Page 387 - 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. 387
stakeholders in promotional genres:
a rhetorical perspective on marketing communication 387
text will therefore emerge: even if the two texts refer roughly “to the
same thing”, the communication event they realize is different. Besides
by describing these two stakeholders and, for instance, their usual rela-
tionship, students discover how to implement the characteristics of real
stakeholders in the text, particularly in the implied writer and reader. As
to our example, for instance, is the relationship between Mepha Phar-
ma and the chemist a formal one or a confidential one? And is it usual
for chemists to require additional brochures or not? Does it often hap-
pen that the number of brochures Mepha Pharma thought to be suffi-
cient is in fact insufficient? Accordingly, has the letter’s implied writ-
er to be someone who is expressing a normal routine-based request to a
colleague he is used to contacting for lots of big and small problems and
questions or someone who is risking an unusual request to a corporation
with which he usually does not interact?
7. Conclusion
In this contribution we have attempted to answer the question ‘who
is communicating to whom in promotional genres’. Taking examples –
a press release, a brochure, a print ad and a TV commercial promoting
a nasal spray – from the marketing communication domain, we have
presented our rhetorical approach. Its application to texts belonging to
different domains has been only briefly described; a wider illustration
would be possible (and will be the theme of future works), but it is out of
the scope of the present paper, which aims at providing an illustrative ex-
ample of the interest of the model of stakeholders of a text.
The fundamental concepts of our approach are those of rhetorical
situation, genre and stakeholders.
All the participants in a communicative event are stakeholders since
they are interested in the success of the communication taking place.
Communication arises for an exigency, which is a kernel element in
every rhetorical situation. Texts are communicative events arising with-
in a specific context in order to adhere to this specific exigency. The con-
text-bound goal is achieved using communicative tools known as dis-
course genres, which are shared flexible recipes for communication that
stakeholders can interpret and produce according to their goals. Texts
such as the examples we have presented here show that texts with similar
goals – that of promoting a product – apply to different rhetorical situa-
tions where various stakeholders play specific roles.
Adherence to rhetorical situations and stakeholders is crucial for the
communicative success of texts in business communication. Therefore,
a rhetorical perspective on marketing communication 387
text will therefore emerge: even if the two texts refer roughly “to the
same thing”, the communication event they realize is different. Besides
by describing these two stakeholders and, for instance, their usual rela-
tionship, students discover how to implement the characteristics of real
stakeholders in the text, particularly in the implied writer and reader. As
to our example, for instance, is the relationship between Mepha Phar-
ma and the chemist a formal one or a confidential one? And is it usual
for chemists to require additional brochures or not? Does it often hap-
pen that the number of brochures Mepha Pharma thought to be suffi-
cient is in fact insufficient? Accordingly, has the letter’s implied writ-
er to be someone who is expressing a normal routine-based request to a
colleague he is used to contacting for lots of big and small problems and
questions or someone who is risking an unusual request to a corporation
with which he usually does not interact?
7. Conclusion
In this contribution we have attempted to answer the question ‘who
is communicating to whom in promotional genres’. Taking examples –
a press release, a brochure, a print ad and a TV commercial promoting
a nasal spray – from the marketing communication domain, we have
presented our rhetorical approach. Its application to texts belonging to
different domains has been only briefly described; a wider illustration
would be possible (and will be the theme of future works), but it is out of
the scope of the present paper, which aims at providing an illustrative ex-
ample of the interest of the model of stakeholders of a text.
The fundamental concepts of our approach are those of rhetorical
situation, genre and stakeholders.
All the participants in a communicative event are stakeholders since
they are interested in the success of the communication taking place.
Communication arises for an exigency, which is a kernel element in
every rhetorical situation. Texts are communicative events arising with-
in a specific context in order to adhere to this specific exigency. The con-
text-bound goal is achieved using communicative tools known as dis-
course genres, which are shared flexible recipes for communication that
stakeholders can interpret and produce according to their goals. Texts
such as the examples we have presented here show that texts with similar
goals – that of promoting a product – apply to different rhetorical situa-
tions where various stakeholders play specific roles.
Adherence to rhetorical situations and stakeholders is crucial for the
communicative success of texts in business communication. Therefore,
