Remarks on Text Typology (Part 3): An Advertisement Does Not Necessarily Have to Look Like an Advertisement
2007-11-05 08:45 | 08. Writing for the Web , 04. Terminology
An interesting suggestion that one should have in mind, however, has been made by 
Halliday & Hasan (1989). The authors explain within their chapter on the identity of a text that a text’s generic form (e.g. the one of a letter) may be dissociated from its generic function (e.g. an advertisement).
The example they have given corresponds to a letter, which could be an advertisement in a magazine. The letter reads:
“Dear Jinny,
I’m so glad you introduced me to Glo-Quick’s Super Facial. It’s just unbelievable what difference it has made to me in a less than a week. I must say it’s a new and very pleasant sensation to be noticed with envious admiration…” (
Undoubtedly, a reader would get the message behind this supposed letter, even if it seems to be an unusual text type for an advertisement. The example rather shows that – on the field of linguistics – there are actually no rules saying that an advertisement has to look like an advertisement, and that a letter only serves for informal communication between friends or relatives. There always seems to be some flexibility in writing texts, as one may be able to write different genres within one type, or vice versa. This means that i.e. a news-article-like text does not necessarily have to contain purely neutral facts to have a communicative function. What is more, the reader may get both of the messages, either the recent facts alone or the advert behind these facts, as corporate news on Web sites often contain commercial ads or PR messages. And this will work as long as the publisher maintains certain features of both text classes (e.g. headlines/catchphrases) that allow for both possible interpretations.
On the whole, one is rather given the impression that different characteristics and qualities of texts are constantly exchanged among Web texts and among advertisements in order to fulfil the communicative needs that are just required. This happens regardless of a text’s generic form or function, its genre or type. However, this is exactly what many Web authors already have achieved with their corporate blog articles or with their newsletters etc., as they have – so to say – intermingled news articles and advertisements, which appears to be in line with Halliday & Hasan’s (1989) considerations on the identity of texts, and which perfectly fits into the Web.
Hyptertext Is Not a Text Type
At the end of this short series on text typology, there is just one typological statement left that is appropriate when dealing with Web texts: Hypertext is not a text type. No more than the hypertext nodes may correspond to conventional text types or genres (see Huber 2003). In fact, the Web comes up with a variety of new text classes among hypertext nodes, such as navigation, page titles, taglines, or meta-tags. There are so many new classes and they come so fast that any further text typological considerations at this point of my discussion would be absurd. All of such text classes must only be considered elements of hypertexts, and nothing else.
Published by Christian Kuhn
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