Genre parameters of corporate press releases

Abstract

The press release as the main genre of public relations (PR) communication has penetrated into all spheres of public life and has become an integral part of modern world. Although the scope of research on the press release in the domain of public relations is extremely diverse, strikingly, the interest of linguists in this genre has so far been rather limited. In this paper we aim to explore the genre parameters and linguistic features of corporate press releases of international jewelry brands. The corpus of the data used for this study consists of 40 press releases issued by two luxury jewelry brands, namely Tiffany & Co. and Harry Winston, Inc. based in the USA between 2019 and 2021 and accessed on the corporations‘s websites. The collected data were analysed in qualitative terms within the theoretical framework of linguistic genre studies. The press release can be regarded as a multidimensional semiotic formation that combines verbal and nonverbal means of informing and influencing the target audience, the selection of which depends on the pragmatic intention of the author as well as the main genre parameters of the press release, such as information redundancy and lexico-grammatical uniformity. The information redundancy is realized by the frequent use of repetitions. The lexico-grammatical uniformity lies in the invariability of linguistic devices used in press releases of international jewelry brands, such as evaluations, superlatives, metaphors, quotations, direct reader address, and imperatives. The press release is a specific form of displaying relevant information about company‘s activities aimed at accumulating publicity capital and developing a positive corporate image. The main distinguishing features of press releases of luxury jewelry brands are accessibility, conciseness, information saturation, high level of formal structuring, hypertextuality, which contribute to the achievement of the goals of PR communication.