-
TOMKOV, R. Advertising Education: Interpersonal Aspects in the
Genre of University Websites. In: Hopkinson, Ch., Tomkov, R.,
Blakov, B. Power and persuasion: Interpersonal discourse strategies
in the public domain. Ostrava: Filozofick fakulta Ostravsk
univerzity v Ostrav, 2011. s. 44-73.
ADVERTISING EDUCATION: INTERPERSONAL ASPECTS IN THE GENRE OF
UNIVERSITY WEBSITES
3.1 Introduction
If there is one dominant characteristic of professional and, to
some extent, even academic genres that has influenced the essential
nature and function of discourse in general in recent years, it has
been the invasion of promotional values in most forms of discourse
(Bhatia: 2005, 213). The invasion of promotion has come hand in
hand with the rapid development and spread of new communication
technologies, which have brought an equally effective impetus for
shaping and reshaping forms of discourse. The World Wide Web
represents a vast communication area open to an almost unlimited
number of texts of varying length, offering at the same time a
highly effective technological background for crossing the borders
between modes of production and perception, and for exploiting and
enhancing intertextuality. As an easily accessible means of mass
communication, the internet occupies a dominant position in the
realization of most discourse types and institutional discourse is
no exception. Educational institutions, like any institutions,
cannot ignore the convenience of addressing the public through the
internet. In todays competitive environment, universities are
finding it extremely difficult to maintain their privileged status
of excellence ...[and] are gradually coming closer to the concept
of a marketplace, where each has to compete with everyone else for
clients attention (Bhatia, 2005: 224). In addition to this, the
majority of contemporary universities are, or are striving to
become, increasingly multi-nationally oriented institutions, for
which a channel of communication effortlessly ignoring frontiers as
well as natural borders between parts of the world is invaluable.
This chapter aims to contribute to the study of both phenomena
mentioned above: researching a set of British, North American and
Czech university websites, I attempt at revealing the significant
generic features of this specific institutional web genre, and
focusing on the hypertext path targeting prospective students, I
explore the role and the realization of the interpersonal semantic
component in this advertising-like discourse.
3.2 Research aims
The massive information explosion on the internet, and the
dynamic nature of both technological and social development
characterized by a range of variables, prevent a research project
such as this from setting itself overly ambitious objectives. The
answers to the following research questions hardly offer a
comprehensive and exhaustive description of the discourse in
question, but they may provide an insight into its more conspicuous
features and the current tendencies in its development. The study
concentrates on
identifying the generic qualities of the university website as a
specific web genre;
-
determining the presence or absence of a specialized hypertext
path targeting prospective students and reflecting their needs;
revealing how this target audience and the overall communicative
purpose of the genre shape the realization of its interpersonal
metafunction;
mapping the culture-specific features of the selected university
websites with regard to global versus local characteristics, which
may possibly compete within the genre.
3.3 Methods and theoretical framework
3.3.1 Systemic Functional Linguistics and genre analysis: key
concepts
The methodology of the research is grounded in Hallidays
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and genre analysis,
represented here mainly by Martin (1997), Swales (1990), and Bhatia
(1993, 1997, 2004, 2005). Language is viewed as a socially and
culturally grounded tool of communication, which is in principle
multifunctional and fulfils simultaneously three metafunctions, or
in other words, realizes three semantic components: the ideational
component, as language reflects and represents reality; the
interpersonal component, as language reflects but also shapes
interpersonal, social relationships; and the textual component, as
language also represents an organized, structured, and cohesive
form that enables it to fluently realize ideational and
interpersonal meanings. The metafunctions correspond with three
sets of contextual factors labelled by Halliday as the field, tenor
and mode of discourse respectively. The interplay of all the three
components results in a contextualized choice and combination of
linguistic devices termed register. The concept of genre is,
similarly to the concept of register, firmly embedded into the
social context, which in SFL is viewed as a stratified system
consisting of a hierarchy of levels: Genre ... is set up above and
beyond metafunctions (at a higher level of abstraction) to account
for relations among social processes in more holistic terms, with a
special focus on the stages through which most texts unfold. The
relation of genre to register as complementary perspectives on the
social content of language (i.e. context) is thus comparable in
some respects to the relation of discourse semantics to
lexicogrammar as complementary perspectives on languages own
content plane (Martin, 1997: 6). Register, which encompasses field,
tenor and mode, thus contextualizes language, consisting of the
ideational, interpersonal and textual components, and is at the
same time contextualized by genre (Martin, 1997: 7). The hierarchy
and inclusion is illustrated in Figure 1, a graphically modified
version of Figure 1.5 in Martin (1997: 8). Martin then defines
genre as representing the system of staged goal-oriented social
processes through which social subjects in a given culture live
their lives (1997: 13). Besides the phases of unfolding mentioned
earlier, the definition emphasizes the fact that genres are always
addressed to certain audience and are closely tied with the
producers and receivers culture. Martins approach towards genre
within the framework of SFL corresponds in principle with the way
genre is characterized by Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993, 2004):
Genre is a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set
of communicative purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by
the members of the professional or academic community in which it
regularly occurs. Most often it is highly structured and
conventionalized with constraints on allowable contributions in
terms of their intent, positioning, form and functional value
(Bhatia, 1993: 13). The only limit to the accord between these two
accounts of genre could be found in Swaless and Bhatias focus on
genres
-
in professional or academic settings, on genres seen exclusively
as reflections of organizational cultures and institutional
practices (Bhatia, 2004: 23). In his recent study on discourse and
genre, Bax (2011) presents a multi-faceted overview of a range of
approaches towards genre and finds an ultimate synthesis of generic
components in defining the concept within the cognitive theory of
mental schemas. He sees genres as mental structures, mental
representations which we apply when producing and interpreting
discourse, mental constructs which are shared by members of a
particular community.
-
Figure 1
In harmony with other researchers (e.g. Martin, 1997, Giltrow
& Stein, 2009), he considers genres to be abstractions that
find their realization in a range of instantiations, and further
specifies his view by describing genres with reference to Roschs
Prototype Theory (Rosch, 1978) as fuzzy mental concepts revolving
around a limited number of clear-cut examples (Bax, 2011: 39).
Fuzziness, as he argues, is indispensable in facilitating the
flexibility of genre realization and use. While he confirms that
genres are inevitably characterized by their function(s), which
control all their other features, and exhibit a recognizable
structure, he differs from other researchers in drawing attention
to the fact that his definition of genre could also be applied to
events which do not include linguistic communication, such as e.g.
a mime show (Bax, 2011: 60), and suggests that Genres are
identified not only by formal criteria, but also by social and
contextual factors (Bax, 2011: 61, cf. Giltrow & Stein, 2009:
5). A fairly similar focus on the cognitive nature of the concept
of genre can be found in Santini, Mehler and Sharoffs
methodological treatise introducing a series of studies exploring
web genres specifically (2010: 4): [genre] reduces the cognitive
load by triggering expectations through a number of conventions.
Put in another way, genres can be seen as sets of conventions that
transcend individual texts, and create frames of recognition
governing document production, recognition and use. Conventions are
regularities that affect information processing in a repeatable
manner. The authors emphasize that, by identifying a text as
belonging to a certain genre, the receiver is given the power and
advantage of predictivity of the communicative purpose and the
context, which thus helps us to understand the text.
genre
field tenor mode
(register)
ideational interpersonal
textual (language)
-
3.3.2 Genres in evolution
Although all the definitions discussed above mention the
recurrence of communicative events as a feature crucial to the
existence of genre and cite conventionalized features as an
important prerequisite for genre identification, none of the
researchers deny the dynamic nature of the genre system. Genres can
never be characterized as static; on the contrary, they continually
develop and change they are in constant evolution (Santini,
2006).
As genres are anchored in social context and culture, their
existence is to a large extent dependent on their compliance with
the current communicative needs of users and their institutions.
Thus genres appear on the scene when they are demanded, and expire
when the situation is not relevant any more (Giltrow & Stein,
2009: 10). Even genres that inhabit the scene for long periods are
susceptible to changes and adjustments. As early as 1995 and 1997
Bhatia commented on a growing tendency towards genre mixing, and
distinguished this phenomenon from genre embedding (Bhatia, 1997:
191). Genre mixing refers to the penetration of features typically
associated with one genre into a different genre, in which they
were not previously expected. The main focus here is on a set of
academic genres (preface, introduction, foreword, acknowledgement
and others) manifesting obvious promotional elements. Genre
embedding means the insertion of one generic form into another,
conventionally distinct generic form, as for example when a letter
or a poem is used within an advertisement. Both genre mixing and
genre embedding are examples of genre hybridization (Bhatia, 2004:
10).
3.3.3 The genre continuum on the web
The general fluidity and pragmatic openness of the genre system
is even greater in the case of web genres or cybergenres (Giltrow
& Stein, 2009: 9). The hypertext net of the world wide web has
brought unprecedented opportunities and substantially shaped
situational factors such as time and space restrictions and
channel/medium specifications and has therefore multiplied the
opportunities for realizing ones communicative purposes, thus
multiplying the range of genres.
Santini (2006, 2007a) presents the synchronic genre repertoire
as a continuum, in which there are three forces interacting
together: traditional genres brought from the past as they were
(reproduced genres), new genres and traditional genres adapted to
the new environment (novel genres and adapted genres), and forms
that are going to emerge but are not fully formed yet (emerging
genres).
Drawing upon her long-term research mapping the proliferation of
new genre candidates on the internet by testing the ability of web
users to identify them and choose a proper label to name them, she
suggests that we might suspect an emerging genre when there is a
recurrent textual pattern without an acknowledged name (Santini,
2007a: 6). It should be added, however, that as indicated by the
use of the present participle as a pre-modifier the emergence of
new genres is to be viewed as a process, which does not develop
abruptly but continuously. Considering the vast space of the world
wide web, it can be expected that both the recurrence of an
identical or similar pattern and the acknowledgement of its name
will spread gradually, and the speed and nature of the process may
be domain-specific or culture-dependent. The process of emergence
may not proceed in parallel stages in different cultures, but is
often highly asymmetrical.
Within the fluid environment of the internet, the inherent
fuzziness of the concept of genre becomes even more exploited:
Genres are not mutually exclusive and different genres can be
merged into a single document, generating hybrid forms, and on the
other hand, ...genres allow a certain freedom of variation, and
consequently can be individualized
-
(Santini, 2007a: 6). These convergent and divergent tendencies
are particularly powerful in emerging genres that are not yet
acknowledged and that often show hybrid (mixing several genres) or
highly individualized (with high authorial variation, high inner
variability) forms and indistinct functions (Santini, 2007a: 6).
Considering Santinis research results, relatively recently emerged
genres include home pages, blogs or FAQs.
3.3.4 Genre analysis of hypertext
As mentioned in the previous sections (1, 3.3), the huge extent
of the internet has invited an array of forms of communication,
which could be more or less easily classified into three groups:
reproduced, novel/adapted and emerging genres. Considering the
sophisticated technological background internet text producers may
take advantage of and the emergence of genres unprecedented in
pre-internet times, the question arises whether genre analysis
methods rooted in non-electronic communication could be effectively
applied to the system of web genres.
On the one hand, the answers suggested by researchers surveying
the current genre repertoire on the web are positive. The
methodology of their analyses is grounded in Swaless and Bhatias
definition of genre (Roberts, 1998; Askehave & Nielsen, 2004;
Santini, 2006, 2007a, 2007b; Giltrow & Stein, 2009) and their
research results show that the principles on which this definition
is based are valid even within the electronic space. The rationale
for this finding may lie in the fact that the internet encompasses
to a large extent electronic versions of traditional written
genres, which preserve both their communicative purpose and formal
structuring (electronic versions of research articles, magazine
articles, course books, and other publications), and also in the
fact that even many of the novel genres are not completely new but
could be associated with possible written or oral pre-electronic
ancestors. Askehave and Nielsen (2004) trace the communicative
purpose and structure of a home page back to the Aristotelian
exordium or to a contemporary genre the newspaper front page;
Santini characterizes the web genre of Frequently Asked Questions
as having a very close antecedent in the paper world in the
Troubleshooting section of technical manuals ... or FAQS can be
seen as a written form of a help desk or information desk (Santini,
2007b: 235).
On the other hand, though, traditional steps of genre analysis
seem to fail to account for those generic features of web genres
whose genuine novelty stems from exploiting the unique capabilities
of the electronic medium. Ignoring these would deprive the web
genres of their chief distinctive features. Rather than by their
linguistic form, i.e. by a certain ritualized and expected store of
linguistic markers, web genres are recognized and distinguished by
the function they fulfil and by their hypertext form and
organization.
In their paper titled Web-Mediated Genres A Challenge to
Traditional Genre Theory (2004), Askehave and Nielsen attempt to
benefit from the valid principles of traditional genre analysis and
at the same time compensate for the absence of consideration given
by those traditional approaches to the specific features of the web
medium. The model of analysis proposed by Askehave and Nielsen
respects the character of hypertext as a system of non-hierarchical
text blocks where the textual elements (nodes) are connected by
links (Askehave & Nielsen, 2004: 14) by developing a
two-dimensional approach, which reflects the generic properties of
the text blocks (the reading mode) as well as the generic
properties of the links between them (the navigating mode). The
modal shifts between reading continuous texts and zooming out of
them to follow a link, which readers need to do when negotiating
their way through websites, are thus seen here as the key
difference between traditional genres and electronic hypertext
genres (Askehave & Nielsen, 2004: 17).
The present analysis draws upon the two-dimensional approach
outlined above and aims to trace both the make-up of the generic
moves (the functional units of the reading
-
mode) and the realization of the links (the functional units of
the navigating mode). As the present research focuses on university
websites addressing prospective students, the genre is expected to
be shaped by a promotional communicative purpose. Bhatias (2004:
65) model of the move structure in advertisements (see Fig. 2) has
thus been used as a stepping stone, and tested against the reading
mode of the web genre.
Move structure in advertisements: headlines attracting the
readers; targeting the market; justifying the product or service;
detailing the product or service; establishing credentials;
celebrity or typical user endorsement; offering incentives; using
pressure tactics; soliciting response.
Figure 2
The analysis of the realization of links benefits here from the
classification of links introduced by Askehave and Nielsen (2004).
Firstly, the division they propose distinguishes two types of links
according to the function they fulfil: structural links, which
organize the information on the website into a hierarchy, and
associative links, which reflect readers potential interests and
chain the texts on the web in an associative manner. Secondly,
considering the realization of links, they define generic links
based on a general expression referring to a global topic, and
specific links, providing thematically contextualized appetizers
for the destination texts.
3.3.5 Persuasion, genres, and the hierarchy of semantic
components and contextual factors
As the aim of the present study does not consist in outlining
the characteristic generic properties of web genres in general but
follows a much narrower scope of analyzing interpersonal aspects in
one specific internet genre, this sub-chapter briefly discusses the
question of the mutual relations (or interplay) between the
concepts of the interpersonal component and persuasion, and
persuasion and genre.
Within Systemic Functional Linguistics the ideational,
interpersonal and textual components are always presented as being
inseparable, simultaneously realized, yet they are never presented
as being organized hierarchically. Their co-presence and
simultaneous realization is generally accepted among functional
linguists, yet attention is also regularly attracted to their
possible hierarchical stratification.
Thus Bhatia explains that the three contextual factors shaping
registers may not always be equally powerful, and may in response
to the requirements of a specific communicative situation create a
hierarchy allowing for field-dominated, mode-dominated, or
tenor-dominated registers. Bhatia mentions scientific register as
field-dominated, casual conversation as mode-dominated and a client
consultation as tenor-dominated register (Bhatia, 2004). I would
argue that this hierarchy of factors can be seen as implying a
related hierarchy of the three semantic components that they
contextualize.
Similarly, a hierarchy of these components, but projected into a
different perspective, is posited by Enkvist (1987), who sees the
ideational and textual elements as being subject to
-
the interpersonal component, which has a controlling role in
communication strategies, and illustrates this interplay
metaphorically both the ideational and textual component fit into
the interpersonal component in the manner of a Russian doll (cf.
Hopkinson et al., 2009: 11, 274).
The concept of persuasion (and manipulation) tends to be
discussed separately from metafunctions, registers and genre, and
their mutual relation seems elusive. A contribution to the study of
the persuasion/genre interface is represented by the collective
monograph Persuasion Across Genres. A Linguistic Approach edited
and co-authored by Virtanen and Halmari (2005). In their
introductory methodological chapter, persuasion is characterized as
an interactive process, as linguistic behavior that attempts to
either change the thinking or behavior of an audience, or to
strengthen its beliefs, should the audience already agree, and it
is also recognized as an inherent part of language communication:
All language use can in a sense be regarded as persuasive (3, cf.
stman, 2005: 191). The interactive nature of persuasion is further
supported by referring to Classical rhetoric, emphasizing that The
persuader, with the intention to cause an effect, will monitor and
gauge her or his linguistic choices based on the sometimes
immediately obvious and sometimes estimated and inferred reactions
of the audience or multiple audiences (7).
In my view, the interpretation of persuasion suggested in the
above-mentioned quotations apparently supports Enkvists notion of
the controlling role of the interpersonal component. Nevertheless,
in Virtanens and Halmaris study the place of persuasion within
language semantics ultimately remains controversial: The
intersection of persuasion and genre, the two key notions of this
volume, is their communicative purpose. Genres can be more or less
persuasive; persuasion, a communicative purpose, finds its
realization through various genres (11). The question then remains
open: is all communication to a certain extent persuasive, i.e. is
persuasion an inherent part of any communicative purpose, or is
persuasion just one of the communicative purposes speakers or
writers may or may not choose?
It is not an ambition of this paper to provide any final answer
to this question. I only consider it important to state that the
analyses and interpretation of the results presented here take
Enkvists stance. Linguistic communication is seen here as being
controlled by the interpersonal component; it is always crucially
shaped by the assumptions the producer has about the receiver and
the kind of relationship the producer wants to build with her or
him, to which the ideational component (the choice of facts
represented) and the textual component (the way the language is
structured) are subjected. All language communication aims to
change the audience in a broad sense (changing the knowledge,
attitudes, mood, the relationship with the speaker or writer, and
so on), but this may not be the only aim, and it may not always be
the priority of the producer: thus it may be either foregrounded or
backgrounded in communication (foregrounding and backgrounding may
not necessarily correspond with the concepts of explicitness and
implicitness in communication).
3.4 Material
The structure of the corpus reflects the objective of the
present study, i.e. the search for the manifestation of
interpersonal aspects in university websites. It thus includes the
part of a university website hypertext which is expected to be
primarily promotional in character the hypertext path addressed at
prospective students. The analysis is based on a survey of the
websites of seven universities: four British universities
(University of Bristol, University of Edinburgh, University of
Warwick, and Leeds Metropolitan University); one American
university (University of California, Los Angeles); and two Czech
universities (Charles University in Prague, and Masaryk University
in Brno). The analysis began at the university home page by
considering the presence or absence of a link targeted at
prospective students,
-
and subsequently followed the path of the links across the sites
and texts anchored within them.
The choice of universities was led by a desire to build an
institutionally comparable but culturally diverse corpus which may
facilitate an analysis of genre as a reflection of a specific
communicative event and at the same time highlight some of the
aspects of its context-dependence and culture-dependence. The core
of the corpus is represented by large research universities, highly
respected in their home countries as well as abroad, and much
sought-after by prospective students. The only university that does
not refer to research as its first and foremost attraction is Leeds
Metropolitan University.
In case of the Czech universities selected, only the
Czech-language versions have been explored, as these correspond to
the English-language British and American websites (as the official
language of the universitys home country in all cases). It must be
admitted, however, that the role of the two languages within the
corpus is not fully parallel. Whereas the English language
addresses both British/American and international audiences, the
websites in Czech target almost exclusively Czech users, with
foreign readers probably seeking out the English version. The
status of the English versions of Czech university websites vary
considerably, from a full English version providing a complete
translation of the original Czech website texts to a scale of more
or less curtailed versions, either shaped by the assumed needs of
the foreign audience or limited to a few texts presenting general,
almost tourist-like information about the university.
As three of the websites examined offered not only the
possibility to order a printed undergraduate prospectus but also
its downloadable version in the pdf format, embedded into the site
for prospective students, these prospectuses were also included
into the corpus. They could be seen as beneficial in providing a
basis for identifying generic distinctions between the
(traditional) text form and the hypertext form of realizing an
identical communicative purpose.
All the university websites surveyed within this research
project were downloaded between January and June 2011.
3.5 University websites: institutional discourse in
hypertext
A university website is an instantiation of institutional
discourse which can with the advantage of technology address a
range of target readers simultaneously, at the same time tailoring
the discourse to fit the objectives which the institution aims to
pursue in association with a specific target audience and to meet
the assumed needs of the target users. A university home page, the
gateway to the vast hypertext space, thus tends to include some or
all of the following links opening specialized paths through the
web designed for the academic staff, current students, prospective
students, alumni, the general public, or even parents and the
press. Even though the hypertext cannot defy the principle of
language linearity completely (when reading the home page as whole,
from left to right and downwards from the top, the links enter into
a certain order), the reader still has the choice to ignore the
linear organization and focus immediately on a relevant path, which
is usually substantially facilitated by the graphic layout of the
page.
University websites are part of the world wide web, which means
that they are part of and at the same time they themselves build a
hypertext net consisting of a hierarchy of hypertexts, which on the
other hand consist of sets of e-texts, i.e. electronic texts. The
classification used here comes from Jucker (2002), who develops the
typology suggested by Storrer (Storrer 1999 in Jucker 2002).
University websites represent a discourse colony, as defined by
Hoey (1986, 2001), and a genre colony, as defined by Bhatia (2004):
in other words the website could be seen on the one hand as a set
of independent but related textual
-
components framed for their interpretation by the university as
the home institution, while on the other hand the website could be
viewed as a complex of closely related genres and sub-genres
working towards a common communicative purpose.
All seven university websites offer a link targeting potential
new students, which leads the visitors to the prospective students
home page and invites them to follow a special path through the
university hypertext. The unifying communicative purpose expected
here is to attract the potential students attention to the
universitys offer, arouse their interest in studying and provoke a
desire to become part of the academic community, and finally to
guide those already decided users through the admission process.
This expectation clearly defines the prospective students websites
as a kind of promotional discourse.
Promotional discourse, whose aim is to influence or persuade the
receivers, is obviously tenor-dominated; so here if not also
elsewhere the interpersonal component has a hierarchically higher,
controlling role and is realized not only by means of the primarily
interpersonal features such as means of address or modality, but
also through the ideational metafunction, controlling the choice of
reality represented, and the textual metafunction, supporting the
interactive character of the text and thus showing respect on the
part of the producer for the needs and expectations of the
receiver.
The suggestion that the genre of prospective university students
websites belongs to promotional genres also seems to be borne out
by the fact that their formal and informative structure complies
with the move structure defined by Bhatia (2004) for
advertisements, as well as with other instantiations of promotional
discourse (cf. 3.4, Figure 2).
3.6 Attracting the reader
The universities feature a specialized link for prospective
students on their main page the university home page. The home page
is the visitors first encounter with the university as a compact,
independent institution, which gives this top-level part of a
website an opportunity to fulfil two important goals: to introduce
the institution and the general content of the site, and to provide
the user with an official and effective gateway to all essential
branches of the hypertext.
One of the branches typically included is the prospective
students path. The link is presented predominantly in the main
upper horizontal bar (in 5 cases out of 7), in the middle vertical
bar (in 3 cases out of 7), or in both positions (in 1 case). Four
universities use prospective students/uchazei (o studium) as the
clickable expressions; four universities prefer to use study(ing)
as the key word, followed by either prospective students or
undergraduates on the next level within the hypertext; the
University of Bristol includes study in the horizontal bar and
prospective students in the vertical bar, both leading to the same
destination. If the expression study(ing) is chosen, its potential
ambiguity is eliminated by the context of the neighbouring links,
which in these cases invariably offer a separate current students
link. Regardless of the type of the bar, the link to the
prospective students website always occupies the first position on
the line. The prospective students website could be viewed as the
first destination reached by the links described above, but at the
same time it is also another home page document functioning as a
gateway to a set of branches related to the topic. The two home
pages double the possibilities for the university to introduce
itself and attract potential students, to use the home page for
building the image of the institution a story about who the author
is or wants to be thought of , as Roberts characterizes the role of
personal home pages (Roberts, 1998: 2). All the home pages
surveyed, with the sole exception of Charles University, strive to
be multifunctional and play multiple roles exploiting the
technological capacities of the
-
internet. The home pages are thus multi-modal, presenting not
only texts distinguished by a variety of graphic realizations but
also audio, visual and audiovisual components such as photographs,
audio recordings and videos. The photographs and videos tend to
visually dominate the layout of the home page, and both are in
their content largely parallel to the presented text: visualizing
the facts and figures, evaluations and descriptions, they animate
the written texts and provide a more authentic, hands-on-like
experience with the university. Photographs prevailingly picture
students and teachers of the university engaged in interaction and
diverse study, research, social or pastime activities, but they may
also depict university buildings, city sights, or even historical
documents related to the universitys history, such as e.g. the
royal charter founding Charles University in Prague, which is used
as the only opening or welcome on the home page. Photographs and
videos also substantially contribute to establishing credentials
for a given university. Even if the videos introducing the
university or virtual walks round the campus are in a mutually
complementary relationship with written texts, each of them is
self-contained and video films can be considered an independent
genre within university home pages.
The photographs are typically used in two ways: they are either
relatively stable enjoying a long-term location on the web and
accompany and illustrate relatively stable links on the page, or
they exist in a symbiosis with a clickable clause briefly
describing a universitys achievement and/or university news, and at
the same time representing a quick link to more detailed
information. The latter tend to occupy a larger space under the
upper horizontal bar, regularly changing in a timed presentation of
a series of 57 pictures, and they substitute a slogan or a headline
opening the site. As the picture presentation cannot be copied, the
examples bellow illustrate solely a set of sentence-links.
(1) The Global Priorities Programme is a key part of the
University research strategy and focuses our world-class,
multidisciplinary research on key areas of global importance.
Read more...
In 2015 the University of Warwick will celebrate its 50th
birthday and is seeking a total of 50 million in donations to take
on and resolve major challenges facing our world.
Read more...
Postgraduate students are an integral part of Warwicks research
community. Join us for our Postgraduate Open Day on 16th November
to find out more about postgraduate opportunities at Warwick.
Read more... University of Warwick home page (my emphasis)
The preference for specific links providing a lead for an
article or for a specific site within the university hypertext as a
substitute for a headline or slogan, or their co-existence on the
home page, may remind the reader of a possible genre predecessor of
the home page, namely the newspaper front page (cf. Askehave &
Nielsen, 2004). However, unlike news reports in a paper, the news
concerning the university has the advantage of being authored
directly by the
-
institution itself, which can address the audience through a
variety of genres: presenting a report on The Global Priorities
Programme, a fund-raising advertisement related to Warwicks 50th
birthday, or an invitation for a Postgraduate Open Day. Even though
each of the leads is shaped by its respective relevant generic
conventions, they ultimately work together to fulfil a common
communicative purpose of presenting the university as a vibrant,
dynamic community of students and academics in co-operation, as an
institution integrating teaching, research and responsibility for
both local and global issues, whose credit stems from long-term
experience and involvement. The bold print in example (1)
highlights the key words or multi-word expressions representing the
principal concepts promoted; the concepts although realized by a
variety of lexicogrammatical means tend to recur throughout the
websites of the British and American research universities
analyzed. Except for Charles University, all the universities
surveyed also introduce their home page with a headline, some of
which play the role of slogans. Whereas the University of Edinburgh
employs a headline on the University home page (a), most
universities prefer to headline only the prospective students home
page (d g); Bristol is the only university headlining both home
pages (b, c).
(2) a) Influencing the world since 1583.
(Edinburgh)
b) learning discovery enterprise (Bristol)
c) Study with the best at an internationally recognised
university with a brilliant academic reputation
(Bristol)
d) Welcome at Leeds Met. Were one of the largest and most
popular universities in the UK.
(Leeds Metropolitan University)
e) Experience Warwick with us... (Warwick)
f) Come on in. Theres a great big world in here. (UCLA)
g) Informace pro uchazee o studium (Masaryk University)
Similarly to the leads in example 1, a comparison of these
headlines reveals that the variability in lexicogrammar is broader
than the variability in the underlying ideational and interpersonal
component. Regardless of whether the headlines are formally
realized as complete clauses, elliptical clauses or just nominal
minor clauses, regardless of whether the positive self-presentation
is explicit or implied, the concepts included and the values
promoted are largely shared or at least overlapping. They also echo
and complement the concepts realized in the key words highlighted
in example 1.
-
The University of Bristol (b) has picked out three key words
forming a simple yet eloquent slogan referring to three principal
areas of university activity: learning is used here rather than
teaching, evoking a task and desire to enrich the knowledge shared
by both students and academics; discovery, referring to the
adventure of (successful) research; enterprise, implying readiness,
ingenuity, energy for developing and realizing projects, having an
impact on the world and life. Their prospective students home page
headline (c) expresses the same values more explicitly, employing
overtly evaluative vocabulary and a directly conveyed illocutionary
force. The headline here provides a summarizing base, which is
further elaborated in subsequent electronic texts: the best is to
be interpreted here again as including both teachers and students,
the impact on the world is emphasized in the international
recognition, and the quality of research and teaching is
encapsulated in a brilliant academic reputation.
In Edinburghs slogan (a) the overlapping ideas of impact and the
world dimension are supported by the reference to long-term
involvement.
Out of context, the Warwick headline seems to lack the
informativity of the others but in fact the opposite is true: the
semantic indeterminacy of the word experience makes it quite
comprehensive and open to specification by context, and its primary
meaning is further enriched by generally positive connotations and
by the syntactic structures used here (verb in imperative + the
name of a place/a city, the name of a place/a city + noun), also
with an associative meaning alluding to the genre of travel guides.
Both semantic layers are exploited: experience provides a common
ground for presenting all the aspects of university life, followed
by clickable sub-headlines Study experience, Life experience and
Future experience, at the same time anticipating the generic
features of the texts found along this hypertext path, which
co-create a guide to the opportunities offered at Warwick. The
words with us, added to the headline in a smaller font, acquire a
double meaning in the context of the home page. As the site
includes a series of current Warwick students photographs paired
with brief quotes about their personal Warwick experiences and
videos of them talking about studying at Warwick, the us can refer
both to the Warwick academic community as a whole or to the
selected students enjoying the Warwick experience and mediating it
to the prospective students.
UCLA does not opt for a descriptive headline either, instead
preferring a playful paraphrase of the generally known saying
Theres a great big world out there, associated mostly with youth,
discovery and surprise. The playfulness of the metaphor of the
university seen as a world of its own by no means less colourful,
multi-faceted and dynamic than the one out there is further
elaborated by means of the accompanying visual effects, namely the
picture of a kaleidoscope and pictures of the campus, students and
teachers as viewed through this magic device. Employing a
colloquial, spoken-like register in the headline, the producer sets
a very informal tenor simulating authentic oral interaction (cf.
Chovanec, 2009) and evoking the atmosphere of a friendly university
community which the receiver is welcome to join.
Bristol, Warwick as well as UCLA inspire action addressing the
prospective students by means of imperative forms.
The headlines offered by Leeds Metropolitan University and
Masaryk University in Brno do not seem to exhibit many elements
overlapping with the headlines discussed above. Whereas the
difference in focus of the Leeds Metropolitan headlines could be
related to the fact that this university does not present itself as
a research university with long tradition, the conspicuous
difference in tenor set by Masaryk University may be attributed to
intercultural differences, reflected here in the conventions of an
institutional genre. It is important to add that while the
prospective students home page headline sticks to the formal
register of administration, lacking in personal contact, the
register actually changes in the subsequent
-
texts, where it becomes less formal, occasionally even
colloquial, and generally strives to build a relationship with the
audience. The lack of headline on the Charles University website
is, on the other hand, symptomatic of the structure and register of
the Universitys prospective students pages as a whole. Contact with
the audience is not opened up, and it is not built into the
individual e-texts either.
The headlines discussed above can be best characterized as
framing headlines as they provide a unifying frame for an otherwise
particularized and formally discontinuous home page structure. The
headlines, together with the name of the university and its logo
(which reappear on individual websites as a letterhead), form a
centre of gravity ensuring the desired identification and
interpretation of the website components. While the university
letterhead provides the essential identification of the
institution, the framing headlines set the tenor of the
relationship between the author and the audience, here in
particular between the university and its potential future
students. With the support of the specific, contextualized links
discussed above (see example 1), the framing headlines spread an
atmosphere within which the visitors can then use the home page as
a gateway, by deciding to select or not to select individual items
out of the list of generic, topical links. As these generic links
of prospective students home pages are closely related to the
targeting the market move, they are tackled in the following
section.
3.7 Targeting the market
The targeting of prospective receivers is multi-layered and is
realized at different levels of specificity. The dominant vehicle
used for addressing the target audience within the internet
hypertext is a link. Sets of generic links on university home pages
tend to sort the hypertext paths offered according to their users;
the users, on the other hand, are sorted according to their
relationship with the institution. With respect to the focus of the
study, the present chapter limits itself to characterizing the ways
of targeting prospective students.
On the most general level, the target receiver is addressed as a
potential applicant (the Czech word uchaze) in the Czech part of
the corpus and as a prospective student in the English-language
corpus. As the group of the prospective students universities
strive to address is becoming increasingly varied, the prospective
students home page includes another filtering set of generic links
opening up specialized paths through the web. Firstly, the links
reflect the level of higher education relevant to the target
audience undergraduate study/prospectus and postgraduate
study/prospectus; secondly, the links target the global audience
international students; thirdly, the links show a consideration for
non-mainstream groups of potential students deaf and disabled
students, care-leavers, mature students, or part-time students.
British and American universities also take care to address not
only prospective students but also their parents and carers.
Individualized paths through the web not only provide quick and
easy access to the specific information being searched for, but
also build a relationship between the institution and the audience
addressed; the co-hyponymical links particularizing the target
audience represent a more personalized means of address, which
shows respect for and interest in the target groups, and may make
them feel welcome in the university community. The welcoming feel
implied by the specified links is further supported in the texts
opened by them, where the university again expresses respect for
the group targeted:
(3) Mature students We welcome applications from mature students
and value the contribution that mature students make to the
University community.
-
Parents and carers At Bristol we recognise that our relationship
is not only with students but also with their parents, guardians
and carers. On this page we hope we can answer some of your
questions.
(Bristol)
Neither of the Czech universities surveyed goes much beyond the
general label referring to applicants: Masaryk University offers a
specialized link to international students (Study programmes for
International Students), while Charles University offers an
individualized link to special needs students only (Applicants with
Special Needs). This is not to suggest that Czech universities
websites do not offer information on the study programmes offered
or that they do not offer a wide range of study programmes
including life-long learning courses; the difference between them
and the British and American universities lies in the fact that on
Czech university websites this comprehensive information is
accessed almost exclusively via the links referring to the types of
study programmes without addressing the users by personal nouns.
Neither of the Czech universities addresses potential students
parents or carers.
Targeting strategies do not consist only in providing links
addressing the target group. University websites help their users
to find an answer to the question Which course? by means of the
institution placing itself in their position and providing an
overview of the university courses, possibly also through the
filter of potential students interests or qualifications achieved
at secondary schools (Subjects you might be studying at A-level or
equivalent or What can I do with biology?; What can I do with
chemistry?..., University of Bristol). This self-targeting by the
website users is also encouraged elsewhere within the prospective
students hypertext: e.g. in the opening texts (Its important to
make sure that the schools you apply to have the programs and
resources that meet your personal and academic needs., UCLA), or
when explaining the admission process (Interviews are used by
admission tutors to gauge your suitability for a course. They also
give you an opportunity to find out whether your chosen course is
the right one for you., University of Bristol).
3.8 Justifying the product
Following Bhatias move structure in advertising discourse, the
justifying the product move is characterized as indicating the
importance or need of the product or service and/or establishing a
niche (Bhatia, 2004: 65). The analysis of the corpus has revealed
that justification of a university education is not seen as a
crucial part of university presentations; neither the importance of
university education nor the establishment of a niche occupies a
central position within the discourse studied. The acknowledgement
of the importance of acquiring a high-quality education is
apparently presupposed as a shared value; what matters, then, is
showing that the particular university is the right place to obtain
this. Even though the realization of the move is not extensive, it
represents a recognizable element analyzable into two distinctive
types: on the one hand, the opening texts of prospective students
websites tend to include an introductory comment implying the
importance of and need for the website itself; on the other hand,
the detailed description of what the universities offer is
complemented with information on the graduates employability and
possibly also on high-profile positions that graduates could
achieve. In neither of the cases do the justification move elements
form an independent text component; instead they are embedded in
the detailing the product or service move, intertwining with a
range of constituents building this complex and elaborated part of
the hypertext.
-
All the universities considered, with the sole exception of
Charles University, use the lines opening prospective students
websites to stress the seriousness and difficulty of deciding on a
specific university programme, thus evoking an uncertainty in the
user, implying the need for help or advice, and finally justifying
the relevance of the e-texts further along the hypertext path.
Evoking uncertainty in the receivers belongs among the typical
advertising strategies preparing the ground for successful
persuasion (Doubravov, 2008: 107). As illustrated by example (4),
this uncertainty can be shaped by a variety of feelings evoked: by
disorientation (Bristol website), fear or anxiety (Leeds), or even
by feeling intimidated by the responsibility (California). The
uncertainty inspired by the expressions underlined is balanced with
the expressions highlighted in bold, which promise help further on
along the path.
(4) Were aware that choosing a university degree programme from
so many options can be quite a confusing process. These suggestions
are not exhaustive but they are intended to give you some idea of
the options you might want to consider, building on the subjects
you are currently studying at A-level (or equivalent).
(Bristol)
The idea of becoming a university student can be liberating,
exhilarating and pretty daunting. Its a time to really think about
what you want from your future, to make life-long friendships, to
work the hardest youve ever worked, and have the most fun youve
ever had. Youve lots to think about, and we at Leeds Metropolitan
have lots to offer...
(Leeds)
Choosing a university is no small feat. Its important to make
sure that the schools you apply to have the programs and resources
that meet your personal and academic needs. Its also important to
understand what the schools expect from you. ... Use the links
below to learn more about what it takes to be a Bruin.
(California)
(highlighting added)
The employability of graduates stands out as one of the
principal attractions displayed by universities in order to justify
university education and the preference for a particular university
as a sound investment for the future. Except for the Charles
University website, employability is always mentioned and commented
on. Masaryk University even currently uses an employability diagram
as one of the visual points of the attracting the reader move
heading the home page; the caption is clickable and reads: "Nai
absolventi maj vborn uplatnn na trhu prce." (Our graduates are
highly employable.). High employability is foregrounded especially
by universities that define themselves as research universities
(here Bristol, Warwick, Edinburgh, UCLA, Masaryk University), where
the claims are supported by credentials drawing upon contemporary
statistics (cf. example 6) and by prestigious employers
endorsements (cf. example 5). Leeds Metropolitan University, which
apparently does not ground its attractions in research-based
teaching, highlights its efforts to make you a great prospect for
employers rather than citing employment figures or employers
testimonials; employment for graduates is mentioned only as a
prospect connected to the city of Leeds, not the university itself:
Why Leeds ... There are good employment prospects for
graduates.
-
The following examples (5, 6) also show how the universities
take care to relate graduates employability to the knowledge and
skills they provide the students with, or to the university
reputation; high employability of their graduates is presented as
one of the universitys main achievements and credentials.
(5) Employers regard the University of Edinburgh as an excellent
training ground for high-flyers of the future. Tomorrows employers
want more than a degree holder they want graduates who have
developed a range of skills and qualities appropriate for the
working world. We can help you to develop a broad range of skills,
grow in confidence and learn more about yourself. Employers value
our graduates for their intellectual ability and highly developed
transferable skills. "Edinburgh University is one of the top
campuses that we target for recruitment. If you are looking for a
university that will give you the skills and experiences to have a
successful career, then Edinburgh University is a good place to
start." Proctor and Gamble
(6) Warwick graduates are highly employable. Research-led
teaching, the high academic content of our degrees, our established
reputation and the diverse range of extracurricular activities and
opportunities available to our students all contribute to our
graduates being highly valued by employers. ... Of students
graduating in 2009, six months after graduation 86% were working,
undertaking academic or professional study, or combining the
two.
(Warwick) (highlighting added)
In both the Edinburgh and Warwick texts, employers play a key
role as the agents of an evaluation and decision process: employers
regard/want more/value (twice). The structure of the texts and the
meanings encoded in the lexis indicate that the universities
co-exist and co-operate with employers in a symbiosis: graduates
embody a broad range of skills, academic knowledge and
extracurricular experiences provided by the universities and at the
same time required by the employers. The harmony of the mutually
advantageous relationship is supported by structural and especially
semantic parallelism: in example 5 the symbiosis manifests itself
in the repeated match between employers requirements (a range of
skills and qualities) and Edinburgh University education results (a
broad range of skills); example 6 illustrates a triplet of
semantically parallel structures building correlations on the one
hand between graduates/students graduating and research-led
teaching, the high academic content of our degrees..., and on the
other hand between the graduates benefiting from Warwicks academic
contribution and high employability (highly employable, valued by
employers, working). Presenting the university as a mediating
entity on the way to a successful career and a full life rounds off
the overall communication strategy highlighting the enabling role
of universities, which is to be characterized in section 9. As
mentioned above, the justifying the product move is not realized as
a separate text, but its components are interwoven into a series of
e-texts realizing the extensive and complex detailing the product
move; the interconnectedness of the two moves manifests itself also
in the affinity of the lexico-grammatical devices that realize
them, the characteristics of which are examined in the following
section.
3.9 Detailing the product/service
-
Within the genre of university internet presentations detailing
the product/service represents the core move, both with regard to
the realization of the overall communicative purpose and also with
regard to the size of e-texts that realize it and the amount of
data presented. The move is realized in a series of e-texts on
different levels of the hypertext: the prospective students link
leads to the prospective students home page with another set of
links, each of which opens a website with one or more e-texts and
offers one or more links located either below a text or inside it,
in the form of a clickable expression (see example 7). Whereas the
links in the upper part of the hypertext tend to appear in sets and
exist in a complementary relationship, covering different aspects
of university study and students life, the links found deeper in
the hypertext, accompanying or penetrating e-texts, tend to lead
the user to further specifications within an area already
selected.
(7) Prospective students Undergraduate Which course?
Postgraduate Studying at Bristol Deaf and disabled students How to
apply International students Money matters Mature students
Accommodation ... Student Life Request a prospectus
Biology Why study Biological Sciences at Bristol? Chemistry BSc
Biology C100 Classics/Classical Studies What are my career
prospects? ... ...
Further details about BSc Biology C100 Programme structure Entry
requirements Contact details
The detailing the product/service move is thus spread across the
hypertext, yet at the same time it is bound tightly together; it is
unified formally as well as semantically by cohesive devices
dominated by lexical ties whose interpretation often crosses the
borders of lexical semantics towards the reflection of cognitive
schemata. The primary carriers of lexical cohesion are here the
hypertext links (cf. Jucker, 2002) readily bridging the virtual
gaps between e-texts. There are three lines traceable across the
detailing hypertext colony: there is a line of discourse describing
what the university offers to its students in all the spheres of
students life and education; there is a discourse line of anchoring
the university in its location (city or region); and there is
obviously a line of discourse describing the requirements for
admission, the admission process itself, and a variety of rules and
guidelines related to Open Days attendance, student accommodation
etc. The interplay of the costs and benefits, of what the
university demands and what it offers, ranks university websites
among examples of institutional discourse. As Iedema argues
(Iedema, 1997: 73), institutional discourses can be typified as
concerned with the realization of constraint, or shouldness, on the
one hand, and with the construal of levels of institutional
enablement and power on the other. The discourse of shouldness
which in the present corpus includes mainly texts on the process of
admission and other texts conveying requirements, rules and
guidelines is clearly distinguishable from the discourse of
enablement, characterizing the universitys offer
-
extended to what is offered by the city or region, not only by
the topic covered but also by the lexico-grammatical devices used.
Whereas the shouldness discourse limits itself mainly to
information on the admission process, the enablement discourse is
much more varied and comprehensive. Within the prospective students
website it is the enabling dimension that is foregrounded: it is
central in introductory texts and forms a spine supporting the
hypertext structure as a whole and framing its shouldness parts.
With the only exception of Charles University, all the other
universities surveyed present a set of texts identifying the
university, indicating its value and describing a variety of the
components of curricular and extracurricular activities pursued
(cf. Bhatia, 2004: 65) all of them tailored to the needs and
expectations of prospective students and targeted towards
accomplishing the communicative purpose of the genre to make
students (preferably high-achieving students) take an informed
decision and apply for admission to the given university. The
principal link opening the hypertext path describing the university
offer is typically called Why choose ...?, Why study at ...?, or
Studying at .... At all the universities, the series of e-texts
targeted by this link covers an almost identical range of topics,
and the values presented and promoted are obviously shared, too.
This line of discourse is realized in two parallel colonies: as a
hypertext colony on the web and as a text colony in the
undergraduate prospectus, which at three out of the seven
universities is accessible as a pdf file freely downloadable from
the web. The analysis revealed almost complete correspondence
between the e-texts and the prospectus texts designed for print or
downloading in the pdf format. The University of Bristol, whose
prospectus in full text is available upon request only, states the
correspondences explicitly: Please note: all the information in the
printed prospectus appears in our online version., and offers a
link (underlined), which does not open the pdf version but leads to
the relevant part of the hypertext. The research hence confirmed
Nielsen and Askehaves conclusion (see 3.4) that the essential
difference between these two text variants consists almost
exclusively in the technological realization of the hypertext form,
which enriches the reading mode with the advantages of the
navigating mode; in addition to this, of course, it facilitates the
use of a much wider choice of non-verbal, multi-modal communication
tools. It should also be mentioned that it is the university web
presentation that plays the supportive role: whereas the pdf and
print prospectuses regularly refer the readers to the website for
further information, the e-text of the website never includes
references to the print prospectus. The answer to the question Why
choose ...? starts by emphasizing the qualities of teaching, which
are presented as closely bound up with the quality of the research.
It then proceeds to study options, including studying abroad,
followed by highlighting the specificity of the universitys
location, introducing the campus, student accommodation, other
university facilities and means of students support; attention is
also drawn to the career and employment prospects that the
university offers. The research universities (except for Charles
University) strive to show their positive impact on the local
community as well as global society, which is proved either by
referring to inventions and innovations or by characterizing the
university as green or sustainable (see example 8).
(8) ...the University has influenced many aspects of our lives
through life-changing research in areas such as cot death
prevention and 3G mobile technology innovation.
(Bristol)
As Scotlands first Fairtrade University, we have been promoting
better conditions for farmers and communities in developing
countries since 2004. ...
-
We are actively reducing our carbon footprint and have invested
12 million in campus-wide combined heat and power energy projects,
winning the 2008 National Energy Efficiency and Carbon Trust
Awards. (Edinburgh)
Even though each university tries to exhibit its specificities
and lend the website presentation a charge of originality, the
parallelism of topics, the similarity of target audiences and,
above all, the common communicative purpose manifest themselves in
the recurrence of certain lexico-grammatical features, which seem
to constitute the core configuration of the genre and sub-genre in
question. The shared significant features include the preference
for certain semantic fields of positively evaluative vocabulary,
the use of exclusive we for the identity of the institution and you
for addressing the prospective students, the preference for
epistemic modality expressing uncertainty and deontic modality of
exemption, and an excessive use of causative syntactic structures.
The enabling line of university website discourse is promotional in
character, representing an example of long-copy, soft-sell
advertising material skilfully combining information mostly based
on relevant credentials and positive evaluation. On the lexical
level, the universities draw upon paradigms revolving around the
semantic features of excellence and activeness respectively. The
teaching, research, campus everything that the university offers is
introduced as: high quality, distinguished, limitless, impressive,
world-renowned, outstanding, four-star, world-leading, world-class,
excellent, most accomplished, top-level, spectacular, fantastic, or
cutting-edge. Many of these expressions of excellence evoke hard
work and energy in general activeness and the drive for an impact
is further highlighted by expressions such as: innovative,
ground-breaking, forward-thinking, life-changing, most active,
vibrant, or stimulating. Throughout the enabling discourse,
personal pronouns prevail as a means of reference to the authorized
participants of communication. The exclusive we stands for the
university and the second person you addresses directly the
readers, more specifically the targeted prospective students. We
represents the identity of the enablers those who offer; the you
stands for the identity of the receivers (see example 9).
(9) Increasingly we are offering a student experience where you
can explore sustainability, global environmental challenges, social
justice and ethical dilemmas. (Edinburgh)
There is a certain ambiguity in the identification of the
collective antecedent to which the pronoun we/our refers: it can
encompass both academics and their management (ex. 10), or the
institutional management only (ex. 12).
(10) We expect the best for and from our students. After all we
are educating many of tomorrows leaders.
(Bristol) Our aim is to develop the teaching methods that work
best for students. (Edinburgh)
(11) Our academic staff are leaders in their field and their
research directly informs their teaching. (Edinburgh)
-
The potential ambiguity of reference does not detract from the
contribution that the first person plural pronouns bring to
building the image of the university as a closely-knit but open and
welcoming community, which co-operates and provides support (see
also example 12).
(12) Welcome to UCLA. We are expecting you. (California)
We will continue our work to attract and retain academically
gifted and highly motivated students from a wide range of
backgrounds, creating a diverse and international University
community. ... By coming to Bristol, you will share in our proud
heritage and help shape our future.
(Bristol)
As a macro speech act, the enabling discourse has the
illocutionary force of a polite offer. Direct imposition is avoided
and emphasis is put on giving options, which is reflected in the
epistemic modal meanings expressed (ex. 13) as well as in the
absence of deontic modality, represented exclusively by the
negative form of modals signalling exemption from obligation (ex.
14). Will is often used referring to future-as-a-matter-of-course;
an indirect imposition could be seen in the use of will when
speaking for the addressee and indicating high probability (ex.
15).
(13) These suggestions are not exhaustive but they are intended
to give you some idea of the options you might want to
consider...
(Bristol) Or you might want to undertake a work placement,
either in the UK or abroad...
(Warwick)
(14) You dont have to wait for opportunities to conduct your own
research. ... You dont need to take a programme that immerses you
only in that field
any academic major can do it. (California)
(15) You will find studying at Warwick both exciting and
challenging. You will have the opportunity to learn from academic
staff working at the forefront of their subjects and you will be
encouraged to experience the excitement of research for
yourself.
(Warwick)
The most obvious example of the textualization of the enabling
dimension in this institutional discourse is the frequent use of
causative syntactic structures, particularly the structure with the
verb help (see ex. 16). The causative structure includes two
agents; the action or the state of the second agent is facilitated
or enabled by the first agent. The structure thus encodes the
mediating function of the university without depriving the students
of their share and the responsibility for the action. The
university website discourse generally prefers the wording of We
encourage you to broaden your horizons (from the Warwick
prospectus) rather than asserting We will broaden your horizons.
The preference for causative structures of this type may be
interpreted as an illustration of the tendency in the social
constitution of the self in contemporary society towards a more
autonomous, self-motivating self (a self-steering self) as
discussed by Fairclough (1993).
(16) Bristol will help you to achieve personal goals but also to
serve societys needs
-
across the globe after graduation. (Bristol)
We will enable you to fulfil your academic potential, make you a
great prospect for employers and give you a little bit extra.
(Leeds)
Our undergraduate research centers can help you get started.
(California)
Whereas the Charles University website lacks the enabling
discourse line, Masaryk Universitys discourse parameters are
comparable with the British and American universities.
Nevertheless, there are certain significant differences in the ways
in which the enabling discourse is realized. In comparison with
British and American university websites, interpersonal meanings
and promotional features are suppressed. Assertions of teaching and
research excellence are briefer and do not employ such a wide
variety of evaluative adjectives. Personal pronouns are avoided,
with a tendency towards impersonal syntactic structure including
Masaryk University and students rather than we and you. The limited
personalization of discourse results in the lack of epistemic
modality, and the enabling character of the discourse results in
the absence of deontic modality the text thus includes only
occasional expressions of possibility (ex. 17).
(17) Studium na MU a ivot v Brn vm pin neopakovatelnou atmosfru
a spoustu monost. Na tchto strnkch se nyn mete s nktermi z nich
seznmit. (Studying at Masaryk University and living in Brno bring
an extraordinary atmosphere and a lot of opportunities. You can get
to know some of them on this website.)
(Brno)
The enabling role of Masaryk Universitys offer is not encoded in
causative structures; the mediating function of the university
experience is generally not made explicit they can only be inferred
by bridging assumptions (ex. 18).
(18) Zhruba polovina student Masarykovy univerzity pravideln
zskv prci jet ped dokonenm studia a podl nezamstnanch absolvent po
jednom a dvou letech od ukonen studia je ni ne 1%. Vce ne tyi ptiny
absolvent pak hodnot sv zamstnn jako perspektivn. (About half of
Masaryk University students get a job even before they graduate and
the proportion of unemployed graduates after 1 2 years after
graduation is less than 1%. More than four fifths of graduates see
their professions as promising.)
(Brno)
Except for the Charles University website, university internet
presentations invariably reflect not only the university and all
its facilities but also its location the city, the region and/or
the campus. Universities without a campus grow together with the
city or the region and feel a close bond with their location. The
home city anchors the university, and the citys attractions are
presented as an extension of the universitys offer. Studying at a
given university is thus seen as enabling the students to enjoy the
beauties of the place. The affiliation of campus universities is
apparently looser, but even here the city or cities are mentioned
and relevant hypertext links promising specific information are
incorporated into
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the hypertext. The city or region are, however, viewed from the
perspective of the universitys needs rather than as a place of
interest in itself (see ex. 19).
(19) UCLA is a shared public asset, owned and operated by the
people of California. All 38 million of them.
The campus is a cultural magnet for the entire Southern
California region. ... UCLA Sports are also an important part of
the L.A. lifestyle...
(California)
The University of Warwick is right in the centre of England,
easy to reach by rail, car or plane from all parts of the UK and
abroad. Ideally located on the border of the West Midlands and
Warwickshire, providing easy access to the major cities of Coventry
and Birmingham, and the beautiful historic towns of Stratford-upon-
Avon, Warwick, Kenilworth and Royal Leamington Spa.
(Warwick)
With non-campus universities, the information on the city is
fully integrated into the presentation: the links opening a city
website are either part of the Why choose ...? hypertext path, or
can be found on the university home page. In both cases the texts
are fully integrated into the generic structure of the university
website: even though they employ lexico-grammatical devices typical
of guidebooks, these elements are recontextualized to serve the
target audience. The city texts within non-campus university web
discourse hence provide an example of genre mixing, whereas links
to city institutional websites inserted into campus university
presentations illustrate the practice of genre embedding on the
internet (e.g. the link to Coventry City Council offered by the
Warwick website). The following extracts exemplify the ways of
recontextualizing the city information to meet the needs of the
university and the assumed expectations of the target users.
(20) When you choose a university, youre also choosing the place
that will be your new home, so its worth getting it right. Our
students always say how much they love the city of Bristol from its
friendly people and fantastic music scene to its vibrant
harbourside, green spaces and buzzing centre.
(Bristol)
Edinburgh has regularly been voted one of the most desirable
places to live in the world. Our city mixes architectural beauty
and history with a lively, fun environment. Our city offers an
exciting array of entertainment, history, culture and sport, with
the lush of Scottish countryside and coastline just a few miles
away. ... Find out more about our beautiful city on our city pages.
(Edinburgh)
While the Bristol University website implies a parallel between
choosing the university and choosing the university city by
stressing the importance of deciding for the right new home, and
indirectly argues for Bristol by adding positive evaluation and
students endorsements, Edinburgh University has based its
customization on the frequent use of the possessive pronoun
suggesting a joint identity shared by the University and the City
of Edinburgh and highlighting the dynamic atmosphere of the city:
lively, fun environment, an exciting array of entertainment. The
city pages referred to here do not step outside the
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University hypertext; they are designed by the University, again
adjusting information to meet the needs of the prospective
students. The hypertext line introducing the universitys offer and
the attractions of the city or region reveals an array of
opportunities that the prospective students may benefit from once
they decide to apply to the given university. Their decision will
be beneficial, however, only if they are admitted by the
university.
The rules and guidelines for the admission process are
undoubtedly a major focus of attention for prospective students,
which is why the link to this colony of texts is often located on
the university home page (or if not, then always on the prospective
students home page). Requirements of different kinds represent the
institutional discourse of constraint or shouldness (Iedema, 1997)
and as such they are not included in university print/pdf
prospectuses, which focus exclusively on the enabling role of the
university; the admission requirements are only referred to by the
website address.
The considerable differences in the lexico-grammar of the
discourse of enablement and the discourse of shouldness signal that
these two hypertext colonies should be distinguished as two
sub-genres of the genre of university web presentations. The
shouldness discourse is deprived of the evaluative premodification
that typifies the enablement discourse; the texts are
matter-of-fact and focus on clarity and non-ambiguity of
expression. The directive function of the colony as a whole
manifests itself in most of the constituent speech acts. Mentioning
the university explicitly as the agent of ordering tends to be
avoided. The frequency of exclusive we is limited; the subject
position is filled either with you, addressing the prospective
students, or is kept impersonal (see ex. 21).
(21) You must satisfy the admissions tutors that your academic
qualifications are sufficient to allow you to cope with the
programme of study. Applications will be accepted by UCAS from mid
September and the normal closing date for home students is 15
January.
(Bristol)
In contrast with the enablement discourse, the discourse of
constraint is naturally based on deontic modality expressing
obligation, with occasional uses of can for possibility and may for
hedging (see ex. 22).
(22) Applicants applying from outside the UK/EU can apply up to
30 June,... Exemptions may be granted to students where there is
clear alternative evidence
of an acceptable standard of English. (Bristol)
The directive function of the requirements the prospective
students are obliged to meet is not encoded solely in modal verbs;
there are four regular patterns in the corpus, occupying different
positions on the scale running between personalized and
depersonalized orders (Iedema, 1997): imperative (+ please), you +
must/should, you + passive form of a verb expressing obligation,
and structures with impersonal subjects (ex. 23).
(23) Check the progress of your application through the
decision-making process via UCAS Track. You must provide evidence
that your written and spoken English is at a level that will enable
you to succeed in your studies. (Edinburgh)
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...you are advised to consult the appropriate admissions tutor
before applying. (Bristol)
All applicants must have a strong academic record and have
achieved (or be expected to achieve) the minimum requirements for
their chosen degree. (Edinburgh)
All applications to full-time programmes apart from Dental
Hygiene and the International Foundation Programme must be made
through the UCAS.
(Bristol)
Even though this part of discourse is characterized by neutral
to formal standard language including relevant terminology, certain
universities employ even more playful language as well as informal
or colloquial expressions (ex. 24).
(24) The who, what, when, where, and how of applying to UCLA.
(California)
If you havent visited the UCAS website yet, youll find a wealth
of information, including a step-by-step guide on how to apply for
your course and advice on how to complete your personal
statement.
(Leeds)
Within the prospective students website as a whole, the series
of texts on different aspects of the admission process is the only
representative of the traditional institutional discourse of
shouldness, which evolves in the hypertext without an invasion of
promotional features.
As was suggested earlier in this chapter, the Charles University
prospective students website stands out as an exception,
contrasting sharply with all the other universities in the corpus.
The contrast consists in the absence of the enablement discourse in
the form described in this chapter: the Universitys offer is
conveyed exclusively through impersonal administrative texts
listing the study programmes offered, without any traces of
promotional features. Except for a brief text characterizing the
University, which is again firmly anchored in the discourse of
academic administration, the website does not provide any
information other than lists of programme types and a general
description of the admission process. The admission texts,
displaying relevant rules, laws and requirements, use
depersonalized ways of expressing shouldness, which contribute to
the institutional distance typical of the website as a whole.
3.10 Establishing credentials
Credentials are generally defined as the qualities, training or
experience that make you suitable to do sth., or as documents such
as letters that prove that you are who you claim to be, and can
therefore be trusted (Hornby, 2010). Within university
presentations, establishing credentials obviously lies at the
centre of attention. As credentials distinguish self-glorification
from defining ones values on the basis of clear evidence (cf.
Bhatia, 2004), establishing credentials is crucial: they provide an
invaluable support to the whole of the enablement discourse and may
help distinguish between universities whose offers are
comparable.
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For the purposes of this study, the first definition of
credentials appears to be too broad, not allowing us to draw any
distinct line between justifying the product/service, detailing the
product/service and establishing credentials; the second
definition, on the other hand, is too narrow, limiting the
confirmation of a universitys trustworthiness to specific documents
only. That is why here the move is considered to include assertions
based on evidence that could be checked with reference to sources
outside the university, or provided by subjects other than the
university itself. The importance of providing credentials and the
colony nature of hypertext raises specific demands on the
realization of this move. The relative discontinuity of the network
of e-texts challenges the linearity of discourse and facilitates
selective reading, so getting the message across to the maximum
number of readers requires that the message be integrated into a
number of e-texts. The building credentials move is thus scattered
across the prospective students hypertext, penetrating into a
number of other moves of the genre, namely into attracting the
reader, justifying and detailing the product/service as well as
into celebrity/typical user endorsement (to be discussed in section
11). It should be also stressed that certain assertions are
multifunctional: the choice of a given university may be justified
by providing credentials for its qualities, and credentials may
also bring details of the offer provided. The typical credentials
scheme draws upon the following areas of evidence: the universitys
history (Fig. 3, ex. 25), the innovative impact on the life of the
local and global community (ex. 26), prizes awarded to the
university, the academic staff and students (ex. 27), the size of
the university (ex. 28), and high-achieving alumni (ex. 29).
Figure 3
The picture of the 1348 foundation charter of Charles
University, combined with a photograph from the precincts of the
oldest university building, is the only image within the Charles
University website; occupying solely the space of the middle
vertical bar of the home page, it attracts the audience by
providing self-evidencing credentials.
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Presenting the historical date of a university foundation as a
credential in itself is rare there is not any other example of this
kind in the present corpus. Rather than foregrounding the year of
origin as such, universities introduce it as a starting point, as
the beginning of continuous work and development.
(25) Od roku 1922 mme ji 150 794 absolvent. (Since 1922 we have
had 150 794 graduates.)
(Brno)
Influencing the world since 1583. (Edinburgh)
The history of the university tends to be highlighted only if it
is long-term and it is typically connected with other credentials
that emphasize achievements of current relevance: hence the since
reference to an interval reaching up to the present interrelated
with the number of graduates or comments on the universitys
impact.
(26) The University of Bristol was the first institute of higher
education in the country to admit women on an equal basis with men
and in 1946 established the first university Department of Drama in
the UK.
(Bristol)
Vdci z MU pispli k odhalen zmn kmenovch bunk pi umlm mnoen.
(Masaryk University scientists have contributed to the discovery of
changes in stem cells in the course of artificial cell
multiplication.)
(Brno)
The latter of the two examples mentioned above illustrates a
developing trend of interlinking the university home page with mass
media resources journals, magazines, and particularly on-line
versions of newspapers. The specific contextualized links embedding
a news report into the genre of university presentations facilitate
an on-going upgrading of the building credentials move and bring
topical evidence of the universitys never-ceasing progress.
(27) Edinburgh is one of the worlds leading research
universities. Our standing was reaffirmed by the 2008 Research
Assessment Exercise (RAE)
which assesses the research quality of higher education
institutions. (Edinburgh)
Example 27 shows the interplay between defining the Universitys
values within the detailing the product/service move and confirming
the trustworthiness of the assertion by supplying credentials.
Credentials also include numbers presented as proving the high
popularity of the institution among university applicants, proving
the institutions size showing the number of both academics and
students which is seen as its strength, and proving the broad range
of faculties, colleges, study programmes, or research projects,
multiplying the opportunities offered by the university. The
largest university in the corpus is the University of California,
Los Angeles; the following example quotes the introduction to the
UCLAs prospectus.
(28) UCLAs strength is its size. Its part of our DNA, part of
our promise: 4, 000 faculty.
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5, 000 courses. 130 undergraduate majors. 109 academic
departments. 880+ student organizations. 11 graduate schools. UCLAs
size means diversity is more than ideal. It is a vibrant reality.
Opportunity and possibility? Limitless. Welcome to UCLA. We are
expecting you.
The university presentation websites surveyed here not only give
information on the number of alumni and the achievements of some of
them; they a