‘Keep out of reach of children!’ Introducing the Corpus of Product Information (CoPI) and its potential for corpus-based genre teaching

Puga, Karin; Götz, Sandra

doi:10.3366/cor.2017.0126

Cited by 2 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Scholars have referred to the genre that is analysed in this thesis by varying terms including product description (Labrador & Ramón, 2015, product information (T. H. Andersen & van Leeuwen, 2017;Puga & Gotz, 2017) and promotional text (Izquierdo & Pérez Blanco, 2020). While this research opts to use the name 'Online product Information' (see Section 5.2 for a discussion) to label the genre, the fact remains that the same aforementioned scholars have used 'genre', 'sub-genre' and 'parent genre' when referring to product information/ product descriptions.…”

Section: Ambiguity In Terminology -Genres or Sub-genres?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars have treated what they call the product descriptions (comparable to 'product information' in this research) of specific product categories as sub-genres of the product description genre (Labrador & Ramón, 2015). However, some researchers have considered product descriptions of a single product category as a genre in itself (Labrador & Ramón, 2020;Puga & Gotz, 2017). Izquierdo and Pérez Blanco (2020) studying the herbal tea promotional text (HTPT) examine this issue genres/ sub-genres, and attribute the variations to different levels of text specificity.…”

Section: Ambiguity In Terminology -Genres or Sub-genres?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In describing the discourse structure of OPI, I set out to adopt functional semantic criteria as the main criterion for identification of discourse organisation. The approach was also guided by move taxonomies identified in literature on persuasive genres (T. H. Andersen & van Leeuwen, 2017;Bhatia, 2005;Izquierdo & Pérez Blanco, 2020;Kathpalia, 1997;Labrador & Ramón, 2015;Onder, 2013;Puga & Gotz, 2017) although there was no strict adherence to any move structure in particular. However, it soon became apparent that such identification of discourse functions is also concurrently guided by a text's structural and linguistic criteria (e.g., placement of items on the text, topics, headings, sub headings, bullet points, use of the imperative form) and other semiotic resources like colour and font size.…”

Section: Conducting the Move Structure Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…'Selection' includes an "Add to Bag" button which implies that the researchers recognize interactivity as being an intrinsic part of the online product information genre. Puga and Gotz (2017) seem to vacillate between the use of the terms 'product description' and 'product information' in the first pages of their article, but then decide to settle on the term 'product information' (as evidenced in the article title)…”

Section: Product Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They did not investigate the rhetorical structure of product information or study it as a multimodal genre. A study on the product information genre by Puga and Gotz (2017), conducted for the purpose of designing data driven teaching materials for EFL learners, focused on linguistic data. They removed all visual details, as well as some other details such as lists of ingredients from their corpus.…”

Section: Chapter 1: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Multimodal Genre Analysis of Online Product Information to Inform English for Specific Purposes

Kithulgoda¹

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Discipline specific writing in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) can be challenging because writing discipline specific texts involves knowing the norms of writing that come with the discipline (Miller & Pessoa 2017). With rapid digitalization of business and communication, it is questionable how Business and Marketing students would cope with genres comprising not just writing, but multiple modes, if they do not possess multimodal literacy. Moreover, hypertextuality affects content (Xia, 2020), in turn creating differences in communicative purposes of the genre. Therefore, attempts to describe any online genre for ESP teaching need to consider the facets of multimodality and digitality. This thesis analyses the Online Product Information (OPI) genre, a micro genre of the online shopping website (Andersen & van Leeuwen, 2017). It exemplifies the application of a set of frameworks to comprehensively describe the OPI genre. Also important to this study is the possibility of culture specific differences. The analysis was based on a corpus of 480 New Zealand (NZ) and Sri Lankan (SL) beauty care and jewellery product information texts sourced from 32 online shopping websites along with 21 semi-structured interviews with specialist informants. Swales’ (1990) move structure analysis and selected resources from Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) Grammar of Visual Design were adopted to investigate the data sets. The analytical framework for website interactivity proposed by Adami (2015) was utilized and adapted to analyse the actions and effects of the interactive items used within OPIs. Fourteen common moves – eight interactive and six non-interactive - were identified for jewellery and beauty care OPIs. Some move steps are unique to one particular product category, while others are common to both. Cross-cultural differences were identified in the use of moves and steps. There are more steps employed in NZ product information to realise move functions, while the same functions are achieved in SL product information, but by using a more limited set of steps that are predominantly textual. Visually, the representational generic pattern characterizing OPI is the use of conceptual analytical structures with offer type images. The pattern was common to both countries. However, NZ beauty care product information utilizes some images of the narrative process and demand types, something which was not present in SL OPIs. The website interactivity analysis reveals that both the SL and NZ product information offer customers the basic necessities for viewing and selecting products (purchasing, selecting requirements, facilitating reading/ viewing). However, the cumulative effect one gets when investigating interactivity is of a closed insular environment with limited opportunity to request information/question sellers in a public space, and limited access to additional information. SL storeowners seem to be more interested in promoting their product via the customer through share options and giving additional seller services. NZ online stores, seem to be less focused on getting their product promoted via customers. Their interactive strategy seems to be providing customers with extra information. They also allow customers more opportunities to provide feedback without regulating that feedback, compared to SL OPIs. The OPI as a whole is informationally dense. It is distinguished by a high use of nouns, adjectives, co-ordinating conjunctions and third person singular present tense verbs, and a relatively low use of auxiliary verbs, adverbs, prepositions or subordinating conjunctions, determiners and modal verbs. Lexical bundles (frequently used word sequences) were identified for Move 3 – Promoting the product - to demonstrate the lexico-grammatical realisation of the move. The analysis indicates that steps operationalizing even a single move could employ a wide variety of linguistic features to realise that move, and that the patterns of language for the genre as a whole may not be a totally accurate indicator of the register of individual moves. The findings suggest the necessity of considering genre feature variation when crossing national boundaries. They also illustrate that the visual and interactive elements of an online multimodal genre play a significant role along with its textual elements, in determining the genre functions. Therefore, ESP teaching needs to consider how text, visuals and the online environment all contribute to achieving genre purposes, when raising students’ genre awareness of a multimodal genre. Implications of the study for ESP pedagogy and online businesses are provided in the Conclusion.

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