This paper analyses the organizational structure of academic BCBBs, identifying and classifying their components, describing their preferred sequencing, and motivating their communicative functions in the larger text. The analysis shows that BCBBs are complex from three points of view: goal orientation, textual organization and generic structure. First, BCBBs are hybrid in function: they are meant both to help the reader form an opinion about given books and to present the books attractively for the authors/publishers’ benefit. This informational-promotional goal is satisfied through the selection of information units that appear to be informative, appealing and accurate. Second, BCBBs are elaborate in structure. There are two main categories of structural components, each of which includes many subtypes, which can be combined in various ways. Also, although given sequences of moves recur in a majority of the texts, no single move is shared by all the texts examined, so that no structure potential, but only a typical framework, can be identified for the genre. Finally, descriptive moves may be realized through discontinuous text segments and/or satisfy two communicative functions simultaneously, which makes it hard to identify and define them. Third, BCBBs are sophisticated in the relationships they establish with other texts and genres. They reproduced excerpts from the larger texts they belong to; at the same time, they draw on a variety of genres to construct their textual building blocks. Also, they reproduce their textual framework in a spiral fashion as a way to attract attention to more and more books. Finally, they may surprise the reader by pointing away from the books they are part of to other texts, somehow relevant to them. The study indicates that informational-promotional texts may be elaborate in structure and varied in content, independently of their sheer length. It also suggests that a consideration of an overarching communicative and transactional function may be necessary to understand their organization. Finally, it provides support for the usefulness of the notion of prototype as an explanatory tool in the relationships between genre members.
Structural and generic complexity in back-cover blurbs of academic books
GESUATO, SARA
2007
Abstract
This paper analyses the organizational structure of academic BCBBs, identifying and classifying their components, describing their preferred sequencing, and motivating their communicative functions in the larger text. The analysis shows that BCBBs are complex from three points of view: goal orientation, textual organization and generic structure. First, BCBBs are hybrid in function: they are meant both to help the reader form an opinion about given books and to present the books attractively for the authors/publishers’ benefit. This informational-promotional goal is satisfied through the selection of information units that appear to be informative, appealing and accurate. Second, BCBBs are elaborate in structure. There are two main categories of structural components, each of which includes many subtypes, which can be combined in various ways. Also, although given sequences of moves recur in a majority of the texts, no single move is shared by all the texts examined, so that no structure potential, but only a typical framework, can be identified for the genre. Finally, descriptive moves may be realized through discontinuous text segments and/or satisfy two communicative functions simultaneously, which makes it hard to identify and define them. Third, BCBBs are sophisticated in the relationships they establish with other texts and genres. They reproduced excerpts from the larger texts they belong to; at the same time, they draw on a variety of genres to construct their textual building blocks. Also, they reproduce their textual framework in a spiral fashion as a way to attract attention to more and more books. Finally, they may surprise the reader by pointing away from the books they are part of to other texts, somehow relevant to them. The study indicates that informational-promotional texts may be elaborate in structure and varied in content, independently of their sheer length. It also suggests that a consideration of an overarching communicative and transactional function may be necessary to understand their organization. Finally, it provides support for the usefulness of the notion of prototype as an explanatory tool in the relationships between genre members.
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