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Re-branding academic institutions with corporate advertising: a genre perspective

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA, SELANGOR, MALAYSIA, dhajibah{at}salam.uitm.edu.my

The end of the 1990s witnessed the corporatization of public universities in Malaysia resulting in the publication of corporate literature in these universities and the type of writing Fairclough (1993) refers to as the marketization of academic discourse. Marketization is necessary in public universities due to stiff competition in attracting students among the public universities as well as from the increasing number of private universities. This article reports how Malaysian universities re-brand themselves using the results of an investigation on corporate brochures from these universities. The investigation employs a structural analysis and a textual analysis. Although informative in nature, these corporate brochures exhibit the use of promotional elements in the texts as seen in the contents and the language use. The communicative functions of university brochures are viewed to be more promotional than informative.

Key Words: brochures • corporate culture • genre analysis • re-branding • universities

Discourse & Communication, Vol. 2, No. 1, 57-77 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1750481307085577


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