Genre and Multimodality: a computer model of genre in document layout

The GeM project ran from 1999 until 2002 and was concerned with developing the first XML annotation scheme for multilayered description of illustrated documents with complex layout. The GeM framework allows layout, rhetorical structure, content and language of different text types to be represented and interrogated. The work begun within GeM is now being continued in a variety of activities. A follow-up project is in the planning stage and will be linked to here when underway.

The outputs of the original GeM project were:

• An annotated corpus of newspapers, illustrated bird guides, instruction manuals and websites
• An XML annotation scheme for illustrated documents
• A prototype generator (implemented with) XSLT that produces laid-out pages expressed in terms of XSL:FO.

The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. It is based at the University of Stirling in the UK (Judy Delin, Renate Henschel), and the Faculty of Language and Literature at the University of Bremen (John Bateman). Patrick Allen of the University of Bradford is an Associate of the project. Key input also comes from our design collaborators: The Guardian, Harper Collins, The Herald, JET Documentation Services, and Enterprise IDU where Judy Delin is Head of Research.

The information on this website represents generally the state of affairs at the end of the ESRC funding phase in 2002, plus some finalized materials from March 2003. Publications following immediately out of the GeM work are being added to the publication list as they appear.

The current state of the GeM corpus can be obtained on CD on request. Note, however, that the corpus is being extended online.

The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Based at the University of Stirling and the University of Bremen, its principal researchers were at Stirling's Centre for Research in Communication and Language (Judy Delin, Renate Henschel and Stewart Pleace) and the Faculty of Language and Literature at the University of Bremen (John Bateman).