Textual metadiscourse in commercial websites

Abstract

"Commercial websites do not only have to catch the attention of the web surfer, who in the endcan also become a potential customer, they are also engaged in the crucial task of guiding thereader through the complex maze of semiotic systems which constitutes a web page. Successfulsites are those giving the reader assistance to be able to find the relevant information he or sheis seeking. Although we assume that this navigation aid is not exclusively verbal, the aim of thispaper is to analyse some of the linguistic means by which this navigation is assisted and, moreparticularly, to explore the presence of textual metadiscourse. After giving a definition of theconcept of metadiscourse, we explore the insights that can be gained from the field of usability,within the area of Computer-Human Interaction, which will help us to detect more clearlymetadiscursive devices present in commercial websites. Then we categorize the different typesof textual metadiscourse and try to find some distinctive features of their presence in digitalmetadiscourse. Finally, we extend the classification to a group of devices which is restricted todigital discourse, hypertextual links or nodes. In so far as they help readers to navigate throughdigital documents, links play an outstanding role in commercial websites and can be classifiedaccording to the metadiscoursive function they carry out."