Idioma: Español
Fecha: Subida: 2021-04-12T00:00:00+02:00
Duración: 18m 26s
Lugar: Conferencia
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Generic patterns in promotional texts: the case of the Greek agri-food business website

Maria N. Melissourgou and Katerina T. Frantzi (University of the Aegean)

Descripción

A growing interest in exports due to the economic recess on the one hand, and the
competitive advantage of agri-food products on the other hand, has led Greek businesses in
the agri-food sector to actively engage in the international promotion of their products.
Export data show that small enterprises with less than 50 employees, represent 90.3% of the
total number of exporting enterprises in the country (Hellenic Statistical Authority, 2020).
Small enterprises, however, lack marketing expertise and the necessary funds for a powerful
marketing campaign and the state’s marketing support over the years has been criticised
(Böwer et al., 2014; Krystallis & Ness, 2005; Papalexiou 2009).
The creation of appropriate texts for specific contexts, such as exhibition leaflets, trade
magazines and company websites, is a necessary activity within the marketing process.
However, this seems a challenging activity; The possible range of genres involved in these
contexts has never been explored and apart from the advertisement we know very little about
promotional genres in the sector. Therefore, this is an opportunity for the scientific
community to help the industry and offer practical advice to everyday problems.
A genre analysis based on corpus evidence has been considered the appropriate way to
approach the research questions. The Agri-Food corpus (875 texts, 800,349 tokens) has been
designed and constructed especially for the project, as the context of the study is very specific
(Surname & Surname, 2020). The genre identification process at the initial stages of the
creation of the corpus has been based on Systemic Functional principles, adopting the model
provided by Surname & Surname (2017); it has revealed five genres frequently seen in the
above contexts: a) the Web Company Presentation, b) the Web Product Presentation, c) the
Business Infomercial, d) the Generic Infomercial and e) the Advertisement.
A further step into genre analysis involves a detailed investigation of lexicogrammatical
features in the corpus. This part of the project explores two genres/subcorpora: the Web
Company Presentation (227,828 tokens, 186 texts) and the Web Product Presentation
(311,457, 162 texts). Evidence-based knowledge on these genres is particularly helpful, as the
web presence of an enterprise is now considered very important and has led major brands to significantly increase their spending for web marketing (Caiazza & Bigliardi, 2020;
Montgomery et al. 2011). The paper describes the typical language patterns involved in the
two genres. Recurrent instances used in specific parts of the text are investigated through
keyword lists, collocation, concordances and range. Particular words or phrases are then
linked to particular rhetorical moves. WordSmith Tools (Scott, 2020) is used for corpus
analysis.
Raising genre awareness can assist marketing professionals as well as public policy makers in
their effort to enhance international competitiveness and facilitate exports. From a more
pedagogical perspective, genre awareness in the workplace can empower ESP practitioners and material writers (Hyon, 2018). It can address the problematic situation observed in the
literature, where material is scarce and when it is not based on authentic data it often contains
contrived language examples (Handford, 2010; Rea, 2010) or contains conflicting advice
(Swales & Feak, 2012). Findings can therefore, directly or indirectly support writing teachers
who are not always aware of the typical characteristics of the genres they need to teach
(Hyland, 2018; Nesi & Gardner, 2012; Tardy, 2016).

Propietarios

Congreso Cilc 2021

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Serie: CILC2021: Usos específicos de la lingüística de corpus / Special uses of corpus linguistics (+información)