1. Genre and Layout Design in Multimodal Documents: Towards an Empirical Account Pat Allen University of East London John Bateman University of Bremen Judy Delin University of Stirling AAAI Fall Symposium 1999

2. Overview Genre in Layout The Genre Space Approaching Genre Analysis: the Bird Book Conclusions and Future Directions

3. Genre in Layout Websites, magazines, instruction manuals, books, newspapers Clear generic constraints on how documents normally look: generate expectations for consumption strategies

4. Genre as Methodology Genre constraints intuitively understood but rarely articulated Genre description and comparison for accessing hidden assumptions about how documents look

5. The Genre Space Genre is conceived as sets of constraints on layout and function of graphical devices Radical extension of linguistic genre to include graphical expressions and practical constraints on their use (time, availability, cost) Genre as sets of intersecting, shifting and hybridising conventions, rather than discrete elements Possible then to ‘cross’ genres to generate new potential layouts, model cultural and historical shifts

6. The GeM Project Genre and Multimodality: A computer model of genre in document layout Designers advise on why their pages look the way they do: new sources of constraint (friction, news hierarchy, for example) Corpus of annotated documents using developing common layout description (Web, magazines, books, instructions, newspapers) Map out genre ‘space’ of parameters for description, test, modify, extend Tool for generating novel and existing layouts for evaluation by designers

7. Starting Points Typography and design Text generation Rhetorical structure theory Reichenberger et al’s (1996) ideas for generating layout, see also Bateman et al. (subm.)

8. Genre Analysis: Birds

11. Kinds of Information Direct observations Location, habitat Background information

12. Two Pages Compared: Information Features Feature typeFeatureA1 RenderingA2 Rendering Direct Observationsize: lengthDLI appearance: adultT, PP, DL, G appearance: soundDLDL size: comparisonTDL appearance: juvenileTDL, G appearance: bill-DL appearance: when flying-DL lookalikes-DL Location, Habitatdistribution: typeDLT, P distribution: geographicalDLM, T Seaonal distributionDLIT BackgroundnestingDLT Informationhow it feedsTT eggsDL- what it eatsDL, T- eggs: when, incubation-T young: feeding, duration-T Key: H header G graphic IT icon using table P picture DL data list I icon using quantity M map T text block

13. Two Pages Compared: Information Types and Rendering Pg.BackgroundLocation, HabitatDirect Observation A1DL, TDLDL, G, P A2TM, IT, T, PDL, G, P, I

14. Genre Analysis: Birds Navigation Functional differentiation of zones Range of graphical resources (type, graphics, pictures) Allocation of graphical resources to information types

15. Genre Analysis: Birds

16. Observations Low degree of diversification in earlier text Redistribution of information across modalities in most recent text Greater graphical differentiation in most recent text Genre has shifted in terms of the utilisation of graphical resources

17. Conclusions Mapping from communicative function to graphical resource a useful framework for document comparison Mappings, functions, and resources will change with genre Generic comparisons arrived at through same process with corpus of different document genres Possible to chart genre shifts across time and cultures

18. Future Directions Next steps: corpus collection and framework extension, annotation, principles for communicative function-graphical resource mappings Implementation of GeM layout tool that enables exploration of different document appearances across genres Planned extension to compare document appearances culturally and historically