ABSTRACT
The technological revolution has led to the emergence of a burgeoning number of digital genres, such as blogs, corporate or social networking sites, and the proliferation of studies and conferences on them. In this chapter we review the significance of these dynamic and digital entities for scholars and professionals who deal with their analysis or production. The chapter starts with an overview of the vast amount of theoretical and empirical research that has been produced in TS using models and methods borrowed from Discourse Analysis, Language Service Providers (LSP) (Swales 1990, 2004; Bhatia 1993, 2008) and Contrastive Studies (Hartman 1980). We will argue that genre analysis can represent a solid foundation for the practice, research, and training efforts in web localization. A model for digital genre analysis is presented in which the complex interrelation of textual super-, macro- and microstructures plays an essential role. This type of analysis can be of the utmost importance when conducting quantitative and qualitative empirical research using these genres. The chapter ends with a proposed open taxonomy of digital genres.
