Genre and Rhetoric

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Genre and Rhetoric in Illustrated Document
Design
Judy Delin University of Stirling John
Bateman University of Bremen Patrick
Allen University of Bradford
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Overview
The GeM project Genre and document
design Levels of description Rhetoric and
practicality Conclusion
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Background to the Project
GeM Genre and Multimodality Genre model of
illustrated documents newspapers, websites,
instructions, illustrated books (bird, medical)
Corpus constructed with designers and layout
professionals Herald, Scotsman, Guardian,
Telegraph, Harper Collins, Harcourt Health,
Taylor and Francis, IDU, freelancers,
IDA Practical constraints on design tasks Aimed
at generating and transforming sample layouts by
computer
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Notions of Genre
Text type? elements related to social goal
or function Text? linguistic or visual
properties intuitive informed by set of
assumptions prior discourse triggered inheren
t pull of innovation shifting historicity
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Modelling genre
Every document both reflects and constructs its
genre Genre boundaries erode and move genres
colonize one another expectations
change Description of genre space that allows
all to be related as a set of parameters of
variation Generating examples out of the space
allows creation of novel text designs as well as
production of existing genre examples
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Levels of Description Bateman et al. 2000
Content Structure the structure of the
information to be communicated Rhetorical
Structure the rhetorical relationships
between content elements, Navigation
Structure signposts supporting intended mode(s
) of consumption Layout Structure the nature,
appearance and position of elements on the
page Linguistic Structure forms of language used
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Genre is constituted in...
the necessity to satisfy goals at these levels,
and to address constraints Artefact
constraints arising out of the
physical nature of the object Production
constraints arising out of the production tech
nology Consumption constraints arising out of
the way in which the object is
mediated/consumed
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Rhetorical Structure in Document Design
How the content is argued and presented
Statementevidence Category example Action
purpose List element list element Documents
should be structured to preserve and signpost
these relationships (see e.g. Schriver 1997)
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Rhetorical Structure in Document Design
Rhetorical structure theory (Mann and Thompson
1987)
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Summary
Genre is amenable to extension to deal with a
range of production and consumption
factors Rhetorical structure is important, but
can be subverted by practical issues Practical
constraints must therefore be part of the
description of genre Practical constraints
differ between genres Close work with designers,
as well as document consumers, must be part of
academic research