"Never judge a book by its cover": Generic and Promotional Variation in English and Arabic Linguistics Book Blurbs

Tahani Awad Jasim

doi:10.31973/aj.v1i119.339

Abstract

Blurbs are short descriptions of the contents of books usually written on their back covers for promotional purposes. This study explores the rhetorical and promotional structure of back cover blurbs accompanying English and Arabic linguistics books from genre- and evaluation- analysis perspectives. To achieve the study aims, a selected corpus of 100 blurbs, divided equally into 50 from English and Arabic linguistics book blurbs, has been considered for analysis. Results have revealed that the generic structure of book blurbs is built around a five-schematic move structure for both languages’ corpora. As to the promotional structure, positive and evaluative adjectives take precedence over other lexical categories in English and Arabic corpora. The generic and promotional structure identified all contributes to the communicative function of promoting the marketing sales of books advertised. Book blurbs can be considered as an advertising discourse performing a persuasive effect on the part of potential customers to buy and read the books advertised. 

Highlights

It is a common fact that most publishing companies and firms spend a lot of effort and money in designing their book covers to maximize their sales and to persuade their prospective readers to buy their products
To gain a better understanding of the role played by cross- linguistic variation in shaping the promotional genre of BBs, the present study examines, through a genre-based comparison, the cross- linguistic differences between the back cover blurbs of English and Arabic linguistics books in terms of their rhetorical organization and promotional structure
The texts examined in this study are a self-compiled corpus of 100 back cover blurbs of linguistics books published in English and Arabic languages

Summary

Introduction

It is a common fact that most publishing companies and firms spend a lot of effort and money in designing their book covers to maximize their sales and to persuade their prospective readers to buy their products. Gea-Valor (2007) contends that the booming industry of book advertisement has motivated "hundreds of publishing companies to benefit from an international market where they need to be competitive: this is why these companies carefully design their book covers, amongst other marketing strategies devised to attract potential customers" (p.159). These publishing houses resort to this influential policy to advertise and enhance the selling of their books. Blurbs have been studied for their generic structures and linguistic devices used to attract the potential customers

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