Multimodality as a driver of genre emergence in corporate communication: the editorial in <i>Peugeot’s</i> employee magazine

Abstract This chapter examines how multimodality shaped the functional and structural differentiation of the editorial in employee magazines, culminating in its emergence as a distinct corporate genre. Drawing on a diachronic analysis of 167 editorials from Peugeot’s employee magazine, published between 1918 and 2010, it traces the progressive integration of semiotic modes to achieve the magazine’s communicative objectives as an instrument of internal public relations. As a manifestation of the corporate voice, the editorial balances organizational authority with the promotion of community formation and employee identification, embodying managerial discourse that legitimizes organizational practices while cultivating cohesion, engagement, and belonging. This tension is negotiated through the systematic integration of semiotic modes that simulate communicative immediacy and interpersonal connection to reduce the communicative distance intrinsic to mass-mediated, downward organizational communication, creating a new editorial type characterized by mode-spanning incoherence (deliberate semiotic incongruity across modes). This case study demonstrates how multimodal orchestration adapts preexisting genres to new communicative contexts.