Genre and Rhetoric in Illustrated Document Design Judy Delin University of Stirling John Bateman University of Bremen Patrick Allen University of Bradford

Overview The GeM project Genre and document design Levels of description Rhetoric and practicality Conclusion

Background to the Project GeM: Genre and Multimodality Genre model of illustrated documents: newspapers, websites, instructions, illustrated books (bird, medical) Corpus constructed with designers and layout professionals: Herald, Scotsman, Guardian, Telegraph, Harper Collins, Harcourt Health, Taylor and Francis, IDU, freelancers, IDA Practical constraints on design tasks Aimed at generating and transforming sample layouts by computer

Notions of Genre Text type? elements related to social goal or function Text? linguistic or visual properties intuitive informed by set of assumptions prior discourse triggered ‘inherent pull of innovation shifting historicity’

Modelling genre Every document both reflects and constructs its genre Genre boundaries erode and move; genres colonize one another; expectations change Description of genre ‘space’ that allows all to be related as a set of parameters of variation Generating examples out of the ‘space’ allows creation of novel text designs as well as production of existing genre examples

Levels of Description: Bateman et al. 2000 Content Structure the structure of the information to be communicated Rhetorical Structure the rhetorical relationships between content elements, Navigation Structure signposts supporting intended mode(s) of consumption Layout Structure the nature, appearance and position of elements on the page Linguistic Structure forms of language used

Genre is constituted in... …the necessity to satisfy goals at these levels, and to address constraints: Artefact constraints arising out of the physical nature of the object Production constraints arising out of the production technology Consumption constraints arising out of the way in which the object is mediated/consumed

Rhetorical Structure in Document Design How the content is argued and presented: Statement:evidence Category: example Action: purpose List element: list element Documents should be structured to preserve and signpost these relationships (see e.g. Schriver 1997)

Rhetorical Structure in Document Design Rhetorical structure theory (Mann and Thompson 1987) nucleus satellite multinuclear

Summary Genre is amenable to extension to deal with a range of production and consumption factors Rhetorical structure is important, but can be subverted by practical issues Practical constraints must therefore be part of the description of genre Practical constraints differ between genres Close work with designers, as well as document consumers, must be part of academic research