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.