TED Talks as an Emergent Genre

Abstract

In her article "TED Talks as an Emergent Genre" Julia Ludewig analyzes TED talks-short, informational, and entertaining presentations that are given during TED conferences in North America and abroad-as a hybrid and emerging genre. Based on a qualitative interpretation of 14 such talks, she offers a list of recurring thematic, argumentative, and rhetorical features, which she aligns with three parent genres-the sales pitch, the memoir, and the academic lecture. Comparing recent versions of TED talks with three older talks from the 1980s and 1990s, she suggests an historical trajectory, which emphasizes the professional performance character of recent talks and their popularization through highly sophisticated and sharable video footage.