Discourse traditions, multimodality and media studies

In previous research, the concept of discourse traditions has predominantly been applied to the development of medieval genres. But Koch’s (1997) concept of discourse traditions as socially accepted stylistic norms, carried by cultural groups and situated between the levels of genres/text types, on the one hand, and the level of idiomatic expressions/fixed structures or samples, on the other hand, can also help us to explain tendencies like differentiation, blending or convergence in the development of multimodal texts in modern media. For this application, it is important to consider as well pictorial and acoustic aspects of cross-media influences in the framework of discourse traditions. In most cases, these cross-media influences are transmitted from older to younger media and genres, following the principle of “stylistic inertia” (Hauser 2008) accompanying the transgression of media limits. However, we also find a kind of repercussion of discourse traditions from new media to old media, observable for instance in the case of special interest magazines for young readers and thus demonstrating openness of the editorial staff to their readers’ environments