Do you know what is intergender?
Despite its complicated name, intergenderness, also known as intergender intertextuality, is an easy concept to be. understood and is related to textual genres: it is as if the different genres dialogue with each other, exchanging information and features. The result of this interesting “conversation” is hybridization, that is, the text starts to present varied elements, as if it were a puzzle.
This is only possible because the genres are dynamic, that is, they accept the modifications made by the speakers. As they are at the service of communication — and we know that communication is the main purpose of language — genres can be mixed to improve the construction of meanings in a text. How about looking at some examples? The following images illustrate advertisements, a genre in which the phenomenon of intergenderism is frequent:
In the Federal Government's propaganda, the comic book and commercial genres were mixed to create an interesting message
As you may have guessed, the advertisement above is a federal government anti-drug campaign. In it, we can identify an element that is not typical of advertising: the comic book. Comics is a genre of its own, but in this situation it was used to help the commercial genre to convey a message to the reader. Could this message have been conveyed without employing intergenderism? Yes, it could, but there is no doubt that the fusion of the two genres created an interesting effect that enriched and facilitated communication with the campaign's target audience: young people.
Take another example:
Submarino advertising campaign. In the ad above, there was a fusion of two genres: the advertisement genre and the personal letter genre
How can it be said that the image above is an advertisement and not a letter? Well, simple, because our metageneric competence (ability to recognize textual genres) allows us to identify the elements that are frequently used in advertising. Furthermore, it is clear that the purpose of communication is to sell a product, in this case, a service, it is enough to observe the non-verbal elements. There was, again, the fusion of two genres, the advertisement and the personal letter.
Intergenericity is a phenomenon that enriches communication, as it helps to construct the meanings of the text. In the two examples above, we could observe that inter-genre intertextuality created an interesting effect, making the message more impactful and even more attractive to the reader. Thanks to the dynamic nature of thetextual genres, new models are created, always with the intention of reaching recipients directly and effectively.
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
