Shown. Multisemiotic Issues. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
[32] "What is Web 3.0?". http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/what-is-web-30.htm, retrieved April 14, 2014.