Page 366 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 366
What Do We Know about the World?
Many studies have shown difficulties in defining the RS of promotion-
al genres, especially in identifying and characterizing the actors taking
part in an advertisement (Atkin and Richardson, 2005); some schol-
ars have defined the addresser as a “corporate persona created by the ad
agency” (Corbett and Connors, 1999: 3; see also Brierley, 1995: 57; Cal-
abrese, 2008: 28). Our approach allows us to describe in detail the par-
ticipants, their needs and influences on the text, thus moving beyond ge-
neric references to advertisers and consumers and proving a systematic
perspective on the text RS.
The kernel notion to our approach is, together with the notion of
genre (as a set of prefabricated communicative choices realizing a specif-
ic communicative task in a given context; cf. Bakhtin 1986 and the rela-
tionship he underlines between discourse genres and different spheres of
human activity), that of stakeholders.
The notion of stakeholders stems from the domain of corporate
communication and refers to those people who have a stake in the ac-
tivity of an enterprise, thus wish that the enterprise would succeed and
work in their favour. In a similar perspective, we claim that all texts
written in an enterprise in order to carry out its activity and achieve its
goal have stakeholders, i.e. persons who have an interest in the commu-
nicative success of those texts. By describing the stakeholders of a text, it
is possible to gain an in-depth understanding of actors playing within a
given communicative situation and their roles. This notion has been ap-
plied to the analysis and production of texts written to carry out various
organization activities and has been successfully integrated in a course
on Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Lugano.
In this paper we will show this especially through four promotion-
al genres, which have a similar generic goal (i.e. to advertise a product or
a service), but different structure and style: a press release, a brochure, a
print ad and a TV commercial. By applying our model of stakeholders,
we will be able to shed light on the diverse RSs generating texts.
Section 2 presents the research gap where this contribution fits in.
When adopting a basic functional model of communication it is rath-
er difficult to fully characterize a communicative event and its partici-
pants. The model of context proposed by Rigotti and Rocci (2006) seems
to be adequate when conceiving communicative events as complex in-
teractions where people wish to accomplish their goals. Rhetorical dis-
course is always bound to a context; its situated nature can be well de-
scribed through Bitzer’s concept of rhetorical situation, which will be
outlined in section 3. Section 4 is devoted to the introduction of the no-
Many studies have shown difficulties in defining the RS of promotion-
al genres, especially in identifying and characterizing the actors taking
part in an advertisement (Atkin and Richardson, 2005); some schol-
ars have defined the addresser as a “corporate persona created by the ad
agency” (Corbett and Connors, 1999: 3; see also Brierley, 1995: 57; Cal-
abrese, 2008: 28). Our approach allows us to describe in detail the par-
ticipants, their needs and influences on the text, thus moving beyond ge-
neric references to advertisers and consumers and proving a systematic
perspective on the text RS.
The kernel notion to our approach is, together with the notion of
genre (as a set of prefabricated communicative choices realizing a specif-
ic communicative task in a given context; cf. Bakhtin 1986 and the rela-
tionship he underlines between discourse genres and different spheres of
human activity), that of stakeholders.
The notion of stakeholders stems from the domain of corporate
communication and refers to those people who have a stake in the ac-
tivity of an enterprise, thus wish that the enterprise would succeed and
work in their favour. In a similar perspective, we claim that all texts
written in an enterprise in order to carry out its activity and achieve its
goal have stakeholders, i.e. persons who have an interest in the commu-
nicative success of those texts. By describing the stakeholders of a text, it
is possible to gain an in-depth understanding of actors playing within a
given communicative situation and their roles. This notion has been ap-
plied to the analysis and production of texts written to carry out various
organization activities and has been successfully integrated in a course
on Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Lugano.
In this paper we will show this especially through four promotion-
al genres, which have a similar generic goal (i.e. to advertise a product or
a service), but different structure and style: a press release, a brochure, a
print ad and a TV commercial. By applying our model of stakeholders,
we will be able to shed light on the diverse RSs generating texts.
Section 2 presents the research gap where this contribution fits in.
When adopting a basic functional model of communication it is rath-
er difficult to fully characterize a communicative event and its partici-
pants. The model of context proposed by Rigotti and Rocci (2006) seems
to be adequate when conceiving communicative events as complex in-
teractions where people wish to accomplish their goals. Rhetorical dis-
course is always bound to a context; its situated nature can be well de-
scribed through Bitzer’s concept of rhetorical situation, which will be
outlined in section 3. Section 4 is devoted to the introduction of the no-
