Evolving Genres In Web Mediated Communication

This volume explores genres in Web-mediated communication in a discourse-analytical perspective, focusing in particular on genre change and evolution under the pressure of technological renewal, the availability of new affordances, and the consequent emergence of new generic conventions that challenge traditional genre theory. The chapters are organised in an ideal progression from websites and more 'traditional' Web applications to Web 2.0 communicative platforms, characterised as they are by user participation and user-generated content, focusing in the final section on blogging and microblogging as the applications that are most representative of the properties of the new platforms. In all chapters the starting point is an awareness of the need to renew or adapt existing analytical tools to make them applicable to the new objects of investigation.

The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction is an invaluable reference work featuring contributions from leading global scholars, available both online and as a three-volume print set. The definitive international reference work on a topic of major and increasing importance, in a new series of sub-disciplinary international encyclopedias Provides state-of-the-art research for scholars in a highly interactive and accessible format, available both online and as a three-volume print set Covers key research topics in the field with contributions from a team of experienced, global editors Successfully brings into a single source, explication of all of the fascinating and ground-breaking Language and Social Interaction work developing globally and across subjects Part of The Wiley Blackwell-ICA International Encyclopedias of Communication series, published in conjunction with the International Communication Association. Online version available at www.wileyicaencyclopedia.com

The book is an edited volume of carefully selected articles by eminent scholars focusing on the specialist knowledge transmission through genre variation, particularly on the issues of standardization and hybridity. The main focus was to analyse discursive popularization in the contexts and domains of natural sciences, law, and commerce, viewed in a diachronic perspective. The scholars involved have concentrated their studies on the creative transformation, hybridization, and even bending of genres used to popularise scientific, legal and commercial discourse for different communicative purposes and audiences, thus extending the conventional genre boundaries to disseminate specialized knowledge. The proliferation of specialized knowledge has indeed created a growing need to convey expert knowledge to a variety of addressees, with different levels of shared understanding and expertise. Such disciplinary knowledge can only be conveyed through various subtle manipulations of generic conventions keeping in mind the aims, the users, the media, the social contexts, and the domain with which specific knowledge is associated.

This volume features representative studies focusing on the evolution of text genres in corporate and professional communication. Genre change is explored in various contexts in light of the increasing importance of new media and the profound social changes that have occurred in the last few decades. Major theoretical issues are raised and discussed, highlighting the need to reconsider the repertoire of conventions traditionally identified in each specific genre, and to reassess and update the analytical tools used to investigate them, about three decades after the emergence of genre analysis.

This book presents an overview of the wide variety of digital genres used by researchers to produce and communicate knowledge, perform new identities and evaluate research outputs. It explores the role of digital genres in the repertoires of genres used by local communities of researchers to communicate both locally and globally, both with experts and the interested public, and sheds light on the purposes for which researchers engage in digital communication and on the semiotic resources they deploy to achieve these purposes. The authors discuss the affordances of digital genres but also the challenges that they pose to researchers who engage in digital communication. The book explores what researchers can do with these genres, what meanings they can make, who they interact with, what identities they can construct and what new relations they establish, and, finally, what language(s) they deploy in carrying out all these practices.

Globalization, i.e. the spatio-temporal processes of change leading to a transformation in the organization of human affairs, is said to have started as long ago as the end of the 15th century. This first wave of globalization was subsequently followed by two others. The third wave of globalization, which began after 2000, has made the world noticeably smaller. In fact, technological innovations have sharply increased the availability of new modes and channels of communication. As a result, the sharing of knowledge and information all around the world has substantially increased and this has prompted the emergence of new ‘globalizing genres’. In addition, it has led to the implementation of a series of adaptations to the existing genres, in an attempt to guarantee their success and survival in an era which celebrates the need for a ‘global reach’. In order to investigate these ‘winds of change’ in generic studies, the present volume combines a historical perspective with a detailed survey of different contemporary discourses and genres situated in an array of contexts of interaction. Accordingly, the empirically informed analyses of discourses and genres do not only focus on the textual, intertextual and interdiscursive features, but also on the institutional, organizational, professional and socio-cultural settings, i.e. all those aspects which show how genres reflect changing disciplinary and professional cultures. As a consequence, and in line with the multi-faceted nature of genre, different reading paths can be followed in the present volume. On the one hand, it is possible to make a distinction between professional, institutional and academic contexts. On the other hand, the concept of change will also be investigated by focusing on oral, written and web-mediated genres. Throughout the volume, the different reading paths aim at highlighting the influence of the three waves of globalization on genre evolution, thus contributing to providing evidence in favour of the homogenization or fragmentation hypotheses, which claim new ‘global genres’ are outnumbering, or are outnumbered by, the proliferation of a myriad of new, customized genres.

Contemporary society has witnessed radical changes in the field of communications in terms of how messages and meanings are disseminated. Digitalization and the Internet have signalled an exponential rise in the circulation of multimodal texts in which different semiotic resources are orchestrated together to construct meaning in all areas of social life, across languages and cultures, and in diverse specialized discourse domains. This has foregrounded the need to examine the semiotic functions, affordances, and issues at stake in a range of multimodal discourse forms, while simultaneously highlighting the importance of critical multimodal literacy in audiences and learners. This volume develops and extends pioneering research on the intersection between multimodality and specialized discourse. Eight newly commissioned studies offer innovative perspectives on multimodal research methodologies and applications in a variety of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) contexts for practitioners and scholars alike. The volume offers a glimpse at future directions in this dynamic and ever-evolving area of investigation focusing on the synergy between verbal and non-verbal modes of communication in the digital age. Each chapter explores an original area of application: academic, economic, scientific, marketing, legal, medical, political, and tourism. The contributors approach multimodality from a range of theoretical and methodological viewpoints including synchronic and diachronic corpus-based and corpus-aided studies, critical discourse analysis, and systemic functional linguistics. Analytical tools such as multimodal (critical) discourse analysis, multimodal transcription, and multimodal annotation software capable of representing the interplay of different semiotic modes - speech, intonation, direction of gaze, facial expressions, gesturing, and spatial positioning of interlocutors - are employed. The diversity of research strands contained in the volume illustrates just some of the vast areas of multimodal knowledge dissemination that are still unmapped. As a cornerstone of communication, multimodality needs exploring in all its facets. These contributions aim to further that cause.

This volume examines the role of English in academic and research settings in Europe and provides recommendations on the challenges posed by the dominance of English over national languages as languages of science and research dissemination; the need for language support for academics that need to disseminate their research in English; and the effect of past and present language policies.

In recent years, the use of Web-mediated digital technologies has constantly grown in importance, reshaping the communication landscape in all professional activities. Web 2.0 applications and platforms have evolved dramatically, exceeding all expectations, and have had an impact on all areas of activity, from personal and social to political and economic. A crucial role in this radical transformation has been played by social media, i.e. online resources enabling users to connect, interact, and share contents. They have changed social relations profoundly on an individual level, but also in their professional dimensions, transforming the dynamics of how professionals work, share knowledge and relate to each other and to their clients. This book explores online professional blogging and networking platforms, discussing methodological issues involved in analysing webmediated professional communication in a genre- and discourse- analytical perspective, with a focus on the structural and textual properties of genres on the Internet. The discursive objects investigated include professional weblogs, and in particular law blogs, professional groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, and LinkedIn job ads. Among the aspects examined are continuity with pre-existing traditional genres, generic integrity, and the debated status of social networking sites as platform users’ communities of practice.

Cyberpragmatics is an analysis of Internet-mediated communication from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics. It addresses a whole range of interactions that can be found on the Net: the web page, chat rooms, instant messaging, social networking sites, 3D virtual worlds, blogs, videoconference, e-mail, Twitter, etc. Of special interest is the role of intentions and the quality of interpretations when these Internet-mediated interactions take place, which is often affected by the textual properties of the medium. The book also analyses the pragmatic implications of transferring offline discourses (e.g. printed paper, advertisements) to the screen-framed space of the Net. And although the main framework is cognitive pragmatics, the book also draws from other theories and models in order to build up a better picture of what really happens when people communicate on the Net. This book will interest analysts doing research on computer-mediated communication, university students and researchers undergoing post-graduate courses or writing a PhD thesis.