## Inmaculada Fortanet, Juan Carlos Palmer & Santiago Posteguillo*

## The Emergence of a New Genre: Advertising on the Internet (netvertising)

## Abstract

This article describes the specific characteristics of internet genres . These  genres are characterized by the net system, a specific interlanguage, hypertext, the multimedia effect and an interactive audience. Netvertising is analysed as a representative example of an internet genre . A set of 20 first web pages of banner ads has been studied. The parameters considered are the following ones: http linkers, images used, integration of visuals with text, objectives of the ad, register, audience, overall page length, sentence length, verb tenses, punctuation marks and personal pronouns. Results show that most net ads are short texts. This conciseness is offset by a wider use of other devices such as punctuation marks, images and http linkers. Banner ads are based on an elaboration of images, with the text used, mainly a variety of brief sentences and noun phrases.

## 1. Introduction

A traditional old conception of the term genre stemming from early Aristotelian perspective postulated the view of genres as static structures mainly valuable for classificatory and explanatory purposes of basically literary manifestations. Linguists, as Levinson (1979) noted, were reluctant to incorporate an originally artistic term in their investigations  -  especially  when  such  inclusion  would  collide  with  much more linguistically established concepts such as those of discourse or register 1 . Additionally, collateral research work in such areas as folk- lore studies contributed to the idea of genres as static instances that were preserved and transmitted through tradition and cultural environment (Ben-Amos 1976) in such instances as myths, legends or tales . This  tendency  condemned  the  term  to  an  enslaved  existence  in  the world of taxonomies.

1 For further explanations on the conflict between genre, discourse, and register , see Frow (1980), Ventola (1984), Martin (1985) and Couture (1986).

* Inmaculada Fortanet, Juan Carlos Palmer & Santiago Posteguillo Universitat Jaume I Castello

A relatively new linguistic trend has come to re-define genre, adding to the concept not just form or structure, but also content, situation, context and objectives or communicative purposes (Swales 1990, Bhatia 1993, Devitt 1993, Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995). All these items become as central to the new conception of genre as form and if one of them is modified this,  in  turn,  implies  a  modification  of  the genre as a whole 2 - and situations, contexts and objectives vary according  to  the  natural  evolution  of  the  discourse  communities  in  which genres are realized. Consequently, genres change, being not static but dynamic instances subject to transformation.

Bitzer (1968) spoke of the existence of recurrent rhetorical situations and  Schutz  and  Luckmann  (1973)  claimed  that  rhetorical  instances underwent a process of systematic typification . Miller (1984) then  extended  the  relevance  of  the  concept  of recurrence from  the traditional literary and/or academic genres studied by linguistic insight to the rhetorical instances of everyday life (greetings, expressions of love or disgust, informal notes and similar natural daily generic instantiations). In an interesting metaphor, Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) considered this as enhancing the traditional linguistic analysis which focused on the genres of the senate to the incorporation of the genres of the agora as well. In this paper, we are concerned with the recurrent rhetorical instances which are taking place and undergoing a systematic process of still unstable typification in the specific context of the Internet. An initial research question may then be 'is Internet a senate or an agora?' Our assumption, and one of the ideas for which we endeavor to disclose some empirical proofs is that, even though the Internet was initially designed as a form of elitist academic senate (after its original military objectives), it has now radically turned into an agora undoubtedly the widest and most international agora ever in human history. A drastic change was brought about in the mid 90s when, along with an enormous - almost uncontrolled - expansion of the network, the commercial possibilities in both economic exchange and advertising of products have completely altered the initial concept of an academic Internet . This transformation has had a rippling effect in the way genres - originally designed for a different context and situation - are being reproduced on the net.

2 For the idea of genre integrity see Bhatia (1994).

How are we to approach the study of these unstable generic forms in constant  rapid  evolution?  This  poses  an  additional  problem.  Bakhtin (1986) distinguished between primary genres and secondary genres . The first group referred to those genres which are part of our daily experience (greetings, etc…), being simple and immediate in their instantiation  and  the  feedback  they  create.  In  contrast,  secondary  genres involve those which 'are removed from their instantiation'; in other words, those genres whose feedback is not immediate but distant - this is the case of, for instance, research articles in academic journals. This distance  between  instantiation  and  response  makes  these  genres  far more complex discursive manifestations of human thought. In relation to this division of genres, Internet genres represent a mixture of both primary  and  secondary  Bakhtinian  genres:  many  of  these Internet genres stem from originally complex secondary well-established and developed secondary genres - such as research articles - but the immediacy of the receiver's response is highly increased, bringing these new textual forms closer to the nature of primary genres; this is especially the case of e-mail messages or participatory genres which are now in vogue on the net (newsgroups, etc…). Ferrara, Brunner and Whittemore (1991) maintain that technology alters genres, producing what they define as blurred genres , and Yates and Orlikowski (1992) study and describe how a specific technological advancement resulted in a parallel generic revolution: this was the case of the appearance of the typewriter  which  favored  a  substantial  increase  of  correspondence among businesses on the one hand and, at the same time, contributed to the standardization of formats, styles and contents of these letters on the other. Among the various changes, Yates and Orlikowski also include the appearance of a new profession - typists - who, for a substantial period of time, had an influence on the evolution of these genres. Nowadays, typing has become a necessary skill for office workers - although it is now usually in demand in combination with word-processing.

Similarly, it is our contention that the appearance of Internet is creating a set of new generic forms for which we are yet to see which will prevail and which will simply be a flash in the pan. For instance, will html language become another necessary skill for professionals in such fields as advertising? Or will html and web pages create a new profession altogether?

Another important question is how far this generic evolution can advance. Berkenkotter and Huckin (1995) stress the significance of both form and content in the definition of genres. For them form and content influence the development of a genre in various ways: epistemologically, depending on the audience's background knowledge, depending on the newness of the genre and depending on the kairos or 'rhetorical timing'.  The  wider  the  background  knowledge  of  a  discourse  community is in relation to an emerging genre, the more that genre may evolve and depart from its original forms and contents. Additionally, the appropriate kairos or rhetorical timing is also essential and it seems very likely that the situation and audience is ripe for a substantial advancement in new generic forms as they are being developed in Internet - see Adell's (1994) preliminary descriptions of new genres which he is able to outline as already existing on the net only a couple of years later (Adell 1996).

Finally, among the new emerging genres on the Internet, advertising - in its various forms - represents one of the leading discursive manifestations of this process of continuous generic change which is currently taking place in this international computing agora. The significance of advertising in relation to sociolinguistic analysis has already been  addressed  regarding  its  more  traditional  forms  of  television, newspaper, magazine and other advertising media (Myers 1994). We have focused on the sociodiscursive study of target ads (linked to banner ads) - the most extended form of netvertising - as a representative genre of the new trend of textual manifestations which are to be encountered in the ever growing world of the Internet.

## 2. Characteristics of Internet genres

According to the definition of genre, there should be a group of features that define a certain kind of discourse as a separate genre.

Internet is a new means of communication which has become popular only in recent years. Much of what can be found on it is not systematized yet. This new means of communication has led to new genres, such as the web page or huge multimedia catalogues, but also to the application of existing ones, such as advertising or research articles. There are several features that all these genres have in common, among which we would like to highlight a few.

## 2.1. The net system

In  all  the  previous  communication  systems,  speech  was  defined  as what a speaker transmitted to a hearer. Consequently, both speaker and hearer had an important role in the communication process. The Internet has completely changed this generally assumed proposition. The issuer of the communication has very often lost his/her identity (for example, in an e-mail message the only thing you know about the issuer of the message is a codified 'address'), and messages can be addressed to just one person, but on most occasions, they can be reached by anybody, any person in the whole world (for example, advertisements). No other  means  of  communication  has  ever  had  such  a  wide  audience. Consequently, since the message is the essence of the communication, only the message is important.

## 2.2. Interlanguage

In relation to what we have just said, if a message comes from anybody in the world, and is addressed to anybody else, what is the consequence in the language used? We can say that over 90% of the information you can find on the Internet is in English. As is well-known, nowadays English is the most international language in the world. The use of any other language means a positive action towards the restriction of the audience.

But the English language may be greatly altered if the use of Internet continues expanding. Most Internet users are non-native speakers or even exclusively writers - of English, who do not use this language in their daily life, which means they are suffering continuous interference from their various mother tongues.

Additionally, there is the special metalanguage that this new means of communication is producing, with expressions such as the follow- ing: to link (relate different parts of a document by means of hypertext), cookie (some kind of file that stores information), communicon (= communication + icon; combination of letters and symbols used on the Internet e-mail to provide emphasis or clarification (Ellsworth et al. 1997: 395-412)), and similar expressions.

What will be the result of using English as the international net language? This is  an  open  problem  that  future  sociolinguistic  research will have to deal with.

## 2.3. Hypertext

One special characteristic of Internet is the use of hypertext; this means that  the  information  is  distributed  in  layers  to  which  the  reader  can have access just by choosing a word or icon and double clicking on it. In this way, readers of the same text may get different readings from it, depending on the layers of information they have opened and the order in which they have done it.

## 2.4. Multimedia effect

On the Internet, you do not only find texts. Other communication elements  are  interlinked  with  the  'traditional  computer  texts',  such  as movies and animation, moving graphics, sound files, databases and catalogues, and programs that run directly on your computer (Ellsworth et al. 1997: 4-5). Day after day new technologies appear, allowing computing designers to introduce new elements (Ellsworth et al. 1997: 26), as for example:

1. Java - which provides for some mini-applications or programs for motion, sound, calculation, and other functions;
2. Shockwave , which allows multimedia movies to be embedded;
3. RealAudio , which provides sound in real time or via files.

## 2.5. The role of the audience

The most evident innovation that this new means of communication has brought is the change in the role of the audience. From now on, receivers will not be passive any more; they have to take decisions and act, if they want to receive the message. Moreover, they can choose the message they want to receive as well as when and how to read it. They can also decide if they want to respond to the message or not, and also when and how to do it. Of course, not all information is transmitted in the same way on the Internet, but this will be a recurrent characteristic of the communication process within the World Wide Web.

All these characteristics make the Internet a new and peculiar means of communication which, as we said above, is leading to the creation of new genres and to new applications of traditional ones. These new genres and applications will deserve the special attention of linguistic researchers. In our case, we would like to give an example of how to analyze netvertising - that is, advertising on the Internet.

## 3. Netvertising: the emergence of a new genre

The language of advertising, together with the effectiveness of advertising  as  a  marketing  strategy,  has  been  widely  analyzed.  However, these analyses have not yet been applied to the Internet advertising, or netvertising .

Before starting the analysis of Internet advertisements, or netads, we have made a bibliographical search to first define what is advertising, different kinds of advertising, and the parameters traditionally analyzed in the language of advertising.

We can say that advertising is informing the public or a sector of the public  about  a  product,  company,  service,  action,  etc.  The  language used is usually selected with great care to meet particular aims. Apart from informing, advertisements are also used to persuade and influence (Vestergaard  and  Schröder  1985:  vii).  There  are  two  main  kinds  of advertising, according to Vestergaard and Schröder (1985: 1-3): noncommercial and commercial advertising. The former includes communications from government agencies to citizens, and appeals from various associations and societies, with aims that range from charity to political propaganda. Commercial advertising can take many forms; for example it can be used to advertise the name or image of a company by means of public extracts of company reports or accounts in prestigious newspapers ( prestige advertising ). Another type of commercial advertising is industrial advertising in which a firm advertises its products or services to other firms. This type of advertising is different from prestige and consumer advertising, because both the advertiser and the prospective reader have a special interest in what is being advertised, and they have some knowledge about it. This is reflected in the language used; factual information is more important and there is less emphasis on persuasion. The third type is consumer advertising , in which a firm tries to sell its products or services to the consumers.

All these kinds of advertising are used on the Internet: prestige and industrial advertising can be found in specific http addresses, which interested users may find specifically for each occasion. We are more concerned with consumer advertising which, as we shall see, is very frequent on the net.

Next, we have looked into the different parameters traditionally analyzed for advertising. The first source we have considered is the book by Vestergaard and Schröder, The Language of Advertising (1985: 1348), which distinguishes between two kinds of parameters: the verbal message and the visual message. In the verbal message, they study the communication situation; textual structure:  cohesion  and  coherence; information  structure;  content:  implicit  and  explicit;  and  participant roles. Related to the visual message, they study text and picture; images and communication; icon, index, and symbol; denotation and connotation; and visual emphasis.

Our second source has been the book edited by Myers, Words in Ads (1994), in which the following parameters for advertising research are dealt with: slogans; sentence type and sentence structure; puns, associations and meanings; pronouns and addresses; languages and varieties  as  signs; conversations and everyday life; metaphor; words and pictures; and audiences.

Finally, our third source for reference is the book by Berke, Successful Advertising for Small Businesses (1996). This is, as its subtitle explains 'a complete guide to planning, writing, designing and laying out great advertising'. It is not a research monograph but it includes some advice on how to write advertisements, paying attention to the following aspects: headlines; length; and pictures and captions.

All  these  parameters  have  not  been  established  for  any  means  of communication in particular, though it seems obvious that the importance of the image is greater in a television commercial than in a newspaper advert. The question that remains unanswered is if all these parameters are applicable to netvertising. This will be one of the aims of this study: to establish parameters that can be studied in a corpus of netadverts.

## 3.1. Method

For this study we will use a corpus of 20 first web pages of 'target ads'. Novak and Hoffman (1996: 4) define a 'banner ad' as 'a small, typically rectangular, graphic image which is linked to a target ad .(...) Banner ads typically provide little information other than the identification of the sponsor, and serve as an invitation for the visitor to click on the banner to learn more'. Banner ads, according to Chatterjee (1996), are a form of passive advertising exposure . Once the reader/ consumer decides to click on the banner ad, and so gaining access to the target ad, s/he is exposed to active advertising. We decided to choose first pages of target ads for our study because banner ads have little language material to be analyzed, and there is usually a very complex and constant change of text and image in motion, which makes an analysis very difficult.

Additionally, we decided to limit the corpus to first pages because some ads have a very large number of linkers that lead the viewer to a never ending process of selecting paths to get more and more information. On the other hand, another criterion followed in the choice of the corpus was the selection of only those adverts whose first pages had enough text and content to be analyzed, since some of these first pages  were  just  indexes  or  tables  of  contents  with  lists  of  items  to choose from.

As for the parameters, we decided that it would be interesting to observe the different elements of content (http linkers, different types of images used - pictures, photographs, cartoons... -, integration of these elements,  etc.)  that  could  be  found  in  each  advert.  We  thought  this parameter could be rather different from those used for traditional advertising. After a thorough examination, we chose the linkers and the images for our analysis, paying special attention to their relationship with the text.

Other parameters we have analyzed are:

- -Objectives of the advertisements
- -Register and audience
- -Linguistic  analysis:  overall  page  length  of  the  advertisements, sentence length, tenses, punctuation marks and personal pronouns.

Our hypothesis is that we can obtain new and different results in this corpus, in comparison with other genres where we have already ana- lyzed some of these variables. 3 This is but a short list of the parameters that can be analyzed with a corpus of netadverts. Many of those proposed by the authors mentioned before could also be studied, and it would be very interesting to compare the results with those obtained with a corpus of other kinds of advertisements.

However, the aim of the present research was not to obtain final results that could lead us to important conclusions on netvertising. We just wanted to introduce a new genre and new ways to study it. The main difficulty of such work is that nothing has been done before: there are  neither  taxonomies  to  be  applied,  nor  results  to  compare  with; everything has to be done from scratch.

In the next section, we will present the results we have obtained after analyzing  the  parameters  mentioned  before,  and  the  taxonomies  we propose for this and further research.

## 4. Analysis and discussion

## 4.1. Objectives of the advertisement

Certainly all advertisements aim at selling the products they advertise; however there are variations in the directness of this final objective due to different advertising strategies. Thus, we could say that some advertisements focus more on influencing or trying to change their consumers' attitudes towards a certain product, whereas others are more direct and straightforward in their approach to their audience. Additionally, in the context of the Internet, advertisers could take advantage of this advanced technological environment and obtain information from their potential buyers. Taking into consideration these different approaches to advertising, we have noticed that in the corpus of 20 netads selected, 16 aimed at changing the audience's opinions, 11 included elements of direct sale of a product, but only 5 took advantage of the technological possibility  of  the  net  to  obtain  information  from  potential  buyers. Whether this lack of full exploitation of all the capabilities of the new context in which these ads are being exhibited (i.e. the Internet) is due to a deliberate advertising strategy - i.e. advertisers may regard the re- quest of information from the buyer as a negative approach - or simply a matter of a not yet complete adaptation of the genre of advertising to a new technological context remains as an open question with relevant sociolinguistic implications for further future research.

3 See Fortanet et al. (1996), Posteguillo (1996), Palmer and Posteguillo (1997a), and Fortanet et al. (1997) for linguistic analyses of the use of tenses, use of punctuation marks, sentence length, and other similar linguistic variables.

## 4.2. Register and audience

In relation to the register of these netads, and paying special attention to vocabulary and style, we distinguish between three different levels: a colloquial, neutral and technical register. A predominance of the colloquial register has been detected - with 10 ads at this colloquial level and 5 with a combination of a colloquial and a neutral register; 3 appeared written in a neutral level and only 2 incorporated a technical style.

## 4.3. Linguistic analysis

After analyzing this type of advertisements, we observed that most of them were fairly short, ranging from one to three pages. In fact, out of the 20 ads analyzed, 12 of them were just one page long, 2 of them could be printed in a couple of pages, whereas the other 6 were printed in three pages. It seems as if the first feature that we could see in our analysis was conciseness.

In fact, our second analysis showed that the number of sentences and noun phrases appearing in the twenty ads was an average of 40.4 statements per advert. 4 Considering this number, we can conclude that there  are  definitely  more  statements  than  in  traditional  press  ads. Therefore, it is important to observe how long those statements are.

Also in the study of statement length, we could observe the characteristic of conciseness. In fact our data showed that, among the 20 ads observed, a huge percentage of statements were either one or two words long. Only a few sentences were formed by 20 or more words, which seemed to prove that conciseness, being one of the most important qualities of advertising, becomes even more important when dealing with netvertising. Figure 1 shows this trend.

4 The total figure observed after analysing the twenty ads was 808 sentences or noun phrases.

Nu Df

TH

·

Figure 1. Statement length as measured by the number of words

<!-- image -->

As figure 1 shows, most statements were very short. However, if we consider the complete results, it could be interesting to observe that most  statements  were  either  short  noun  phrases  or  brief  imperative sentences designed to prompt possible customers into the buying habit. A further study of those types of statements appearing within the 20 ads analyzed would be relevant in order to observe how this type of advertisements were written.

First of all, we distinguished between noun phrases and sentences. The former totalled 461, equaling 57.05 % of the total, of which most coincided with http linkers. We found 347 sentences within the 20 ads, of which 262 were simple sentences and 85 were compound sentences. Nevertheless, this type of sentences demanded further analysis as we hypothesize  that  a  good  number  of  these  could  be  imperative  sentences.  Figure  2  shows  the  different  verb  tenses  used  within  simple sentences with the corresponding predominance of imperative forms.

Figure 2. Use of verb tenses

<!-- image -->

As we can see in figure 2, most sentences appear either in the imperative (134) or in the simple present (103), amounting to a total of 90.45 per cent of the total number of verb tenses used.

An analysis of the 85 compound sentences observed provided 33 different combinations. Nevertheless, once again imperatives and simple present tenses were by far the most usual ones, appearing in 80 of those combinations. The most common compound sentence is the one following the simple present + simple present pattern (23 instances). In most cases, this pattern introduced either a conditional sentence ( If you need further information, you can call... )  or  a  judgment  ( This  is  an offer you can't refuse! ). Additionally, in 15 of these 23 cases, at least one of the sentences appeared introduced by a modal verb.

Regarding the use of personal pronouns, as it could be expected in a set of texts where there is a predominance of imperative forms, you is the most frequently used personal pronoun, followed by it , and we/us (see table 1). You is used to systematically address the receiver of the advertisement, it is used as a substitute for the product being advertised, and we/us refer to the sellers. Additionally there are some instances of other pronouns such as they/them to refer to the competition, and I used to refer to the receiver of the advertisement in the context where he or she is required to give information about himself or herself.

Table 1. Use of personal pronouns

| Type of personal pronoun   |   Number of instances used |
|----------------------------|----------------------------|
| You                        |                         99 |
| It                         |                         18 |
| We                         |                         13 |
| I                          |                          6 |
| Us                         |                          5 |
| They                       |                          3 |
| Them                       |                          2 |
| She                        |                          1 |
| Her                        |                          1 |
| Yourself                   |                          1 |

Observing all these data, we can conclude that most advertisements were short texts created by either simple sentences or noun phrases, giving special importance to imperative messages, prompting readers to buy the products advertised. Nevertheless, we also consider that this analysis should go further, paying special attention to the type of punctuation marks most often used when designing this type of text. With the  exception  of  the  traditional  punctuation  marks  ( period , comma , semi-colon ), we observed that netvertising authors used different punctuation in order to transmit a message to potential customers. Table 2 shows our findings.

Table 2. Use of punctuation marks

| Type of punctuation mark   | Number of instances used   | Purpose                                                       | Examples                                                                                                                        |
|----------------------------|----------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| -                          | 15                         | To introduce authors' observations                            | Internet, intranet, extranet --we make the net a business tool.                                                                 |
| :                          | 27                         | To offer examples                                             | Read all about it:full details AlphaServer Systems and the world- class customers who use them to work faster, smarter, better. |
| (                          | 30                         | To offer examples and clarifying instructions                 | (Click here for terms and price details)                                                                                        |
| /                          | 10                         | To offer options                                              | Make a purchase/lease request.                                                                                                  |
| !                          | 63To                       | stress the importance offer                                   | of an No fees or clubs to join!                                                                                                 |
| ?                          |                            | 23Rhetorical questions                                        | Looking for high quality, low cost auto insurance?                                                                              |
| ...                        | 25                         | To introduce special offer or funny comment                   | Now it is possible to check out your blind date... before the date.                                                             |
| ''                         | 13To                       | introduce specific reported sentences, or newly- coined terms | terms, It brings thousands of the hottest uncensored videos out of the video store 'back room' and onto your computer screen.   |
| [                          | 13To                       | introduce foot                                                | linkers [What's new] [Tips and Time Savers]                                                                                     |

As table 2 shows, advertising on the net clearly relies on a vast usage of different punctuation marks for distinct specific purposes.

## 4.4. Content units: images and HT linkers

Nevertheless, as in most other advertising genres, text is only one of the multiple features that linguists should study. For instance, a complementary analysis of the images appearing in the 20 ads selected for our research provided additional information for a better understanding of what each text was about. 5 To be precise, we have found three different types of images: pictures, cartoons and photographs.

After analyzing our corpus of ads, we observed a total number of 90 images. This number can be quite misleading, because they were not evenly distributed over the ads: whereas 2 ads had 12 images each, there were 5 ads with only 1 image. Table 3 shows the overall results.

5 We have also stressed the relevance of visual information in previous studies about other  different  genres,  especially  in  the  relationship  between  graphics  and  texts  in research articles (Fortanet et al. 1996), and textbooks (Posteguillo 1997).

on Although results did not show a common trend in usage, all the advertisements analyzed used images in at least one instance, showing the importance of graphical information in advertising.

Table 3. Number of images used

| Number of images per text.   | Instances observed   |
|------------------------------|----------------------|
| 1                            | 5                    |
| 2                            | 3                    |
| 3                            | 4                    |
| 4                            | 1                    |
| 5                            | 1                    |
| 6                            | 1                    |
| 7                            | 1                    |
| 10                           | 1                    |
| 11                           | 1                    |
| 12                           | 2                    |
| Total 20                     | Total 20             |

We also paid attention to the kind of images appearing within the ads analyzed. Our results showed, as we said above, that there were three important types of images: pictures, cartoons and photographs. A further analysis revealed that pictures were the most often used type of image, with cartoons and photographs far behind (see figure 3 below).

Figure 3. Different types of images

<!-- image -->

Additionally, we have observed that images are often interconnected with texts (in 56 instances out of 90, i.e., 62.2%). This seemed to show that  publicists  frequently  resort  to  images  as  a  means  of  conveying their messages but that, at the same time, they decide to combine image with  text,  so  that  this  combination  becomes  a  characteristic  of  this genre What is most important is to observe how hypertext plays an important part within this genre. In order to analyze this hypothesis we considered the number of http linkers appearing within these ads, creating our own taxonomy to define them. Table 5 shows how most linkers were side-linking  devices,  offering  the  option  to  access  a  new  web  page from a clearly defined position on the screen:

Table 4. Type of picture/text combinations

| Type of picture/text combination   |   Number of instances used |
|------------------------------------|----------------------------|
| Picture only                       |                         22 |
| Picture + one text                 |                         33 |
| Picture + more than one text       |                          2 |
| Photograph only                    |                          5 |
| Photograph + one text              |                          8 |
| Photograph + more than one text    |                          2 |
| Cartoon                            |                          7 |
| Cartoon + one text                 |                         11 |

Table 5. Type of http linkers

| Type of http linker       |   Number of instances |
|---------------------------|-----------------------|
| side linkers              |                   194 |
| text-integrated linkers   |                    96 |
| linkers within an image   |                    62 |
| images as linkers         |                    53 |
| foot linkers              |                    51 |
| Total number of instances |                   456 |

These results seem to indicate that a good number of linkers appear on the side of the page, either in bold type or with a different color, making quite explicit its web-page linking function. On the other hand, an average of 22.8 linkers per advertisement gives an idea of the neverending progression of the overall world of netvertising, and the huge commercial possibilities of this still underdeveloped genre.

## 5. Conclusion

Most of these net advertisements are short texts, very much in line with other similar, more traditional forms of advertising. The conciseness regarding the form of expression to convey the message of the publicists is especially noticeable when it comes to syntax: a majority of statements are either very brief (made up of 1, 2, 3 or 4 words) or noun phrases.  There  is  a  corresponding  predominance  of  imperatives  and simple present tense verb form, most appropriate for this predominantly concise style.

This reduction of text length is offset by a wider use of other devices, namely punctuation marks, images, and http linkers. In our view, the incorporation of these additional elements aims at increasing the vividness  of  the  advertisements.  Certainly,  the  combination  of  the various  types  of  images  used  (pictures,  photographs,  and  cartoons) with the http linkers results in a more appealing message than if they were text-based advertisements.

We have carried out an initial analysis and categorization of http linkers; however, since these represent a specific feature of internet HT discourse, and are a novelty for the genre analyst, it is our contention that further research in this area should be carried out, not only from a purely linguistic point of view, but especially from a sociolinguistic or pragmatic perspective, in order to analyze which elements are selected by HT authors as linkers.

We  believe  in  the  increasing  relevance  of  linguistic  analyses  of Internet genres for pedagogical purposes in English Language Teaching  in  general  and,  more  specifically,  in  the  contexts  of  English  for Academic Purposes and English for Specific Purposes. Therefore, the introduction of the study of HT genres within the syllabus of applied linguistics  courses  within  English  Studies  or  English  Philology  degrees should be taken into consideration. 6

6 We have already argued for a shift in English Philology degrees from a literary or theoretical linguistics-based emphasis towards a more applied linguistics/teacher training-based syllabus (Palmer and Posteguillo 1997b).

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## Corpus analysed

- http://www.novell.com/ROCKTHENET
- http://www.ads.digital.com/world/
- http://www.autobytel.com/
- http://www.autotown.com/autoquote.html
- http://www.prograde.com/nails/
- http://www.clothesline.com/
- http://micro.sitespecific.com/Quicken/TurboTax/cgi-bin/tt.iv.09.tt.x.ncgi/

- http://www.att.com/w3403/attworldnetservice/needforspeedc.html
- http://www.intel.com/proshare/videophone/
- http://www.buick.com/cgi-bin/homepage.pl ?buick+homepage+Y+
- http://www.biztravel.com/V4/a20\_a-0-0-0...age=00000000&data=0&target=Main& dest=here
- http://www.sun.co
- http://www.metlife.com/
- http://members.aol.com/ucbooks/BG.index.html
- http://www.securetax.com/
- http://www.homearts.com/cgibin/metascipt.pl...e/05brazilf.1.htm%20/mktbanner/mbrazil.gif
- http://www.register.com/nutek
- http://www.globetrotter.com/
- http://www.easports.com/fifa97/index.html
- http://www.hardchannels.com/