Page 371 - 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. 371
stakeholders in promotional genres:
a rhetorical perspective on marketing communication 371
with the company promoting the training shoes; on the contrary, the
communal component is often strongly present since it hints at shared
knowledge and experience of advertising within a culture.
Culturally shared interaction schemes encompass discourse genres,
that is, standard rhetorical schemes used in order to achieve the goals of
a given interaction scheme (Rigotti and Rocci, 2006: 173, cf. also Bakh-
tin 1986: 602).3 In our example, the interaction scheme of advertising
extracts the genre of print ad from the group of discourse genres (bill-
boards, TV commercials, flyers, etc.) related to a similar communicative
practice. Social roles of the interaction field and communicative roles
deriving from the implementation of the interaction scheme onto the
interaction field identify the participants to the communication. From
Rigotti and Rocci’s model of context it emerges that participants are
identified and characterized within both the institutional and the in-
terpersonal dimensions. In fact, they are characterized by the role and
function they have in an organization, by the culture to which they be-
long, by previous interactions they had with other participants and by
their personal characteristics and attitudes. From this perspective this
model highlights that participant’s act in a specific context with a spe-
cific goal. It is often the case that in order to achieve their goal(s) partic-
ipants write texts. The context itself in which they act directs and con-
strains the production of the text. For instance, an organization which
wants to sell its medical products, such as the example we are going to
present later on in this paper, belongs to a specific interaction field (the
market of medical products) and, in order to achieve its goal, it activates
a certain interaction scheme (that of promotional texts) and it produc-
es a certain number of texts belonging to one or more discourse genres
(a print ad, a billboard, a brochure, etc.) which can help the organization
increase the sales of their medical products.
This model of communication context focuses on the goal to be ac-
complished and the activity to be performed in a specific social envi-
ronment composed by people, their desires, their needs, their culturally
shared knowledge, their view of the world, etc. This viewpoint on com-
2 Here Bakthin highlights that “[…] each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively
stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres” and that “individual concrete utter-
ances (oral and written) by participants in the various areas of human activity […] reflect the specific
conditions and goals of each such area”.
3 The concepts of purpose and task in the definition of genre are stated (and debated) to be funda-
mental in most major communicative approaches to genres since the beginning of the “new” genre
movement of the early 1980s (Askehave and Swales, 2001: 195–196).
a rhetorical perspective on marketing communication 371
with the company promoting the training shoes; on the contrary, the
communal component is often strongly present since it hints at shared
knowledge and experience of advertising within a culture.
Culturally shared interaction schemes encompass discourse genres,
that is, standard rhetorical schemes used in order to achieve the goals of
a given interaction scheme (Rigotti and Rocci, 2006: 173, cf. also Bakh-
tin 1986: 602).3 In our example, the interaction scheme of advertising
extracts the genre of print ad from the group of discourse genres (bill-
boards, TV commercials, flyers, etc.) related to a similar communicative
practice. Social roles of the interaction field and communicative roles
deriving from the implementation of the interaction scheme onto the
interaction field identify the participants to the communication. From
Rigotti and Rocci’s model of context it emerges that participants are
identified and characterized within both the institutional and the in-
terpersonal dimensions. In fact, they are characterized by the role and
function they have in an organization, by the culture to which they be-
long, by previous interactions they had with other participants and by
their personal characteristics and attitudes. From this perspective this
model highlights that participant’s act in a specific context with a spe-
cific goal. It is often the case that in order to achieve their goal(s) partic-
ipants write texts. The context itself in which they act directs and con-
strains the production of the text. For instance, an organization which
wants to sell its medical products, such as the example we are going to
present later on in this paper, belongs to a specific interaction field (the
market of medical products) and, in order to achieve its goal, it activates
a certain interaction scheme (that of promotional texts) and it produc-
es a certain number of texts belonging to one or more discourse genres
(a print ad, a billboard, a brochure, etc.) which can help the organization
increase the sales of their medical products.
This model of communication context focuses on the goal to be ac-
complished and the activity to be performed in a specific social envi-
ronment composed by people, their desires, their needs, their culturally
shared knowledge, their view of the world, etc. This viewpoint on com-
2 Here Bakthin highlights that “[…] each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively
stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres” and that “individual concrete utter-
ances (oral and written) by participants in the various areas of human activity […] reflect the specific
conditions and goals of each such area”.
3 The concepts of purpose and task in the definition of genre are stated (and debated) to be funda-
mental in most major communicative approaches to genres since the beginning of the “new” genre
movement of the early 1980s (Askehave and Swales, 2001: 195–196).
