Page 113 - Literacy in the New Media Age

102 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

Figure 6.1 ‘Annapelle’: a multimodal promotional message

I will discuss one other example, a different genre (Figure 6.1). It is a
slight text, but I want to know what I can say about it generically. My own
definition of genre remains as before: genre is that shaping of text which reflects
and is brought into existence as a result of the social relations of the participants
in the making (writing/speaking) and in the use (reading/hearing/interpretation)
of a text. Here is a copy of the written part of the text:

Annapelle is a 100% Australian owned company specialising in the
manufacture and importing of quality handcrafted Leather handbags and
accessories. This fine produce which is made in Italian Leather was
manufactured in the People’s Republic of China under strict supervision,
and the packaging and quality inspection was carried out in Melbourne,
Australia.
(card supplied with leather purse)

The provenance of this text is as follows: it is a small card, about 5 x 10 cm, on
quite firm ‘cardboard’, olive/eucalypt green. It came, together with two other
cards exactly the same, in a leather purse, sent from Australia, in 1996 on the
occasion of a birthday, sent as a gift and as a memento from ‘home’ to us, living
now in England.
What can I say about this text from the point of view of genre? First, it
informs me, it tells me things, and in this it suggests a social relationship
between its makers and me: I am someone who may like (or need) to be told
things; ‘they’ are someone who can tell me things. The text is laid out in what I
take to be an aesthetically pleasing fashion – it is ‘sculpted’ (it reminds me of the
shapes of poems by the seventeenth-century poet George Herbert). The makers