What are the Characteristics of Digital Genres? - Genre Theory from a Multi-Modal Perspective

This paper explores the possibility of extending the functional genre analysis model to account for the genre characteristics of non-linear, multi-modal, web-mediated documents. The extension involves a two-dimensional view on genres which allows us to account for the fact that digital genres not only act as text but also as medium. Genre theoretical concepts such as ´communicative purpose´, ´moves´, and ´rhetorical structure´ are being adapted to accommodate the multi-modal, non-linear characteristics of web texts. The homepage (the first, introductory page on a website - not to be confused with the ´personal homepage´ genre) constitutes the material for the theoretical discussions and the exemplary analyses.