Tracking the change in institutional genre: a diachronic corpus-based study of White House Press Briefings

Genre specific features are subject to changes due to external factors such as internationalisation and globalisation; (Candlin and Gotti 2004; Cortese and Duszak 2008) but are also due to internal dynamics. This study focuses on evolving aspects of disciplinary discourses recording the transformations undergone by domain-specific genres with particular reference to examining processes of genre variation, evolution and contamination within institutional communication. By genre analysis we aim to describe language use in professional and institutional settings (Bhatia 2004). Within this general framework our focus is on a specific genre of political communication, i.e. the White House press briefing. The briefings are the meetings with the press held by the White House Press Secretary, through which the White House delivers official information and announcements about the President’s daily schedule, explains the administration’s decisions and policies, responds to criticism, provides commentary on current events, and answers the questions posed by the press (Kumar 2007, 235). As reported by a number of presidency scholars (Perloff 1998; Kumar 2007), the importance of communication and media relations at the White House has been steadily growing throughout the 20th century, and nowadays “the president and the news media jointly occupy center stage” (Perloff 1998, 58). The aim of this study is to explore discoursal aspects of this institutional genre through an investigation of its phraseological clusters with a view to identifying changes in the individual podium’s strategies related to shifting roles according to communicative strategic needs.