Generic Patterns in Promotional Discourse

Published in Persuasion Across Genres: A Linguistic Approach, (2005) edited by Helena Halmari, Tuija Virtanen, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, (213-228).

Generic Patterns in Promotional Discourse @Vijay K Bhatia Department of English City University of Hong Kong

Introductory If there is one dominant characteristic of professional and, to some extent, even academic genres that has influenced the essential nature and function of discourse in general in recent years, it has been the invasion of promotional values in most forms of discourse. Promotional genres, in this respect, undoubtedly have become the most versatile and fast developing area of discourse. Promotional concerns have also influenced the nature of the entire range of professional and even academic discourse. It has been the result of several factors, some of which include, the availability of new technology in mass communication and a massive information explosion as a result of this, the compulsive nature of advertising and promotional activities in business and other areas of social concern, the essentially competitive nature of much of professional and academic activities and several others. The most significant changes we found in the eighties in traditional financial sectors, especially in the banking and investment sectors, which turned advertising into a subtle art form rather than traditional hard selling. In the last few years, the entire range of advertising activities has undergone radical changes and in turn has influenced other forms of discourse, which only remotely and perhaps occasionally displayed promotional elements. As Featherstone (1991) points out the world of today is a “consumer culture”, where many of our discursive activities, whether in business or academic, or even in personal context, have to some extent been influenced by promotional concerns. The inevitable result of this development is that many of the institutionalised genres, whether they are social, professional or academic, are seen as incorporating elements of promotion. Fairclough (1993:141), referring to such changes in discursive practices, points out,

...there is an extensive restructuring of boundaries between orders of discourse and between discursive practices; for example, the genre of consumer advertising has been colonizing professional and public service orders of discourse on a massive scale, generating many new hybrid partly promotional genres...

As an instance of such a hybrid genre, Fairclough (1993) discusses the case of contemporary university prospectuses, where, he highlights an increasing tendency towards marketization of the discursive practices of British universities.

The main purpose of this paper is to highlight a range of professional and academic discourse in an attempt to investigate the complexity of promotional generic patterns, and to further investigate mixing and embedding of non-promotional generic elements to achieve promotional goals.

Traditional forms of promotional discourse The most traditional form of promotional discourse one finds in what has been known as advertisement, which is often viewed as a form of discourse which is intended to inform and promote in order to sell ideas, goods or services to a selected group of people. Although advertising is one of most dynamic and versatile genres of public discourse today, in that it can boast of some of the most varied and innovative uses of lexicogrammatical and discoursal forms and rhetorical strategies, these innovations are often used within rather outside the typical generic boundaries of promotional discourse (for detailed accounts of this kind of variation, see Kathpalia, 1992, Bhatia, 1995). Without going into any detailed generic and discoursal specification of the general advertising genre, I would like to point out that most print advertisements of hard sell type make use some of the following rhetorical moves to persuade potential customers to buy the product or service they promote. Let me take up the following an example to illustrate the use of some of the typical rhetorical moves used in ‘hard-sell’ type (See Kathpalia, 1993) print advertisements.

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Generic Structure of Advertisements: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Headlines Targeting the market Justifying the product or service by establishing a niche Detailing the product or service Establishing credentials Endorsement or Testimonials Offering incentives Using pressure tactics Soliciting response Signature line and Logo etc.

Sources of promotional input Advertising in the context of today is an extremely innovative and versatile artefact. It is almost impossible to give a comprehensive account of the strategies advertisers may use to influence their targeted audience. Therefore, without attempting to be comprehensive in this regard, I shall briefly take up only one of the strategies traditionally used for a long time. 3

Product differentiation in Advertising: The most essential element or essence of much of advertising activity is in the copywriter’s concern with differentiating products. The key concept in persuasive advertising is product differentiation. The copywriter must analyze all the background information, all the ‘evidence’, in the light of discovering what makes a particular product different from that of competitors. An excellent illustration of this strategy one may find in an old story, which seems to capture the essential spirit of product differentiation in promotional advertising. It goes somewhat like this. In the good old days, there were two shops selling sausages in the same street in London. Initially both were doing well, but as days went by, the competition became tough and the promotional activities intense. Suddenly, one fine morning the shop on the right side of the road put up a poster claiming, “We sell the best sausages in London”. The next morning, the shop on the left side, in an attempt to outsmart his competitor came up with the claim “We sell the best sausages in England”. The next day, the first one came up with the claim, “Our sausages are the best in the world”. The second one responded by saying, “We sell sausages to the Queen”, to which the first one responded the following day by displaying a huge poster saying, “God save the Queen!”

Discoursal Resources for Product Differentiation: The most common form of product differentiation is achieved by offering a product description which is good, positive, and favourable. In the modern-day practice of advertising, the traditional practice of direct comparison of products has become somewhat risky, although subtle forms of comparison, in the case of a household product, for example, where it is typically claimed that this “special” brand is so much superior to an “ordinary” one. However, it is the generic values of ‘description’ and ‘evaluation’, which are most often called upon to serve the cause of millions of products and services across the corporate world (see Bhatia, 1993, for a detailed discussion of this). The most common denominator in most of the efforts for product differentiation is the use of the primary generic values of description and evaluation. Let me give some substance to this by displaying the relationship between various levels of generic description.

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Although genres are essentially identified in terms of communicative purposes they tend to serve, these communicative purposes can be characterised at various levels of generalisations. These communicative purposes can be realised in terms of a combination of rhetorical processes, which can also be considered as primary generic values. In professional genres, it is often possible to posit several levels of generalisation. To take the case of promotional genres, one may find at the highest level of generalisation “promotional discourse” in the form of a constellation of several closely related genres with an overlapping communicative purpose of promoting a product or service to a potential customer. Some of the common examples of promotional genres may include advertisements, promotional letters, job applications (in the sense that their purpose is also to sell the services of the applicant to a potential employer, see Bhatia, 1993), book blurbs, company brochures, travel brochures, and a number of others. All these and a number of other instances of this kind have a large degree of overlap in the communicative purposes they tend to serve and that is the main reason why they are seen as forming a closely-related discourse colony, serving more or less a common promotional purpose, in spite of the fact

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that some of them may also display subtle differences in their realisations. It is further possible for us to view any one of these genres, advertisements, for example, at a lower level of generalisation and make distinctions between more specific realisations of this genre. Obvious examples will include print advertisements, TV commercials, radio advertisements, and others. The differences between these are less discernible in terms of communicative purposes but more in terms of the medium of discourse and therefore as genres, they belong to the same broad category, popularly known as advertisements. Taking a step further, this time considering only print advertisements, it is further possible to view these in terms of categories like straight-line advertisements, picture-caption reminder advertisements, image-building advertisements, testimonials, pretend genres etc. (Kathpalia 1992). Whatever the sub-category, all these advertisements serve the same set of communicative purposes, though most of them use different strategies to promote the product or service. Straight-line advertisements most often use ‘product appraisal’ as the main persuasive strategy, whereas Image-building advertisements rely more heavily on establishing credentials as the main source of persuasion. Another variation one may find in the use of linguistic resources is that whereas some types rely on verbal strategies (straight-line advertisements using product appraisal) while others, for example picturecaption advertisements, rely more on visual inputs. Once again, it is possible for us to take up straight-line advertisements and differentiate them further either in terms of their use of linguistic features for product evaluation, or may be in terms of the kind of product they advertise, or even in terms of the audience they serve. In each case, we are sure to find subtle differences in the use of strategies for product description, evaluation, product differentiation, and these eventually giving rise to specific uses of linguistic resources. But the interesting thing is that all these variations become distinctive genres only at a level at which they start indicating a substantial difference in their communicative purposes.

Colony of Promotional Genres As a result of this kind of variation, one may find a variety of promotional genres forming some kind of a colony, which will have members serving a range of communicative purposes, of which the most dominating one might be promotional in nature. If we take

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advertising to be the most central member or exponent of such a colony, with marketing as one of the most dominant characteristic communicative purpose, then sales promotion letters can be placed very close to it. There may be major differences in terms of the medium in use, i.e., print, audio or visual and the format they are often associated with, i.e., somewhat personalised letter format for sales promotion letters as against a general appeal for a large number of groups of potential customers for advertisements. Book blurbs can be placed close to these two, although they are different from these two in terms of the specificity of the product they promote, i.e., books, the selection and size of the market or audience they target, and also the nature of the strategies and hence lexico-grammatical resources they employ, of course depending upon the subject discipline of the book. However, all three of them are almost completely overlapping in terms of their communicative purpose of marketing, i.e., that of selling for profit (Kathpalia, 1992). Very closely related to these are will be job application letters, which have traditionally been regarded as very different from sales promotion letters, but as indicated in Bhatia (1993), they are very similar in terms of their communicative purpose and the use of lexicogrammatical and discoursal resources. Somewhat similar to these two types of letters, one may find the use of a reference letter or a testimonial, which, in principle, may essentially be a review of the candidate’s suitability to a particular job description, but in practice, most often it turns out to be a letter of recommendation, i.e., a positive evaluation of the competence of the candidate in question.

Invasion of Territorial Integrity As mentioned in the previous sections, genres more often than not operate within their own territorial boundaries displaying what Bhatia (1993) calls ‘generic integrity’, which is recognisable by reference to both the text-internal as well as the text-external aspects of the genre. Text-internal aspects constitute lexico-grammatical, discoursal and rhetorical features of the textualisation of the genre, and are easily accessible to language experts or discourse analysts; whereas text-external aspects constitute socio-rhetorical, contextual and procedural elements which make the genre possible, and are most often used by

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members of a specific discourse or professional community with which the genre if typically associated. However, in the context of present-day interdisciplinary and dynamic world of work, it is often difficult to keep the individual generic boundaries intact, which has become even more difficult because of the explosion of information technology and the new media and also the overpowering influence of promotional activities in the overly competitive world of today. Of all the genres, which have invaded the territorial integrity of most professional and academic genres ‘advertising’ clearly stands out to be the most predominant instrument of colonisation. It has successfully invaded a number of institutionalised genres, including academic, corporate, political, journalistic and many of the reporting genres, displaying the use of a range of strategies from a relatively subtle appropriation of lexico-grammatical and discoursal resources to a much more conspicuous ‘hybridization’ (Fairclough (1993) or ‘mixing’ and ‘embedding’ of genres (Bhatia, 1994, 1995, 1997a).

Invasion of territorial integrity (Non-traditional generic patterns used for promotional purposes) Mixed and Embedded Generic Patterns ▪ Academic Discourse Academic course descriptions Job descriptions Academic Introductions: book introduction, preface, foreword Book blurbs ▪ Corporate Discourse Annual Reports Company Brochures Financial Statements Investment Brochures ▪ News Reporting Discourse News reports v. News stories Editorials v. News analysis ▪ Political Discourse Joint Declarations Memorandum of understanding Diplomatic Communiqués

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Bhatia (1995), in his discussion of genre-mixing in professional discourse, gives examples from several settings, where genre-mixing and embedding is becoming increasingly common. He also mentions several instances where one may find an increasing use of promotional strategies in genres, which are traditionally considered non-promotional in their communicative purposes. The examples include job advertisements and academic introductions, where he found rather explicit indications of promotional elements, which traditionally have been regarded as either purely informative or at best persuasive, but certainly not promotional in the marketing sense. However, in all these instances of genre-mixing, there is at least one thing in common. Almost all the instances of genre-mixing are somewhat compatible with each other, in that, they do not show any conflict in communicative purposes. A closer look at these instances will indicate that it often is the case that informative functions are more likely to be colonized by promotional functions rather than any other. As Bhatia (1993) points out the most popular promotional strategy in advertising has been to describe and evaluate a product or service in a positive manner, which may be seen as information-giving function of language. These two functions of language, i.e., informational and promotional are therefore unlikely to create tension, even if they may not be entirely complementary to each other. A number of such instances of mixed genres are getting established and are being given innovative names, as in the case of infomercial, infotainment, or advertorial. Although it may appear that this kind of genre-mixing is more common in genres that are less likely to create functional tension, it will be somewhat premature to assume that it will always be the case. It is possible to view this subtle colonisation of genres in terms of appropriation and mixing of genres, depending upon the degree of invasion one may find in individual members of the colony. This can be diagrammatically represented as follows.

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COLONIZATION OF ACADEMIC, PROFESSIONAL AND ISTITUTIONALIZED GENRES

The primary and most dominant form of promotional discourse is what is commonly known as advertising discourse, which of course has a number of exponents. Variations, in terms of forms, (‘hard sell’ and ‘soft sell’), medium (radio, TV, or print), range of products (cars, cosmetics, and computers), and the strategies employed partly capture the enormous potential that promotional discourse displays in a culture of consumerism. A very closely related marketing genre which has remarkable similarities with advertising is what is popularly known as a book blurb or a publisher’s blurb, to distinguish it from author’s introduction. Most traditional forms of advertisement have a near overlap with book blurbs in respect of the rhetorical moves both of them use to persuade their readership to buy the advertised product or book. Sales promotional letter, though remarkably similar to a typical advertisement is interdiscursively more complex, in that it is always embedded in a letter format.

This interdiscursivity is also partly responsible for bringing together yet another genre, i.e., job application letter, which shares not only the embedded format with it but also a striking range of lexico-grammatical resources, though sometimes different in form but remarkably similar in their functional value. In spite of their very different contextual configurations, as genres they display remarkable similarities in terms of the communicative purposes, the lexico-grammatical resources they use and also in terms of their move-structure (Bhatia, 1993). This probably is one of the most

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interesting appropriations of generic resources across conventional socio-rhetorical boundaries. Somewhat similar but more radical appropriation of linguistic and discoursal resources we find in the case of philanthropic fundraising letters, which are very different from sales promotional letters in terms of the rationale, ideology and the nature of appeal, but are remarkably similar in terms of their move structures (see Bhatia, 1998). Closely related to job application letters, we have testimonials, reference letters and CVs, all of which tend to have promotional intentions. In addition to these appropriated forms, we do get a number of other public and professional genres, which tend to be persuasive though not exactly for marketing ends. Some of the most notable candidates for inclusion in this category are genres related to socio-political and diplomatic contexts, such as consultation papers (see Bhatia, 1997b), diplomatic communiqués, press releases, and what are popularly known as memoranda of understanding (Bhatia, forthcoming). Although, most of these are designed to serve informative purposes, they invariably focus on only positive aspects and incorporate persuasive and sometime even promotional elements.

Somewhat more distant category of discourses, which still have a number of genres, essentially informative and traditionally non-promotional in intent, are increasingly being influenced and even, colonised by promotional concerns. The main communicative purpose they serve is still informative, but they can sometimes be mixed or hybrid in appearance. Fairclough (1993) discusses several interesting instances of academic course descriptions and job advertisements, which, he rightly claims, are becoming increasingly promotional. Similarly, Bhatia (1995, 1997a) points out two interesting developments in the case of academic introductions, i.e., book introductions, prefaces and forewords. Firstly he finds the traditional distinctions, although very subtle in nature, between these closely related genres disappearing in practice, so that it is very difficult to establish each one having separate generic integrity of its own. Secondly, and perhaps more interesting from the point of view of this paper, most of these forms of academic introductions are becoming increasingly promotional in practice, so that sometimes it becomes rather difficult not to take notice of such promotional elements in these essentially informative genres, particularly in the case of book introductions.

Coming to review as a genre, one may continue to find book reviews as essentially balanced evaluation, where one may find reasonable description of book, which may incorporate positive as well as negative aspects of the product in question. However, in the case of reviews of food and restaurants, software, new cars and a number of other similar products, one may find a majority of them predominantly promotional in character, focussing mainly on positive description and

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evaluation. Leaflets on services from corporations, banking as well as financial, medical and health institutions, travel industries, and government departments are primarily informative, but some mixture of promotional or persuasive overtones cannot be ruled out in most cases. Similarly, brochures and reports, whether they report on the company services, financial matters, investment appreciation, or travel opportunities, are essentially mixed genres, incorporating informative as well as promotional elements.

Concluding Remarks The foregoing discussion presents an increasingly complex and rather expanding picture of colonisation of a range of professional, academic and institutionalised genres. The so-called rapid appropriation of linguistic and discoursal resources has, to some extent, been accelerated by several factors in the last few years. Although several genre scholars have pointed out that genres are dynamic constructs (Swales, 1990, Bhatia, 1993, 1995, Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995) and they often undergo change and development over a period of time, it must be pointed out that such a large-scale colonisation by just one kind of discourse has some special significance. In my view, this has been inspired by a number of interesting and significant developments in recent years. Almost an unprecedented exploitation of new technology to make public discourse accessible to large audiences across the globe has prompted millions of new ‘makers’ of discourse to give varied interpretations to conventional forms of discourse, often creating new forms. Appropriation of lexico-grammatical and rhetorical resources from the discourse of corporate advertising has offered a very attractive option because of its innovative character and creative use of language. Advertising has turned the process of writing into an art form, where writers constantly compete for attention getting by the use of not only innovative use of language but also by the creative use of traditional expressions and clichés, which are often shunned by good writers in other forms of discourse. This process of colonisation is given a further boost by the fact that the world we live in today provides an extremely competitive environment in which academics and professionals are required to perform. Universities for example, until very recently, have always maintained their special status and dignity in society, because of their territorial demarcation and also because of their excellence in specialist areas of knowledge. However, in the present-day competitive environment most of them are finding it extremely difficult now to maintain their privileged status of excellence. As a result of an increasing number of students going for higher education, the universities are gradually coming closer to the concept of a marketplace, where everyone has

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compete with everyone else for clients’ attention. Similarly, in the corporate world, the events in the past few years have made the present corporate far more competitive than what it was in the past. In the sixties and seventies, the corporate world was rather small and varied, with very few multinationals operating globally. The markets were also somewhat segmented and often protected by governments. With the competition in trade and commerce becoming more and more intense, multinationals were on the increase in the eighties and became almost a norm in the nineties. From the point of view of discourse development, there were two important consequences: first, promotion and advertising activities became almost essential for survival, and second, crosscultural variations became a significant factor in promotional and advertising discourse. The most important consequence of these developments on the discourse of advertising has been that in a very short period of time this has become one of the most dynamic and innovative forms of discourse today, which in turn has influenced the construction, interpretation, use and exploitation of most other forms of academic, professional, and institutional genres, thus invading their territorial integrity to create appropriated, embedded, mixed or hybrid forms of discourse. REFERENCES Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin, T.N., (1995): Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication -Cognition / Culture/ Power, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Bhatia, Vijay K., (1993): Analysing Genre-Language Use in Professional Settings, London, Longman. Bhatia, Vijay K., (1994): Genre-mixing in Academic Introductions, a paper presented at the Penn State Conference on Rhetoric and Composition, The Pennsylvania State University, USA, 13-16 July 1994. Bhatia, Vijay K., (1995): Genre-mixing and in professional communication: The case of ‘private intentions’ v. ‘socially recognised purposes, in Bruthiaux (P.), Boswood (T.), & Bertha (B.), (eds.), Explorations in English for Professional Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Bhatia, Vijay K.(1997a): Genre-mixing in Academic Introductions, English for Specific Purposes, 16,3. Bhatia, Vijay K., (1997b): Democratizing legislative decision-making in Hong Kong: a study of generic patterns used in public discourse, The Journal of Pragmatics, 28, (525-532). Bhatia, Vijay K., (1998): Discourse of Philanthropic Fund-raising, in Working Papers, IU Center for Philanthropy, University of Indiana, Indianapolis. Bhatia, Vijay K., (2000): Genres in Conflict, in Anna Trosborg (ed.) Analysing Professional Genres, Amesterdam, John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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Fairclough, N. (1993): Critical discourse analysis and the marketization of public discourse: the universities, in Discourse & Society, Sage, London, 4 (2), (133-168). Featherstone, M. (1991): Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, London, Sage. Kathpalia, S. S., (1992): A Genre Analysis of Promotional Texts, an unpublished PhD. thesis, National University of Singapore. Swales, J. M. (1990): Genre Analysis - English in Academic and Research Settings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

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