TOMKOV, R. Advertising Education: Interpersonal Aspects in the Genre of University Websites.

In: Hopkinson, Ch., Tomkov, R., Blakov, B. Power and persuasion: Interpersonal discourse
strategies in the public domain. Ostrava: Filozofick fakulta Ostravsk univerzity v Ostrav, 2011. s.
44-73.

ADVERTISING EDUCATION:
INTERPERSONAL ASPECTS IN THE GENRE OF UNIVERSITY WEBSITES

3.1

Introduction

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 (Bhatia:
2005, 213). The invasion of promotion has come hand in hand with the rapid development
and spread of new communication technologies, which have brought an equally effective
impetus for shaping and reshaping forms of discourse.
The World Wide Web represents a vast communication area open to an almost
unlimited number of texts of varying length, offering at the same time a highly effective
technological background for crossing the borders between modes of production and
perception, and for exploiting and enhancing intertextuality. As an easily accessible means of
mass communication, the internet occupies a dominant position in the realization of most
discourse types and institutional discourse is no exception. Educational institutions, like any
institutions, cannot ignore the convenience of addressing the public through the internet. In
todays competitive environment, universities are finding it extremely difficult to maintain
their privileged status of excellence ...[and] are gradually coming closer to the concept of a
marketplace, where each has to compete with everyone else for clients attention (Bhatia,
2005: 224). In addition to this, the majority of contemporary universities are, or are striving to
become, increasingly multi-nationally oriented institutions, for which a channel of
communication effortlessly ignoring frontiers as well as natural borders between parts of the
world is invaluable.
This chapter aims to contribute to the study of both phenomena mentioned above:
researching a set of British, North American and Czech university websites, I attempt at
revealing the significant generic features of this specific institutional web genre, and focusing
on the hypertext path targeting prospective students, I explore the role and the realization of
the interpersonal semantic component in this advertising-like discourse.
3.2

Research aims

The massive information explosion on the internet, and the dynamic nature of both
technological and social development characterized by a range of variables, prevent a research
project such as this from setting itself overly ambitious objectives. The answers to the
following research questions hardly offer a comprehensive and exhaustive description of the
discourse in question, but they may provide an insight into its more conspicuous features and
the current tendencies in its development.
The study concentrates on
identifying the generic qualities of the university website as a specific web genre;

3.3

determining the presence or absence of a specialized hypertext path targeting

prospective students and reflecting their needs;
revealing how this target audience and the overall communicative purpose of the
genre shape the realization of its interpersonal metafunction;
mapping the culture-specific features of the selected university websites with regard
to global versus local characteristics, which may possibly compete within the genre.
Methods and theoretical framework

3.3.1 Systemic Functional Linguistics and genre analysis: key concepts

The methodology of the research is grounded in Hallidays Systemic Functional Linguistics
(SFL), and genre analysis, represented here mainly by Martin (1997), Swales (1990), and
Bhatia (1993, 1997, 2004, 2005).
Language is viewed as a socially and culturally grounded tool of communication,
which is in principle multifunctional and fulfils simultaneously three metafunctions, or in
other words, realizes three semantic components: the ideational component, as language
reflects and represents reality; the interpersonal component, as language reflects but also
shapes interpersonal, social relationships; and the textual component, as language also
represents an organized, structured, and cohesive form that enables it to fluently realize
ideational and interpersonal meanings. The metafunctions correspond with three sets of
contextual factors labelled by Halliday as the field, tenor and mode of discourse respectively.
The interplay of all the three components results in a contextualized choice and combination
of linguistic devices termed register.
The concept of genre is, similarly to the concept of register, firmly embedded into the
social context, which in SFL is viewed as a stratified system consisting of a hierarchy of
levels: Genre ... is set up above and beyond metafunctions (at a higher level of abstraction) to
account for relations among social processes in more holistic terms, with a special focus on
the stages through which most texts unfold. The relation of genre to register as
complementary perspectives on the social content of language (i.e. context) is thus
comparable in some respects to the relation of discourse semantics to lexicogrammar as
complementary perspectives on languages own content plane (Martin, 1997: 6). Register,
which encompasses field, tenor and mode, thus contextualizes language, consisting of the
ideational, interpersonal and textual components, and is at the same time contextualized by
genre (Martin, 1997: 7). The hierarchy and inclusion is illustrated in Figure 1, a graphically
modified version of Figure 1.5 in Martin (1997: 8).
Martin then defines genre as representing the system of staged goal-oriented social
processes through which social subjects in a given culture live their lives (1997: 13). Besides
the phases of unfolding mentioned earlier, the definition emphasizes the fact that genres are
always addressed to certain audience and are closely tied with the producers and receivers
culture.
Martins approach towards genre within the framework of SFL corresponds in
principle with the way genre is characterized by Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993, 2004):
Genre is a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative
purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or
academic community in which it regularly occurs. Most often it is highly structured and
conventionalized with constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their intent,
positioning, form and functional value (Bhatia, 1993: 13). The only limit to the accord
between these two accounts of genre could be found in Swaless and Bhatias focus on genres

in professional or academic settings, on genres seen exclusively as reflections of

organizational cultures and institutional practices (Bhatia, 2004: 23).
In his recent study on discourse and genre, Bax (2011) presents a multi-faceted
overview of a range of approaches towards genre and finds an ultimate synthesis of generic
components in defining the concept within the cognitive theory of mental schemas. He sees
genres as mental structures, mental representations which we apply when producing and
interpreting discourse, mental constructs which are shared by members of a particular
community.

ideational
interpersonal
textual
(language)

field
tenor
mode
(register)

genre

Figure 1

In harmony with other researchers (e.g. Martin, 1997, Giltrow & Stein, 2009), he considers
genres to be abstractions that find their realization in a range of instantiations, and further
specifies his view by describing genres with reference to Roschs Prototype Theory (Rosch,
1978) as fuzzy mental concepts revolving around a limited number of clear-cut examples
(Bax, 2011: 39). Fuzziness, as he argues, is indispensable in facilitating the flexibility of
genre realization and use. While he confirms that genres are inevitably characterized by their
function(s), which control all their other features, and exhibit a recognizable structure, he
differs from other researchers in drawing attention to the fact that his definition of genre could
also be applied to events which do not include linguistic communication, such as e.g. a mime
show (Bax, 2011: 60), and suggests that Genres are identified not only by formal criteria, but
also by social and contextual factors (Bax, 2011: 61, cf. Giltrow & Stein, 2009: 5). A fairly
similar focus on the cognitive nature of the concept of genre can be found in Santini, Mehler
and Sharoffs methodological treatise introducing a series of studies exploring web genres
specifically (2010: 4): [genre] reduces the cognitive load by triggering expectations through a
number of conventions. Put in another way, genres can be seen as sets of conventions that
transcend individual texts, and create frames of recognition governing document production,
recognition and use. Conventions are regularities that affect information processing in a
repeatable manner. The authors emphasize that, by identifying a text as belonging to a
certain genre, the receiver is given the power and advantage of predictivity of the
communicative purpose and the context, which thus helps us to understand the text.

3.3.2 Genres in evolution

Although all the definitions discussed above mention the recurrence of communicative events
as a feature crucial to the existence of genre and cite conventionalized features as an
important prerequisite for genre identification, none of the researchers deny the dynamic
nature of the genre system. Genres can never be characterized as static; on the contrary, they
continually develop and change they are in constant evolution (Santini, 2006).
As genres are anchored in social context and culture, their existence is to a large extent
dependent on their compliance with the current communicative needs of users and their
institutions. Thus genres appear on the scene when they are demanded, and expire when the
situation is not relevant any more (Giltrow & Stein, 2009: 10). Even genres that inhabit the
scene for long periods are susceptible to changes and adjustments. As early as 1995 and 1997
Bhatia commented on a growing tendency towards genre mixing, and distinguished this
phenomenon from genre embedding (Bhatia, 1997: 191). Genre mixing refers to the
penetration of features typically associated with one genre into a different genre, in which
they were not previously expected. The main focus here is on a set of academic genres
(preface, introduction, foreword, acknowledgement and others) manifesting obvious
promotional elements. Genre embedding means the insertion of one generic form into
another, conventionally distinct generic form, as for example when a letter or a poem is used
within an advertisement. Both genre mixing and genre embedding are examples of genre
hybridization (Bhatia, 2004: 10).
3.3.3 The genre continuum on the web
The general fluidity and pragmatic openness of the genre system is even greater in the case of
web genres or cybergenres (Giltrow & Stein, 2009: 9). The hypertext net of the world wide
web has brought unprecedented opportunities and substantially shaped situational factors
such as time and space restrictions and channel/medium specifications and has therefore
multiplied the opportunities for realizing ones communicative purposes, thus multiplying the
range of genres.
Santini (2006, 2007a) presents the synchronic genre repertoire as a continuum, in
which there are three forces interacting together: traditional genres brought from the past as
they were (reproduced genres), new genres and traditional genres adapted to the new
environment (novel genres and adapted genres), and forms that are going to emerge but are
not fully formed yet (emerging genres).
Drawing upon her long-term research mapping the proliferation of new genre
candidates on the internet by testing the ability of web users to identify them and choose a
proper label to name them, she suggests that we might suspect an emerging genre when there
is a recurrent textual pattern without an acknowledged name (Santini, 2007a: 6). It should be
added, however, that as indicated by the use of the present participle as a pre-modifier the
emergence of new genres is to be viewed as a process, which does not develop abruptly but
continuously. Considering the vast space of the world wide web, it can be expected that both
the recurrence of an identical or similar pattern and the acknowledgement of its name will
spread gradually, and the speed and nature of the process may be domain-specific or culturedependent. The process of emergence may not proceed in parallel stages in different cultures,
but is often highly asymmetrical.
Within the fluid environment of the internet, the inherent fuzziness of the concept of
genre becomes even more exploited: Genres are not mutually exclusive and different genres
can be merged into a single document, generating hybrid forms, and on the other hand,
...genres allow a certain freedom of variation, and consequently can be individualized

(Santini, 2007a: 6). These convergent and divergent tendencies are particularly powerful in
emerging genres that are not yet acknowledged and that often show hybrid (mixing several
genres) or highly individualized (with high authorial variation, high inner variability) forms
and indistinct functions (Santini, 2007a: 6). Considering Santinis research results, relatively
recently emerged genres include home pages, blogs or FAQs.
3.3.4 Genre analysis of hypertext
As mentioned in the previous sections (1, 3.3), the huge extent of the internet has invited an
array of forms of communication, which could be more or less easily classified into three
groups: reproduced, novel/adapted and emerging genres. Considering the sophisticated
technological background internet text producers may take advantage of and the emergence of
genres unprecedented in pre-internet times, the question arises whether genre analysis
methods rooted in non-electronic communication could be effectively applied to the system of
web genres.
On the one hand, the answers suggested by researchers surveying the current genre
repertoire on the web are positive. The methodology of their analyses is grounded in Swaless
and Bhatias definition of genre (Roberts, 1998; Askehave & Nielsen, 2004; Santini, 2006,
2007a, 2007b; Giltrow & Stein, 2009) and their research results show that the principles on
which this definition is based are valid even within the electronic space. The rationale for this
finding may lie in the fact that the internet encompasses to a large extent electronic versions
of traditional written genres, which preserve both their communicative purpose and formal
structuring (electronic versions of research articles, magazine articles, course books, and other
publications), and also in the fact that even many of the novel genres are not completely new
but could be associated with possible written or oral pre-electronic ancestors. Askehave and
Nielsen (2004) trace the communicative purpose and structure of a home page back to the
Aristotelian exordium or to a contemporary genre the newspaper front page; Santini
characterizes the web genre of Frequently Asked Questions as having a very close
antecedent in the paper world in the Troubleshooting section of technical manuals ... or FAQS
can be seen as a written form of a help desk or information desk (Santini, 2007b: 235).
On the other hand, though, traditional steps of genre analysis seem to fail to account
for those generic features of web genres whose genuine novelty stems from exploiting the
unique capabilities of the electronic medium. Ignoring these would deprive the web genres of
their chief distinctive features. Rather than by their linguistic form, i.e. by a certain ritualized
and expected store of linguistic markers, web genres are recognized and distinguished by the
function they fulfil and by their hypertext form and organization.
In their paper titled Web-Mediated Genres A Challenge to Traditional Genre
Theory (2004), Askehave and Nielsen attempt to benefit from the valid principles of
traditional genre analysis and at the same time compensate for the absence of consideration
given by those traditional approaches to the specific features of the web medium. The model
of analysis proposed by Askehave and Nielsen respects the character of hypertext as a
system of non-hierarchical text blocks where the textual elements (nodes) are connected by
links (Askehave & Nielsen, 2004: 14) by developing a two-dimensional approach, which
reflects the generic properties of the text blocks (the reading mode) as well as the generic
properties of the links between them (the navigating mode). The modal shifts between
reading continuous texts and zooming out of them to follow a link, which readers need to do
when negotiating their way through websites, are thus seen here as the key difference between
traditional genres and electronic hypertext genres (Askehave & Nielsen, 2004: 17).
The present analysis draws upon the two-dimensional approach outlined above and
aims to trace both the make-up of the generic moves (the functional units of the reading

mode) and the realization of the links (the functional units of the navigating mode). As the
present research focuses on university websites addressing prospective students, the genre is
expected to be shaped by a promotional communicative purpose. Bhatias (2004: 65) model
of the move structure in advertisements (see Fig. 2) has thus been used as a stepping stone,
and tested against the reading mode of the web genre.

Move structure in advertisements:

headlines attracting the readers;
targeting the market;
justifying the product or service;
detailing the product or service;
establishing credentials;
celebrity or typical user endorsement;
offering incentives;
using pressure tactics;
soliciting response.

Figure 2

The analysis of the realization of links benefits here from the classification of links
introduced by Askehave and Nielsen (2004). Firstly, the division they propose distinguishes
two types of links according to the function they fulfil: structural links, which organize the
information on the website into a hierarchy, and associative links, which reflect readers
potential interests and chain the texts on the web in an associative manner. Secondly,
considering the realization of links, they define generic links based on a general expression
referring to a global topic, and specific links, providing thematically contextualized
appetizers for the destination texts.
3.3.5 Persuasion, genres, and the hierarchy of semantic components
and contextual factors
As the aim of the present study does not consist in outlining the characteristic generic
properties of web genres in general but follows a much narrower scope of analyzing
interpersonal aspects in one specific internet genre, this sub-chapter briefly discusses the
question of the mutual relations (or interplay) between the concepts of the interpersonal
component and persuasion, and persuasion and genre.
Within Systemic Functional Linguistics the ideational, interpersonal and textual
components are always presented as being inseparable, simultaneously realized, yet they are
never presented as being organized hierarchically. Their co-presence and simultaneous
realization is generally accepted among functional linguists, yet attention is also regularly
attracted to their possible hierarchical stratification.
Thus Bhatia explains that the three contextual factors shaping registers may not always
be equally powerful, and may in response to the requirements of a specific communicative
situation create a hierarchy allowing for field-dominated, mode-dominated, or tenordominated registers. Bhatia mentions scientific register as field-dominated, casual
conversation as mode-dominated and a client consultation as tenor-dominated register
(Bhatia, 2004). I would argue that this hierarchy of factors can be seen as implying a related
hierarchy of the three semantic components that they contextualize.
Similarly, a hierarchy of these components, but projected into a different perspective,
is posited by Enkvist (1987), who sees the ideational and textual elements as being subject to

the interpersonal component, which has a controlling role in communication strategies, and
illustrates this interplay metaphorically both the ideational and textual component fit into
the interpersonal component in the manner of a Russian doll (cf. Hopkinson et al., 2009: 11,
274).
The concept of persuasion (and manipulation) tends to be discussed separately from
metafunctions, registers and genre, and their mutual relation seems elusive. A contribution to
the study of the persuasion/genre interface is represented by the collective monograph
Persuasion Across Genres. A Linguistic Approach edited and co-authored by Virtanen and
Halmari (2005). In their introductory methodological chapter, persuasion is characterized as
an interactive process, as linguistic behavior that attempts to either change the thinking or
behavior of an audience, or to strengthen its beliefs, should the audience already agree, and it
is also recognized as an inherent part of language communication: All language use can in a
sense be regarded as persuasive (3, cf. stman, 2005: 191). The interactive nature of
persuasion is further supported by referring to Classical rhetoric, emphasizing that The
persuader, with the intention to cause an effect, will monitor and gauge her or his linguistic
choices based on the sometimes immediately obvious and sometimes estimated and inferred
reactions of the audience or multiple audiences (7).
In my view, the interpretation of persuasion suggested in the above-mentioned
quotations apparently supports Enkvists notion of the controlling role of the interpersonal
component. Nevertheless, in Virtanens and Halmaris study the place of persuasion within
language semantics ultimately remains controversial: The intersection of persuasion and
genre, the two key notions of this volume, is their communicative purpose. Genres can be
more or less persuasive; persuasion, a communicative purpose, finds its realization through
various genres (11). The question then remains open: is all communication to a certain extent
persuasive, i.e. is persuasion an inherent part of any communicative purpose, or is persuasion
just one of the communicative purposes speakers or writers may or may not choose?
It is not an ambition of this paper to provide any final answer to this question. I only
consider it important to state that the analyses and interpretation of the results presented here
take Enkvists stance. Linguistic communication is seen here as being controlled by the
interpersonal component; it is always crucially shaped by the assumptions the producer has
about the receiver and the kind of relationship the producer wants to build with her or him, to
which the ideational component (the choice of facts represented) and the textual component
(the way the language is structured) are subjected. All language communication aims to
change the audience in a broad sense (changing the knowledge, attitudes, mood, the
relationship with the speaker or writer, and so on), but this may not be the only aim, and it
may not always be the priority of the producer: thus it may be either foregrounded or
backgrounded in communication (foregrounding and backgrounding may not necessarily
correspond with the concepts of explicitness and implicitness in communication).
3.4

Material

The structure of the corpus reflects the objective of the present study, i.e. the search for the
manifestation of interpersonal aspects in university websites. It thus includes the part of a
university website hypertext which is expected to be primarily promotional in character the
hypertext path addressed at prospective students. The analysis is based on a survey of the
websites of seven universities: four British universities (University of Bristol, University of
Edinburgh, University of Warwick, and Leeds Metropolitan University); one American
university (University of California, Los Angeles); and two Czech universities (Charles
University in Prague, and Masaryk University in Brno). The analysis began at the university
home page by considering the presence or absence of a link targeted at prospective students,

and subsequently followed the path of the links across the sites and texts anchored within
them.
The choice of universities was led by a desire to build an institutionally comparable
but culturally diverse corpus which may facilitate an analysis of genre as a reflection of a
specific communicative event and at the same time highlight some of the aspects of its
context-dependence and culture-dependence. The core of the corpus is represented by large
research universities, highly respected in their home countries as well as abroad, and much
sought-after by prospective students. The only university that does not refer to research as its
first and foremost attraction is Leeds Metropolitan University.
In case of the Czech universities selected, only the Czech-language versions have been
explored, as these correspond to the English-language British and American websites (as the
official language of the universitys home country in all cases). It must be admitted, however,
that the role of the two languages within the corpus is not fully parallel. Whereas the English
language addresses both British/American and international audiences, the websites in Czech
target almost exclusively Czech users, with foreign readers probably seeking out the English
version. The status of the English versions of Czech university websites vary considerably,
from a full English version providing a complete translation of the original Czech website
texts to a scale of more or less curtailed versions, either shaped by the assumed needs of the
foreign audience or limited to a few texts presenting general, almost tourist-like information
about the university.
As three of the websites examined offered not only the possibility to order a printed
undergraduate prospectus but also its downloadable version in the pdf format, embedded into
the site for prospective students, these prospectuses were also included into the corpus. They
could be seen as beneficial in providing a basis for identifying generic distinctions between
the (traditional) text form and the hypertext form of realizing an identical communicative
purpose.
All the university websites surveyed within this research project were downloaded
between January and June 2011.
3.5

University websites: institutional discourse in hypertext

A university website is an instantiation of institutional discourse which can with the

advantage of technology address a range of target readers simultaneously, at the same time
tailoring the discourse to fit the objectives which the institution aims to pursue in association
with a specific target audience and to meet the assumed needs of the target users. A university
home page, the gateway to the vast hypertext space, thus tends to include some or all of the
following links opening specialized paths through the web designed for the academic staff,
current students, prospective students, alumni, the general public, or even parents and the
press. Even though the hypertext cannot defy the principle of language linearity completely
(when reading the home page as whole, from left to right and downwards from the top, the
links enter into a certain order), the reader still has the choice to ignore the linear organization
and focus immediately on a relevant path, which is usually substantially facilitated by the
graphic layout of the page.
University websites are part of the world wide web, which means that they are part of
and at the same time they themselves build a hypertext net consisting of a hierarchy of
hypertexts, which on the other hand consist of sets of e-texts, i.e. electronic texts. The
classification used here comes from Jucker (2002), who develops the typology suggested by
Storrer (Storrer 1999 in Jucker 2002). University websites represent a discourse colony, as
defined by Hoey (1986, 2001), and a genre colony, as defined by Bhatia (2004): in other
words the website could be seen on the one hand as a set of independent but related textual

components framed for their interpretation by the university as the home institution, while on
the other hand the website could be viewed as a complex of closely related genres and subgenres working towards a common communicative purpose.
All seven university websites offer a link targeting potential new students, which leads
the visitors to the prospective students home page and invites them to follow a special path
through the university hypertext. The unifying communicative purpose expected here is to
attract the potential students attention to the universitys offer, arouse their interest in
studying and provoke a desire to become part of the academic community, and finally to
guide those already decided users through the admission process. This expectation clearly
defines the prospective students websites as a kind of promotional discourse.
Promotional discourse, whose aim is to influence or persuade the receivers, is
obviously tenor-dominated; so here if not also elsewhere the interpersonal component has
a hierarchically higher, controlling role and is realized not only by means of the primarily
interpersonal features such as means of address or modality, but also through the ideational
metafunction, controlling the choice of reality represented, and the textual metafunction,
supporting the interactive character of the text and thus showing respect on the part of the
producer for the needs and expectations of the receiver.
The suggestion that the genre of prospective university students websites belongs to
promotional genres also seems to be borne out by the fact that their formal and informative
structure complies with the move structure defined by Bhatia (2004) for advertisements, as
well as with other instantiations of promotional discourse (cf. 3.4, Figure 2).
3.6

Attracting the reader

The universities feature a specialized link for prospective students on their main page the
university home page. The home page is the visitors first encounter with the university as a
compact, independent institution, which gives this top-level part of a website an opportunity
to fulfil two important goals: to introduce the institution and the general content of the site,
and to provide the user with an official and effective gateway to all essential branches of the
hypertext.
One of the branches typically included is the prospective students path. The link is
presented predominantly in the main upper horizontal bar (in 5 cases out of 7), in the middle
vertical bar (in 3 cases out of 7), or in both positions (in 1 case). Four universities use
prospective students/uchazei (o studium) as the clickable expressions; four universities
prefer to use study(ing) as the key word, followed by either prospective students or
undergraduates on the next level within the hypertext; the University of Bristol includes
study in the horizontal bar and prospective students in the vertical bar, both leading to the
same destination. If the expression study(ing) is chosen, its potential ambiguity is eliminated
by the context of the neighbouring links, which in these cases invariably offer a separate
current students link. Regardless of the type of the bar, the link to the prospective students
website always occupies the first position on the line.
The prospective students website could be viewed as the first destination reached by
the links described above, but at the same time it is also another home page document
functioning as a gateway to a set of branches related to the topic. The two home pages double
the possibilities for the university to introduce itself and attract potential students, to use the
home page for building the image of the institution a story about who the author is or
wants to be thought of , as Roberts characterizes the role of personal home pages (Roberts,
1998: 2).
All the home pages surveyed, with the sole exception of Charles University, strive to
be multifunctional and play multiple roles exploiting the technological capacities of the

internet. The home pages are thus multi-modal, presenting not only texts distinguished by a
variety of graphic realizations but also audio, visual and audiovisual components such as
photographs, audio recordings and videos. The photographs and videos tend to visually
dominate the layout of the home page, and both are in their content largely parallel to the
presented text: visualizing the facts and figures, evaluations and descriptions, they animate the
written texts and provide a more authentic, hands-on-like experience with the university.
Photographs prevailingly picture students and teachers of the university engaged in interaction
and diverse study, research, social or pastime activities, but they may also depict university
buildings, city sights, or even historical documents related to the universitys history, such as
e.g. the royal charter founding Charles University in Prague, which is used as the only
opening or welcome on the home page.
Photographs and videos also substantially contribute to establishing credentials for a
given university. Even if the videos introducing the university or virtual walks round the
campus are in a mutually complementary relationship with written texts, each of them is selfcontained and video films can be considered an independent genre within university home
pages.
The photographs are typically used in two ways: they are either relatively stable
enjoying a long-term location on the web and accompany and illustrate relatively stable
links on the page, or they exist in a symbiosis with a clickable clause briefly describing a
universitys achievement and/or university news, and at the same time representing a quick
link to more detailed information. The latter tend to occupy a larger space under the upper
horizontal bar, regularly changing in a timed presentation of a series of 57 pictures, and they
substitute a slogan or a headline opening the site. As the picture presentation cannot be
copied, the examples bellow illustrate solely a set of sentence-links.
(1)

The Global Priorities Programme is a key part of the University research strategy
and focuses our world-class, multidisciplinary research on key areas of global
importance.
Read more...
In 2015 the University of Warwick will celebrate its 50th birthday and is seeking
a total of 50 million in donations to take on and resolve major challenges facing
our world.
Read more...
Postgraduate students are an integral part of Warwicks research community.
Join us for our Postgraduate Open Day on 16th November to find out more
about postgraduate opportunities at Warwick.
Read more...
University of Warwick home page
(my emphasis)

The preference for specific links providing a lead for an article or for a specific site within the
university hypertext as a substitute for a headline or slogan, or their co-existence on the home
page, may remind the reader of a possible genre predecessor of the home page, namely the
newspaper front page (cf. Askehave & Nielsen, 2004). However, unlike news reports in a
paper, the news concerning the university has the advantage of being authored directly by the

institution itself, which can address the audience through a variety of genres: presenting a
report on The Global Priorities Programme, a fund-raising advertisement related to
Warwicks 50th birthday, or an invitation for a Postgraduate Open Day.
Even though each of the leads is shaped by its respective relevant generic conventions,
they ultimately work together to fulfil a common communicative purpose of presenting the
university as a vibrant, dynamic community of students and academics in co-operation, as an
institution integrating teaching, research and responsibility for both local and global issues,
whose credit stems from long-term experience and involvement. The bold print in example
(1) highlights the key words or multi-word expressions representing the principal concepts
promoted; the concepts although realized by a variety of lexicogrammatical means tend to
recur throughout the websites of the British and American research universities analyzed.
Except for Charles University, all the universities surveyed also introduce their home
page with a headline, some of which play the role of slogans. Whereas the University of
Edinburgh employs a headline on the University home page (a), most universities prefer to
headline only the prospective students home page (d g); Bristol is the only university
headlining both home pages (b, c).
(2)
a) Influencing the world since 1583.
(Edinburgh)
b) learning

discovery

enterprise
(Bristol)

c) Study with the best at an internationally recognised university

with a brilliant academic reputation
(Bristol)
d) Welcome at Leeds Met. Were one of the largest and most popular universities
in the UK.
(Leeds Metropolitan University)
e) Experience Warwick with us...
(Warwick)
f) Come on in. Theres a great big world in here.
(UCLA)
g) Informace pro uchazee o studium
(Masaryk University)

Similarly to the leads in example 1, a comparison of these headlines reveals that the
variability in lexicogrammar is broader than the variability in the underlying ideational and
interpersonal component.
Regardless of whether the headlines are formally realized as complete clauses,
elliptical clauses or just nominal minor clauses, regardless of whether the positive selfpresentation is explicit or implied, the concepts included and the values promoted are largely
shared or at least overlapping. They also echo and complement the concepts realized in the
key words highlighted in example 1.

The University of Bristol (b) has picked out three key words forming a simple yet
eloquent slogan referring to three principal areas of university activity: learning is used here
rather than teaching, evoking a task and desire to enrich the knowledge shared by both
students and academics; discovery, referring to the adventure of (successful) research;
enterprise, implying readiness, ingenuity, energy for developing and realizing projects,
having an impact on the world and life. Their prospective students home page headline (c)
expresses the same values more explicitly, employing overtly evaluative vocabulary and a
directly conveyed illocutionary force. The headline here provides a summarizing base, which
is further elaborated in subsequent electronic texts: the best is to be interpreted here again as
including both teachers and students, the impact on the world is emphasized in the
international recognition, and the quality of research and teaching is encapsulated in a
brilliant academic reputation.
In Edinburghs slogan (a) the overlapping ideas of impact and the world dimension are
supported by the reference to long-term involvement.
Out of context, the Warwick headline seems to lack the informativity of the others but
in fact the opposite is true: the semantic indeterminacy of the word experience makes it
quite comprehensive and open to specification by context, and its primary meaning is further
enriched by generally positive connotations and by the syntactic structures used here (verb in
imperative + the name of a place/a city, the name of a place/a city + noun), also with an
associative meaning alluding to the genre of travel guides. Both semantic layers are exploited:
experience provides a common ground for presenting all the aspects of university life,
followed by clickable sub-headlines Study experience, Life experience and Future
experience, at the same time anticipating the generic features of the texts found along this
hypertext path, which co-create a guide to the opportunities offered at Warwick. The words
with us, added to the headline in a smaller font, acquire a double meaning in the context of
the home page. As the site includes a series of current Warwick students photographs paired
with brief quotes about their personal Warwick experiences and videos of them talking about
studying at Warwick, the us can refer both to the Warwick academic community as a whole
or to the selected students enjoying the Warwick experience and mediating it to the
prospective students.
UCLA does not opt for a descriptive headline either, instead preferring a playful
paraphrase of the generally known saying Theres a great big world out there, associated
mostly with youth, discovery and surprise. The playfulness of the metaphor of the university
seen as a world of its own by no means less colourful, multi-faceted and dynamic than the
one out there is further elaborated by means of the accompanying visual effects, namely the
picture of a kaleidoscope and pictures of the campus, students and teachers as viewed through
this magic device. Employing a colloquial, spoken-like register in the headline, the producer
sets a very informal tenor simulating authentic oral interaction (cf. Chovanec, 2009) and
evoking the atmosphere of a friendly university community which the receiver is welcome to
join.
Bristol, Warwick as well as UCLA inspire action addressing the prospective students
by means of imperative forms.
The headlines offered by Leeds Metropolitan University and Masaryk University in
Brno do not seem to exhibit many elements overlapping with the headlines discussed above.
Whereas the difference in focus of the Leeds Metropolitan headlines could be related to the
fact that this university does not present itself as a research university with long tradition, the
conspicuous difference in tenor set by Masaryk University may be attributed to intercultural
differences, reflected here in the conventions of an institutional genre. It is important to add
that while the prospective students home page headline sticks to the formal register of
administration, lacking in personal contact, the register actually changes in the subsequent

texts, where it becomes less formal, occasionally even colloquial, and generally strives to
build a relationship with the audience. The lack of headline on the Charles University website
is, on the other hand, symptomatic of the structure and register of the Universitys prospective
students pages as a whole. Contact with the audience is not opened up, and it is not built into
the individual e-texts either.
The headlines discussed above can be best characterized as framing headlines as they
provide a unifying frame for an otherwise particularized and formally discontinuous home
page structure. The headlines, together with the name of the university and its logo (which
reappear on individual websites as a letterhead), form a centre of gravity ensuring the
desired identification and interpretation of the website components. While the university
letterhead provides the essential identification of the institution, the framing headlines set
the tenor of the relationship between the author and the audience, here in particular between
the university and its potential future students. With the support of the specific, contextualized
links discussed above (see example 1), the framing headlines spread an atmosphere within
which the visitors can then use the home page as a gateway, by deciding to select or not to
select individual items out of the list of generic, topical links. As these generic links of
prospective students home pages are closely related to the targeting the market move, they
are tackled in the following section.
3.7

Targeting the market

The targeting of prospective receivers is multi-layered and is realized at different levels of

specificity. The dominant vehicle used for addressing the target audience within the internet
hypertext is a link. Sets of generic links on university home pages tend to sort the hypertext
paths offered according to their users; the users, on the other hand, are sorted according to
their relationship with the institution. With respect to the focus of the study, the present
chapter limits itself to characterizing the ways of targeting prospective students.
On the most general level, the target receiver is addressed as a potential applicant (the
Czech word uchaze) in the Czech part of the corpus and as a prospective student in the
English-language corpus. As the group of the prospective students universities strive to
address is becoming increasingly varied, the prospective students home page includes
another filtering set of generic links opening up specialized paths through the web. Firstly, the
links reflect the level of higher education relevant to the target audience undergraduate
study/prospectus and postgraduate study/prospectus; secondly, the links target the global
audience international students; thirdly, the links show a consideration for non-mainstream
groups of potential students deaf and disabled students, care-leavers, mature students,
or part-time students. British and American universities also take care to address not only
prospective students but also their parents and carers.
Individualized paths through the web not only provide quick and easy access to the
specific information being searched for, but also build a relationship between the institution
and the audience addressed; the co-hyponymical links particularizing the target audience
represent a more personalized means of address, which shows respect for and interest in the
target groups, and may make them feel welcome in the university community. The
welcoming feel implied by the specified links is further supported in the texts opened by
them, where the university again expresses respect for the group targeted:
(3)

Mature students
We welcome applications from mature students and value the contribution
that mature students make to the University community.

Parents and carers

At Bristol we recognise that our relationship is not only with students
but also with their parents, guardians and carers. On this page we hope
we can answer some of your questions.
(Bristol)
Neither of the Czech universities surveyed goes much beyond the general label
referring to applicants: Masaryk University offers a specialized link to international students
(Study programmes for International Students), while Charles University offers an
individualized link to special needs students only (Applicants with Special Needs). This is
not to suggest that Czech universities websites do not offer information on the study
programmes offered or that they do not offer a wide range of study programmes including
life-long learning courses; the difference between them and the British and American
universities lies in the fact that on Czech university websites this comprehensive information
is accessed almost exclusively via the links referring to the types of study programmes
without addressing the users by personal nouns. Neither of the Czech universities addresses
potential students parents or carers.
Targeting strategies do not consist only in providing links addressing the target group.
University websites help their users to find an answer to the question Which course? by
means of the institution placing itself in their position and providing an overview of the
university courses, possibly also through the filter of potential students interests or
qualifications achieved at secondary schools (Subjects you might be studying at A-level or
equivalent or What can I do with biology?; What can I do with chemistry?..., University of
Bristol). This self-targeting by the website users is also encouraged elsewhere within the
prospective students hypertext: e.g. in the opening texts (Its important to make sure that the
schools you apply to have the programs and resources that meet your personal and academic
needs., UCLA), or when explaining the admission process (Interviews are used by
admission tutors to gauge your suitability for a course. They also give you an opportunity to
find out whether your chosen course is the right one for you., University of Bristol).

3.8

Justifying the product

Following Bhatias move structure in advertising discourse, the justifying the product move
is characterized as indicating the importance or need of the product or service and/or
establishing a niche (Bhatia, 2004: 65). The analysis of the corpus has revealed that
justification of a university education is not seen as a crucial part of university presentations;
neither the importance of university education nor the establishment of a niche occupies a
central position within the discourse studied. The acknowledgement of the importance of
acquiring a high-quality education is apparently presupposed as a shared value; what matters,
then, is showing that the particular university is the right place to obtain this.
Even though the realization of the move is not extensive, it represents a recognizable
element analyzable into two distinctive types: on the one hand, the opening texts of
prospective students websites tend to include an introductory comment implying the
importance of and need for the website itself; on the other hand, the detailed description of
what the universities offer is complemented with information on the graduates employability
and possibly also on high-profile positions that graduates could achieve. In neither of the
cases do the justification move elements form an independent text component; instead they
are embedded in the detailing the product or service move, intertwining with a range of
constituents building this complex and elaborated part of the hypertext.

All the universities considered, with the sole exception of Charles University, use the
lines opening prospective students websites to stress the seriousness and difficulty of
deciding on a specific university programme, thus evoking an uncertainty in the user,
implying the need for help or advice, and finally justifying the relevance of the e-texts further
along the hypertext path. Evoking uncertainty in the receivers belongs among the typical
advertising strategies preparing the ground for successful persuasion (Doubravov, 2008:
107). As illustrated by example (4), this uncertainty can be shaped by a variety of feelings
evoked: by disorientation (Bristol website), fear or anxiety (Leeds), or even by feeling
intimidated by the responsibility (California). The uncertainty inspired by the expressions
underlined is balanced with the expressions highlighted in bold, which promise help further
on along the path.
(4)

Were aware that choosing a university degree programme from so many options can
be quite a confusing process. These suggestions are not exhaustive but they are
intended to give you some idea of the options you might want to consider, building on
the subjects you are currently studying at A-level (or equivalent).
(Bristol)
The idea of becoming a university student can be liberating, exhilarating and pretty
daunting. Its a time to really think about what you want from your future, to make
life-long friendships, to work the hardest youve ever worked, and have the most fun
youve ever had. Youve lots to think about, and we at Leeds Metropolitan have lots to
offer...
(Leeds)
Choosing a university is no small feat. Its important to make sure that the schools you
apply to have the programs and resources that meet your personal and academic needs.
Its also important to understand what the schools expect from you. ... Use the links
below to learn more about what it takes to be a Bruin.
(California)
(highlighting added)

The employability of graduates stands out as one of the principal attractions displayed
by universities in order to justify university education and the preference for a particular
university as a sound investment for the future. Except for the Charles University website,
employability is always mentioned and commented on. Masaryk University even currently
uses an employability diagram as one of the visual points of the attracting the reader move
heading the home page; the caption is clickable and reads: "Nai absolventi maj vborn
uplatnn na trhu prce." (Our graduates are highly employable.). High employability is
foregrounded especially by universities that define themselves as research universities (here
Bristol, Warwick, Edinburgh, UCLA, Masaryk University), where the claims are supported
by credentials drawing upon contemporary statistics (cf. example 6) and by prestigious
employers endorsements (cf. example 5). Leeds Metropolitan University, which apparently
does not ground its attractions in research-based teaching, highlights its efforts to make you a
great prospect for employers rather than citing employment figures or employers
testimonials; employment for graduates is mentioned only as a prospect connected to the city
of Leeds, not the university itself: Why Leeds ... There are good employment prospects for
graduates.

The following examples (5, 6) also show how the universities take care to relate
graduates employability to the knowledge and skills they provide the students with, or to the
university reputation; high employability of their graduates is presented as one of the
universitys main achievements and credentials.
(5)

Employers regard the University of Edinburgh as an excellent training ground for

high-flyers of the future.
Tomorrows employers want more than a degree holder they want graduates who
have developed a range of skills and qualities appropriate for the working world.
We can help you to develop a broad range of skills, grow in confidence and learn
more about yourself.
Employers value our graduates for their intellectual ability and highly developed
transferable skills.
"Edinburgh University is one of the top campuses that we target for recruitment. If
you are looking for a university that will give you the skills and experiences to have
a successful career, then Edinburgh University is a good place to start."
Proctor and Gamble

(6)

Warwick graduates are highly employable. Research-led teaching, the high

academic content of our degrees, our established reputation and the diverse
range of extracurricular activities and opportunities available to our students all
contribute to our graduates being highly valued by employers. ... Of students
graduating in 2009, six months after graduation 86% were working, undertaking
academic or professional study, or combining the two.
(Warwick)
(highlighting added)

In both the Edinburgh and Warwick texts, employers play a key role as the agents of
an evaluation and decision process: employers regard/want more/value (twice). The structure
of the texts and the meanings encoded in the lexis indicate that the universities co-exist and
co-operate with employers in a symbiosis: graduates embody a broad range of skills,
academic knowledge and extracurricular experiences provided by the universities and at the
same time required by the employers. The harmony of the mutually advantageous relationship
is supported by structural and especially semantic parallelism: in example 5 the symbiosis
manifests itself in the repeated match between employers requirements (a range of skills and
qualities) and Edinburgh University education results (a broad range of skills); example 6
illustrates a triplet of semantically parallel structures building correlations on the one hand
between graduates/students graduating and research-led teaching, the high academic
content of our degrees..., and on the other hand between the graduates benefiting from
Warwicks academic contribution and high employability (highly employable, valued by
employers, working). Presenting the university as a mediating entity on the way to a
successful career and a full life rounds off the overall communication strategy highlighting the
enabling role of universities, which is to be characterized in section 9.
As mentioned above, the justifying the product move is not realized as a separate
text, but its components are interwoven into a series of e-texts realizing the extensive and
complex detailing the product move; the interconnectedness of the two moves manifests
itself also in the affinity of the lexico-grammatical devices that realize them, the
characteristics of which are examined in the following section.
3.9

Detailing the product/service

Within the genre of university internet presentations detailing the product/service represents
the core move, both with regard to the realization of the overall communicative purpose and
also with regard to the size of e-texts that realize it and the amount of data presented. The
move is realized in a series of e-texts on different levels of the hypertext: the prospective
students link leads to the prospective students home page with another set of links, each of
which opens a website with one or more e-texts and offers one or more links located either
below a text or inside it, in the form of a clickable expression (see example 7). Whereas the
links in the upper part of the hypertext tend to appear in sets and exist in a complementary
relationship, covering different aspects of university study and students life, the links found
deeper in the hypertext, accompanying or penetrating e-texts, tend to lead the user to further
specifications within an area already selected.
(7)

Prospective students

Undergraduate

Postgraduate
Deaf and disabled students
International students
Mature students
...

Biology

Chemistry
Classics/Classical Studies
...

Further details about BSc Biology C100

Which course?

Studying at Bristol
How to apply
Money matters
Accommodation
Student Life
Request a prospectus

Why study Biological Sciences at Bristol?

BSc Biology C100

What are my career prospects?

...

Programme structure
Entry requirements
Contact details

The detailing the product/service move is thus spread across the hypertext, yet at the
same time it is bound tightly together; it is unified formally as well as semantically by
cohesive devices dominated by lexical ties whose interpretation often crosses the borders of
lexical semantics towards the reflection of cognitive schemata. The primary carriers of lexical
cohesion are here the hypertext links (cf. Jucker, 2002) readily bridging the virtual gaps
between e-texts.
There are three lines traceable across the detailing hypertext colony: there is a line of
discourse describing what the university offers to its students in all the spheres of students
life and education; there is a discourse line of anchoring the university in its location (city or
region); and there is obviously a line of discourse describing the requirements for admission,
the admission process itself, and a variety of rules and guidelines related to Open Days
attendance, student accommodation etc. The interplay of the costs and benefits, of what the
university demands and what it offers, ranks university websites among examples of
institutional discourse. As Iedema argues (Iedema, 1997: 73), institutional discourses can be
typified as concerned with the realization of constraint, or shouldness, on the one hand, and
with the construal of levels of institutional enablement and power on the other. The discourse
of shouldness which in the present corpus includes mainly texts on the process of
admission and other texts conveying requirements, rules and guidelines is clearly
distinguishable from the discourse of enablement, characterizing the universitys offer

extended to what is offered by the city or region, not only by the topic covered but also by the
lexico-grammatical devices used.
Whereas the shouldness discourse limits itself mainly to information on the
admission process, the enablement discourse is much more varied and comprehensive.
Within the prospective students website it is the enabling dimension that is foregrounded: it
is central in introductory texts and forms a spine supporting the hypertext structure as a whole
and framing its shouldness parts.
With the only exception of Charles University, all the other universities surveyed
present a set of texts identifying the university, indicating its value and describing a variety of
the components of curricular and extracurricular activities pursued (cf. Bhatia, 2004: 65) all
of them tailored to the needs and expectations of prospective students and targeted towards
accomplishing the communicative purpose of the genre to make students (preferably highachieving students) take an informed decision and apply for admission to the given university.
The principal link opening the hypertext path describing the university offer is
typically called Why choose ...?, Why study at ...?, or Studying at .... At all the
universities, the series of e-texts targeted by this link covers an almost identical range of
topics, and the values presented and promoted are obviously shared, too. This line of
discourse is realized in two parallel colonies: as a hypertext colony on the web and as a text
colony in the undergraduate prospectus, which at three out of the seven universities is
accessible as a pdf file freely downloadable from the web. The analysis revealed almost
complete correspondence between the e-texts and the prospectus texts designed for print or
downloading in the pdf format. The University of Bristol, whose prospectus in full text is
available upon request only, states the correspondences explicitly: Please note: all the
information in the printed prospectus appears in our online version., and offers a link
(underlined), which does not open the pdf version but leads to the relevant part of the
hypertext. The research hence confirmed Nielsen and Askehaves conclusion (see 3.4) that the
essential difference between these two text variants consists almost exclusively in the
technological realization of the hypertext form, which enriches the reading mode with the
advantages of the navigating mode; in addition to this, of course, it facilitates the use of a
much wider choice of non-verbal, multi-modal communication tools. It should also be
mentioned that it is the university web presentation that plays the supportive role: whereas the
pdf and print prospectuses regularly refer the readers to the website for further information,
the e-text of the website never includes references to the print prospectus.
The answer to the question Why choose ...? starts by emphasizing the qualities of
teaching, which are presented as closely bound up with the quality of the research. It then
proceeds to study options, including studying abroad, followed by highlighting the specificity
of the universitys location, introducing the campus, student accommodation, other university
facilities and means of students support; attention is also drawn to the career and
employment prospects that the university offers. The research universities (except for Charles
University) strive to show their positive impact on the local community as well as global
society, which is proved either by referring to inventions and innovations or by characterizing
the university as green or sustainable (see example 8).
(8)

...the University has influenced many aspects of our lives through life-changing
research in areas such as cot death prevention and 3G mobile technology innovation.
(Bristol)
As Scotlands first Fairtrade University, we have been promoting better conditions
for farmers and communities in developing countries since 2004.
...

We are actively reducing our carbon footprint and have invested 12 million
in campus-wide combined heat and power energy projects, winning the 2008
National Energy Efficiency and Carbon Trust Awards.
(Edinburgh)
Even though each university tries to exhibit its specificities and lend the website
presentation a charge of originality, the parallelism of topics, the similarity of target audiences
and, above all, the common communicative purpose manifest themselves in the recurrence of
certain lexico-grammatical features, which seem to constitute the core configuration of the
genre and sub-genre in question. The shared significant features include the preference for
certain semantic fields of positively evaluative vocabulary, the use of exclusive we for the
identity of the institution and you for addressing the prospective students, the preference for
epistemic modality expressing uncertainty and deontic modality of exemption, and an
excessive use of causative syntactic structures.
The enabling line of university website discourse is promotional in character,
representing an example of long-copy, soft-sell advertising material skilfully combining
information mostly based on relevant credentials and positive evaluation. On the lexical
level, the universities draw upon paradigms revolving around the semantic features of
excellence and activeness respectively. The teaching, research, campus everything that
the university offers is introduced as: high quality, distinguished, limitless, impressive,
world-renowned, outstanding, four-star, world-leading, world-class, excellent, most
accomplished, top-level, spectacular, fantastic, or cutting-edge. Many of these expressions of
excellence evoke hard work and energy in general activeness and the drive for an impact
is further highlighted by expressions such as: innovative, ground-breaking, forward-thinking,
life-changing, most active, vibrant, or stimulating.
Throughout the enabling discourse, personal pronouns prevail as a means of
reference to the authorized participants of communication. The exclusive we stands for the
university and the second person you addresses directly the readers, more specifically the
targeted prospective students. We represents the identity of the enablers those who offer;
the you stands for the identity of the receivers (see example 9).
(9)

Increasingly we are offering a student experience where you can explore

sustainability, global environmental challenges, social justice and ethical dilemmas.
(Edinburgh)

There is a certain ambiguity in the identification of the collective antecedent to which

the pronoun we/our refers: it can encompass both academics and their management (ex.
10), or the institutional management only (ex. 12).
(10)

We expect the best for and from our students. After all we are educating many
of tomorrows leaders.
(Bristol)
Our aim is to develop the teaching methods that work best for students.
(Edinburgh)

(11)

Our academic staff are leaders in their field and their research directly informs
their teaching.
(Edinburgh)

The potential ambiguity of reference does not detract from the contribution that the
first person plural pronouns bring to building the image of the university as a closely-knit but
open and welcoming community, which co-operates and provides support (see also example
12).
(12)

Welcome to UCLA. We are expecting you.

(California)
We will continue our work to attract and retain academically gifted and highly
motivated students from a wide range of backgrounds, creating a diverse
and international University community. ... By coming to Bristol, you will share
in our proud heritage and help shape our future.
(Bristol)

As a macro speech act, the enabling discourse has the illocutionary force of a polite
offer. Direct imposition is avoided and emphasis is put on giving options, which is reflected in
the epistemic modal meanings expressed (ex. 13) as well as in the absence of deontic
modality, represented exclusively by the negative form of modals signalling exemption from
obligation (ex. 14). Will is often used referring to future-as-a-matter-of-course; an indirect
imposition could be seen in the use of will when speaking for the addressee and indicating
high probability (ex. 15).
(13)

These suggestions are not exhaustive but they are intended to give you some idea
of the options you might want to consider...
(Bristol)
Or you might want to undertake a work placement, either in the UK or abroad...
(Warwick)

(14)

You dont have to wait for opportunities to conduct your own research. ...
You dont need to take a programme that immerses you only in that field
any academic major can do it.
(California)

(15)

You will find studying at Warwick both exciting and challenging. You will have
the opportunity to learn from academic staff working at the forefront of their subjects
and you will be encouraged to experience the excitement of research for yourself.
(Warwick)

The most obvious example of the textualization of the enabling dimension in this
institutional discourse is the frequent use of causative syntactic structures, particularly the
structure with the verb help (see ex. 16). The causative structure includes two agents; the
action or the state of the second agent is facilitated or enabled by the first agent. The structure
thus encodes the mediating function of the university without depriving the students of their
share and the responsibility for the action. The university website discourse generally prefers
the wording of We encourage you to broaden your horizons (from the Warwick prospectus)
rather than asserting We will broaden your horizons. The preference for causative
structures of this type may be interpreted as an illustration of the tendency in the social
constitution of the self in contemporary society towards a more autonomous, self-motivating
self (a self-steering self) as discussed by Fairclough (1993).
(16)

Bristol will help you to achieve personal goals but also to serve societys needs

across the globe after graduation.

(Bristol)
We will enable you to fulfil your academic potential, make you a great prospect
for employers and give you a little bit extra.
(Leeds)
Our undergraduate research centers can help you get started.
(California)
Whereas the Charles University website lacks the enabling discourse line, Masaryk
Universitys discourse parameters are comparable with the British and American universities.
Nevertheless, there are certain significant differences in the ways in which the enabling
discourse is realized. In comparison with British and American university websites,
interpersonal meanings and promotional features are suppressed. Assertions of teaching and
research excellence are briefer and do not employ such a wide variety of evaluative
adjectives. Personal pronouns are avoided, with a tendency towards impersonal syntactic
structure including Masaryk University and students rather than we and you. The
limited personalization of discourse results in the lack of epistemic modality, and the enabling
character of the discourse results in the absence of deontic modality the text thus includes
only occasional expressions of possibility (ex. 17).
(17)

Studium na MU a ivot v Brn vm pin neopakovatelnou atmosfru a spoustu

monost. Na tchto strnkch se nyn mete s nktermi z nich seznmit.
(Studying at Masaryk University and living in Brno bring an extraordinary atmosphere
and a lot of opportunities. You can get to know some of them on this website.)
(Brno)

The enabling role of Masaryk Universitys offer is not encoded in causative structures;
the mediating function of the university experience is generally not made explicit they can
only be inferred by bridging assumptions (ex. 18).
(18)

Zhruba polovina student Masarykovy univerzity pravideln zskv prci jet

ped dokonenm studia a podl nezamstnanch absolvent po jednom a dvou letech
od ukonen studia je ni ne 1%. Vce ne tyi ptiny absolvent pak hodnot sv
zamstnn jako perspektivn.
(About half of Masaryk University students get a job even before they graduate
and the proportion of unemployed graduates after 1 2 years after graduation is less
than 1%. More than four fifths of graduates see their professions as promising.)
(Brno)

Except for the Charles University website, university internet presentations invariably
reflect not only the university and all its facilities but also its location the city, the region
and/or the campus. Universities without a campus grow together with the city or the region
and feel a close bond with their location. The home city anchors the university, and the citys
attractions are presented as an extension of the universitys offer. Studying at a given
university is thus seen as enabling the students to enjoy the beauties of the place. The
affiliation of campus universities is apparently looser, but even here the city or cities are
mentioned and relevant hypertext links promising specific information are incorporated into

the hypertext. The city or region are, however, viewed from the perspective of the universitys
needs rather than as a place of interest in itself (see ex. 19).
(19)

UCLA is a shared public asset, owned and operated by the people of California.
All 38 million of them.
The campus is a cultural magnet for the entire Southern California region. ...
UCLA Sports are also an important part of the L.A. lifestyle...
(California)
The University of Warwick is right in the centre of England, easy to reach by rail,
car or plane from all parts of the UK and abroad. Ideally located on the border
of the West Midlands and Warwickshire, providing easy access to the major cities
of Coventry and Birmingham, and the beautiful historic towns of Stratford-uponAvon, Warwick, Kenilworth and Royal Leamington Spa.
(Warwick)

With non-campus universities, the information on the city is fully integrated into the
presentation: the links opening a city website are either part of the Why choose ...? hypertext
path, or can be found on the university home page. In both cases the texts are fully integrated
into the generic structure of the university website: even though they employ lexicogrammatical devices typical of guidebooks, these elements are recontextualized to serve the
target audience. The city texts within non-campus university web discourse hence provide
an example of genre mixing, whereas links to city institutional websites inserted into campus
university presentations illustrate the practice of genre embedding on the internet (e.g. the link
to Coventry City Council offered by the Warwick website). The following extracts exemplify
the ways of recontextualizing the city information to meet the needs of the university and the
assumed expectations of the target users.
(20)

When you choose a university, youre also choosing the place that will be your new
home, so its worth getting it right. Our students always say how much they love
the city of Bristol from its friendly people and fantastic music scene to its vibrant
harbourside, green spaces and buzzing centre.
(Bristol)
Edinburgh has regularly been voted one of the most desirable places to live
in the world.
Our city mixes architectural beauty and history with a lively, fun environment.
Our city offers an exciting array of entertainment, history, culture and sport,
with the lush of Scottish countryside and coastline just a few miles away. ...
Find out more about our beautiful city on our city pages.
(Edinburgh)

While the Bristol University website implies a parallel between choosing the
university and choosing the university city by stressing the importance of deciding for the
right new home, and indirectly argues for Bristol by adding positive evaluation and
students endorsements, Edinburgh University has based its customization on the frequent use
of the possessive pronoun suggesting a joint identity shared by the University and the City of
Edinburgh and highlighting the dynamic atmosphere of the city: lively, fun environment,
an exciting array of entertainment. The city pages referred to here do not step outside the

University hypertext; they are designed by the University, again adjusting information to meet
the needs of the prospective students.
The hypertext line introducing the universitys offer and the attractions of the city or
region reveals an array of opportunities that the prospective students may benefit from once
they decide to apply to the given university. Their decision will be beneficial, however, only
if they are admitted by the university.
The rules and guidelines for the admission process are undoubtedly a major focus of
attention for prospective students, which is why the link to this colony of texts is often located
on the university home page (or if not, then always on the prospective students home page).
Requirements of different kinds represent the institutional discourse of constraint or
shouldness (Iedema, 1997) and as such they are not included in university print/pdf
prospectuses, which focus exclusively on the enabling role of the university; the admission
requirements are only referred to by the website address.
The considerable differences in the lexico-grammar of the discourse of enablement
and the discourse of shouldness signal that these two hypertext colonies should be
distinguished as two sub-genres of the genre of university web presentations. The
shouldness discourse is deprived of the evaluative premodification that typifies the
enablement discourse; the texts are matter-of-fact and focus on clarity and non-ambiguity of
expression. The directive function of the colony as a whole manifests itself in most of the
constituent speech acts. Mentioning the university explicitly as the agent of ordering tends to
be avoided. The frequency of exclusive we is limited; the subject position is filled either
with you, addressing the prospective students, or is kept impersonal (see ex. 21).
(21)

You must satisfy the admissions tutors that your academic qualifications are sufficient
to allow you to cope with the programme of study.
Applications will be accepted by UCAS from mid September and the normal closing
date for home students is 15 January.
(Bristol)

In contrast with the enablement discourse, the discourse of constraint is naturally

based on deontic modality expressing obligation, with occasional uses of can for possibility
and may for hedging (see ex. 22).
(22)

Applicants applying from outside the UK/EU can apply up to 30 June,...

Exemptions may be granted to students where there is clear alternative evidence
of an acceptable standard of English.
(Bristol)

The directive function of the requirements the prospective students are obliged to meet
is not encoded solely in modal verbs; there are four regular patterns in the corpus, occupying
different positions on the scale running between personalized and depersonalized orders
(Iedema, 1997): imperative (+ please), you + must/should, you + passive form of a verb
expressing obligation, and structures with impersonal subjects (ex. 23).
(23)

Check the progress of your application through the decision-making process via
UCAS Track.
You must provide evidence that your written and spoken English is at a level that will
enable you to succeed in your studies.
(Edinburgh)

...you are advised to consult the appropriate admissions tutor before applying.
(Bristol)
All applicants must have a strong academic record and have achieved (or be expected
to achieve) the minimum requirements for their chosen degree.
(Edinburgh)
All applications to full-time programmes apart from Dental Hygiene and the
International Foundation Programme must be made through the UCAS.
(Bristol)
Even though this part of discourse is characterized by neutral to formal standard language
including relevant terminology, certain universities employ even more playful language as
well as informal or colloquial expressions (ex. 24).
(24)

The who, what, when, where, and how of applying to UCLA.

(California)
If you havent visited the UCAS website yet, youll find a wealth of information,
including a step-by-step guide on how to apply for your course and advice on how
to complete your personal statement.
(Leeds)

Within the prospective students website as a whole, the series of texts on different
aspects of the admission process is the only representative of the traditional institutional
discourse of shouldness, which evolves in the hypertext without an invasion of promotional
features.
As was suggested earlier in this chapter, the Charles University prospective students
website stands out as an exception, contrasting sharply with all the other universities in the
corpus. The contrast consists in the absence of the enablement discourse in the form described
in this chapter: the Universitys offer is conveyed exclusively through impersonal
administrative texts listing the study programmes offered, without any traces of promotional
features. Except for a brief text characterizing the University, which is again firmly anchored
in the discourse of academic administration, the website does not provide any information
other than lists of programme types and a general description of the admission process. The
admission texts, displaying relevant rules, laws and requirements, use depersonalized ways of
expressing shouldness, which contribute to the institutional distance typical of the website as
a whole.
3.10

Establishing credentials

Credentials are generally defined as the qualities, training or experience that make you
suitable to do sth., or as documents such as letters that prove that you are who you claim to
be, and can therefore be trusted (Hornby, 2010). Within university presentations, establishing
credentials obviously lies at the centre of attention. As credentials distinguish selfglorification from defining ones values on the basis of clear evidence (cf. Bhatia, 2004),
establishing credentials is crucial: they provide an invaluable support to the whole of the
enablement discourse and may help distinguish between universities whose offers are
comparable.

For the purposes of this study, the first definition of credentials appears to be too
broad, not allowing us to draw any distinct line between justifying the product/service,
detailing the product/service and establishing credentials; the second definition, on the
other hand, is too narrow, limiting the confirmation of a universitys trustworthiness to
specific documents only. That is why here the move is considered to include assertions based
on evidence that could be checked with reference to sources outside the university, or
provided by subjects other than the university itself.
The importance of providing credentials and the colony nature of hypertext raises
specific demands on the realization of this move. The relative discontinuity of the network of
e-texts challenges the linearity of discourse and facilitates selective reading, so getting the
message across to the maximum number of readers requires that the message be integrated
into a number of e-texts. The building credentials move is thus scattered across the
prospective students hypertext, penetrating into a number of other moves of the genre,
namely into attracting the reader, justifying and detailing the product/service as well as
into celebrity/typical user endorsement (to be discussed in section 11). It should be also
stressed that certain assertions are multifunctional: the choice of a given university may be
justified by providing credentials for its qualities, and credentials may also bring details of the
offer provided.
The typical credentials scheme draws upon the following areas of evidence: the
universitys history (Fig. 3, ex. 25), the innovative impact on the life of the local and global
community (ex. 26), prizes awarded to the university, the academic staff and students (ex. 27),
the size of the university (ex. 28), and high-achieving alumni (ex. 29).

Figure 3

The picture of the 1348 foundation charter of Charles University, combined with a
photograph from the precincts of the oldest university building, is the only image within the
Charles University website; occupying solely the space of the middle vertical bar of the home
page, it attracts the audience by providing self-evidencing credentials.

Presenting the historical date of a university foundation as a credential in itself is rare

there is not any other example of this kind in the present corpus. Rather than foregrounding
the year of origin as such, universities introduce it as a starting point, as the beginning of
continuous work and development.
(25)

Od roku 1922 mme ji 150 794 absolvent.

(Since 1922 we have had 150 794 graduates.)
(Brno)
Influencing the world since 1583.
(Edinburgh)

The history of the university tends to be highlighted only if it is long-term and it is

typically connected with other credentials that emphasize achievements of current relevance:
hence the since reference to an interval reaching up to the present interrelated with the
number of graduates or comments on the universitys impact.
(26)

The University of Bristol was the first institute of higher education in the country
to admit women on an equal basis with men and in 1946 established the first
university Department of Drama in the UK.
(Bristol)
Vdci z MU pispli k odhalen zmn kmenovch bunk pi umlm mnoen.
(Masaryk University scientists have contributed to the discovery of changes in stem
cells in the course of artificial cell multiplication.)
(Brno)

The latter of the two examples mentioned above illustrates a developing trend of
interlinking the university home page with mass media resources journals, magazines, and
particularly on-line versions of newspapers. The specific contextualized links embedding a
news report into the genre of university presentations facilitate an on-going upgrading of the
building credentials move and bring topical evidence of the universitys never-ceasing
progress.
(27)

Edinburgh is one of the worlds leading research universities.

Our standing was reaffirmed by the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
which assesses the research quality of higher education institutions.
(Edinburgh)

Example 27 shows the interplay between defining the Universitys values within the
detailing the product/service move and confirming the trustworthiness of the assertion by
supplying credentials.
Credentials also include numbers presented as proving the high popularity of the
institution among university applicants, proving the institutions size showing the number of
both academics and students which is seen as its strength, and proving the broad range of
faculties, colleges, study programmes, or research projects, multiplying the opportunities
offered by the university. The largest university in the corpus is the University of California,
Los Angeles; the following example quotes the introduction to the UCLAs prospectus.
(28)

UCLAs strength is its size. Its part of our DNA, part of our promise: 4, 000 faculty.

5, 000 courses. 130 undergraduate majors. 109 academic departments. 880+ student
organizations. 11 graduate schools. UCLAs size means diversity is more than ideal.
It is a vibrant reality. Opportunity and possibility? Limitless. Welcome to UCLA.
We are expecting you.
The university presentation websites surveyed here not only give information on the
number of alumni and the achievements of some of them; they also indicate continuous cooperation between the university and its alumni and the support alumni provide to each other
and to the universitys current students. The universities thus emphasize the value and the
cohesiveness of the academic community, promoted throughout the prospective students
discourse, even beyond the borders of the university.
(29)

Your Warwick experience does not come to an end when you graduate! Instead, you
will become a member of the wider Warwick community a global network of current
students and graduates (alumni). We have around 150,000 alumni in more than 140
countries, so wherever you find yourself, there will be people who have shared your
Warwick experience.
This is an invaluable global network, enabling you to meet people both face to face
and online to get advice when youre applying to Warwick and, later, to support you
through your career.
(Warwick)
Notable alumni
Baroness Valerie Amos (Sociology, 1973 76) the UKs first female black Cabinet
Minister, now Head of the UNs Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA). ...
(Warwick)

3.11

Celebrity or typical user endorsement

Endorsement has a firm position in the prospective students hypertext and addresses the
audience in a multi-modal way. All the British and American universities offer, alongside
photographs accompanied with texts, a series of short videos featuring current students (or
occasionally visiting researchers and university administrators) explaining the universitys
strong points, showing the prospective students round the campus, sharing experiences with
them, or giving them advice. Masaryk University combines students endorsements with their
photographs and provides an electronic version of a magazine prepared by current students for
prospective students and welcoming them to student life at the University and in the city.
The typical user endorsements, i.e. current students personal messages, by far
outnumber endorsements expressed by professors or administrators. These peer-reviews and
the characteristics of their performers themselves echo the information presented and the
values promoted in the enablement line of detailing the product/service move; they could be
interpreted as credentials proving that the universitys offer, as well as the values advocated,
are actually realized in practice. The endorsers personal data displayed on the website
name, (year) and programme of study, (home city/country) correspond with the diversity of
study programmes and the cultural diversity highlighted in the detailing texts: the students
study at a variety of faculties/colleges and come from different parts of the country and
different cultural backgrounds. In their accounts they emphasize the qualities of teaching,
research, extracurricular experience, student life and city life the same qualities that are

foregrounded elsewhere in the university presentation, frequently even using identical key
words (see ex. 30). The endorsers speak for themselves using the first person singular, and
rather than addressing the audience directly they avoid the address or opt for the general
subject or object you. In sum, the series of personal endorsements forms a mosaic touching
upon all the aspects of study and life at university. The picture drawn by the endorsements is
to a large extent semantically and formally parallel to the detailing move, animating the
presentation with an authentic, personalized message enriched by the visualization of the
speaker.
(30)

I came to Warwick to do research in an innovative subject and have found the entire
experience amazing. Academically, socially, and personally, Warwick rewards you
in all these ways and prepares you for life in the future.
Andrew King, PhD, Microbiology & Fluid dynamics
(Warwick)
Anthony, Second year, BSc Accounting and Management
As well as encompassing the university life I always imagined I would have,
the Universitys fantastic reputation and the prestige that accompanies it persuaded
me to choose Bristol. I wanted to be part of the University renowned success
and it has definitely been the best choice for my degree programme.
(Bristol)
(highlighting added)

The expressions highlighted in the Warwick example mirror the key words of the
undergraduate on-line and printed prospectuses: the prospectus itself is called Warwick
experience and the key word recurs in all its parts, each of which opens up a different sphere
of student life at Warwick (academic, social, personal, and so on). Referring to one of the
highlighted qualities of the university, the word innovative also occupies a central position
in the prospective students discourse.
The second extract in example 30 echoes the key ideas of the Bristol prospective
students website, mentioned first in their home page headline (see section 6, example 2) and
then again in the introductory texts providing arguments for choosing Bristol (cf. section 9,
example 12).
3.12

Offering incentives, using pressure tactics and soliciting response

The last three moves Bhatia suggests (2004) as typical of promotional genres may be seen as
marginal if we consider the space they need to be realized. However, the brevity of their
realization is not always indicative of their importance. Particularly, the very last move of
soliciting response runs across the prospective students hypertext, manifesting itself in
three types of texts.
The users response is continuously solicited by the Contact us link opening an email correspondence with the university, which is located in the upper or lower horizontal bar
on university home pages, often included in headers that frame all the websites within the
hypertext. Interestingly enough, even this very short text exhibits stylistic variation consistent
with the tenor of the hypertext as a whole: the link soliciting a question or comment from the
users is usually represented just by the icon of an envelope, or the clickable expressions
Contact us, Contact, Contacts, Charles University website offers the link kontaktn
formul (contact form) instead.

At Czech universities the prospective students response is also solicited by offering a

link to an electronic application directly from the university home page, Charles University
being an exception as it does not use the electronic application system. As the British and
American universities use more than one application system and the systems are often run by
an organization outside the university (e.g. UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admission
Service), the prospective students home page includes a more general link How to apply?,
Admissions & applications, Undergraduate admissions, etc. leading to e-texts providing
more detailed information together with links to relevant admission systems.
All universities organize Open Days (Czech universities once a year, British and
American universities several times a year) and encourage prospective students to visit the
university they are considering not necessarily only during the Open Days. If the university
focuses mainly or exclusively on contacting the prospective students at the Open Days, the
Open Day link is provided on the university home page (e.g. Masaryk University); if the
university offers an array of opportunities to visit, including virtual visits and invitations to a
series of higher education fairs organized throughout the country, the appropriate links are
postponed to the prospective students home page, where it appears as Visit us, Visiting the
University, or Tours.
The use of pressure tactics is hardly traceable in the university websites, examples
can be occasionally found (ex. 31, the bold type print) but the punishment for noncompliance with the requirement involves mitigation (the underlined text).
(31)

Warwick strongly advises candidates to submit their applications as early as

possible, and before 15 January. The University is committed to considering all
applications as quickly as possible, but in the interests of fairness some decisions may
be delayed until the University has received all applications that are submitted by
15 January. We will give careful consideration to applications received after this date
where possible, however extremely competitive courses will not be able to consider
new applications at this stage.
(Warwick)
(highlighting added)

Neither pressure tactics nor incentives are a regular component of university website
presentations; not even incentives, though, are completely absent. With the presence of tuition
fees, which are currently (2011) being increased in the United Kingdom, different forms of
financial help come to the fore in deciding on a higher education. British universities thus
highlight links to information on bursaries, which may eventually play the role of incentives
(see ex. 32).
(32)

Best bursaries in the UK

The University of Edinburgh is offering the most

generous bursary package within the UK for those on the lowest household incomes.
(Edinburgh)

The Best bursaries... link is located next to current news links on the University of
Edinburgh home page and leads to an e-text with the sub-headline included in example 32,
explaining the situation and the offer in detail.
3.13

Conclusions

University web presentations represent a complex web genre, which is realized as a genre set
and organized as a hypertext discourse colony: in other words, the web genre of university

presentations consists of a set of sub-genres instantiated in e-texts, which are both formally
and semantically independent and at the same time related to each other by cohesive ties
between individual e-texts and between e-texts and the hypertext links leading to them. As
such, the form of university web presentations resemble in principle discourse/text colonies
realized in a non-electronic environment. The essential difference between the non-electronic
and electronic genres (print prospectuses vs. online prospectuses) has not proved to lie in the
discourse structure or the lexico-grammatical devices used; the specificity of the web genre
instead stems from the technological support facilitating the multi-modal realizations of
certain sub-genres or some of their moves and enabling the presentation of almost unlimited
amounts of information, including the embedding of e-texts primarily presented outside the
university hypertext.
All university websites surveyed offer special reading paths through the hypertext,
including a specialized path targeting prospective students. The dual communicative purpose
of the prospective students hypertext informing the target users about the universitys offer
and encouraging them to accept it results in genre mixing: the institutional discourse of
university presentations is colonized with promotional discourse, which takes over the leading
role. The leading role of the promotional genre manifests itself in the compliance of the
university web presentation as a whole with the move structure Bhatia (2004) suggests as
typical of instances of a promotional genre colony. The promotional charge of the
presentation has led to the expansion and foregrounding of the enablement dimension of this
institutional discourse and to the relative backgrounding of the dimension of constraint or
shouldness.
Individual hypertext components are multifunctional and often combine the functions
of more than one promotional move. The multifunctional character seems to be supported
here by the features inherent to hypertext: on the one hand the hierarchical structure of
hypertext exempts the producers from space limits and enables them to offer details to
interested parties, while on the other hand hypertext defies the linearity of text production and
reception and needs to reflect the fact that it is up to the readers which text components they
will decide to read and in which order. Both these features increase repetitiveness within the
website, particularly the reiteration of the key concepts with which the university wants to be
associated.
The research results show that the evolution of web genres can be seen as a gradual
process, which is on the one hand culture-dependent, but on the other hand contributes to the
globalizing effect that is typical of the internet. While British and American university
websites represent examples of an inherently variable but well-defined web genre, and the
Masaryk University website complies with all the attributes of the genre (at the same time
respecting demands for localization in order to meet culture-specific needs), Charles
Universitys website presentation shows that this genre is still evolving in the Czech context.
The Charles University website has not been recognized and used as an autonomous genre by
this institution: ignoring the opportunities provided by the technological support and the
possibility to address the users, e.g. prospective students, this website functions almost
exclusively as an electronic notice-board displaying a large amount of highly impersonal
institutional information, which is not consistently sorted with regard to users (prospective
student, current student, academic staff etc.), including lists of study programmes,
requirements, study regulations or graduates profiles as formulated in requests for
accreditation.

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