Multimodal IT marketing discourse: An integrated approach investigation

Websites of software vendors feature verbal and nonverbal means providing for a number of parameters to be taken into account in order to gain more comprehensive insights into the range and interplay of the means in use. This paper investigates the multimodal website marketing discourse of Microsoft , Oracle, and SAP relying on an approach which makes use of multimodal critical discourse analysis, pragmatics, and text linguistics. The integrated framework allows for consideration of the discourse-generating intention of the locutionary source, the discourse function, verbal content categories and audio-visual techniques employed in the nonverbal discourse contributing to the global category of ideologeme consisting of key ideas and aimed at the locutionary target. The intention of such discourse is to persuade consumers to purchase IT solutions which is manifested in the persuasive function. The textual content has been investigated in terms of a set of categories such as: the theme, including IT terms; tonality, made explicit through positively charged words and imperative sentences; time and space, emphasizing time saving efforts to deal with challenges enterprise-wide. The findings are similar to those revealed in the verbal content of customer testimonial videos, with audio-visual techniques such as invigorating music, company settings, contrast colors, etc. being alike. It is of particular interest that the linguistic means in these three marketing discourses are different only when it comes to metaphorical expressions. The global ideologeme is made explicit by urging customers to optimize data and feel IT-powered performance benefits. It is conveyed through multiple antitheses such as data challenges vs. one solution, previously vs. now, old vs. new, and slowly vs. fast. The antitheses in the three marketing discourses are similar as are the typical manifestations of categories and audio-visual techniques which may encourage further research in terms of making the specific discourse of a company stand out to its customers.