Genre analysis in the digital era: Developments and challenges

Abstract

The widespread adoption of digital communication has led to the evolution of human society into a digital and multimodal era. As genres are constructed to address the problems existing in reality, they tend to absorb the digital and multimodal elements and are developing into new forms and functions. In consideration of these developments, genre scholars have devised theoretical and methodological toolkits that might respond to reality. However, these newly formulated insights are dispersed among various studies which warrant a comprehensive review for the future scholars to refer to. In this context, the present article surveys a wide range of studies available in the literature and identifies three major developments in the genre analysis, namely, digital genre analysis, multimodal genre analysis, and genre innovation. In addition to these developments, it has been observed that in the digital era, the genre analysts are confronted with epistemological, methodological, and ethical issues. In consideration of these issues, the present report discusses the possible solutions that the analysts may consider while researching digital-multimodal genres. The developments and challenges identified in the present review reveal the social dimension of genre, and imply the necessity of viewing genre as a socially-oriented, dynamic, communicative phenomenon that corresponds to the continually evolving social reality.