Genre Theory

By: Laura Onofrio

Berkenkotter & Huckin identify five broad features of genres: dynamism, situatedness, form and content, duality of structure, community ownership.
- Genres are dynamic, rhetorical forms that rarely develop from actors' response to recurrent situations and that serve to stabilize experience and give it coherence and meaning.
- Genres change over time in response to their users' socio-cognitive needs. Ones knowledge of a genre is derived from and embedded in one's participation in the communicative activities of daily and professional life; therefore, it is constantly changing and developing over time. This knowledge includes what the appropriate form of the genre is; as well as, what content is appropriate, when it is appropriate and where it is appropriate.
- Genre rules are drawn on when engaging in professional activities. Through this process social structures are constituted and reproduced and genre conventions signal a discourse in the community's norms, ideology, social ontology and epistemology. (Berkenkotter & Huckin: 1995)

Berger claims that all genres follow certain conventions and that they are formulaic and have particular structures (1997). He argues that as individuals are socialized they absorb the nature of different genres and learn to recognize and expect particular conventions in relation to particular genres. Genres define the audiences' expectations without revealing the storyline (1997).

Grossberg further explains how a genre is a class of texts that have something in common. They are ways of defining, measuring and sustaining audience's tastes (1998). They can be broad and can encompass a great deal of diversity. Genres are constantly evolving. Grossberg (1998) identifies three common ways of defining a genre:
1. Through a shared set of conventions (conventions of narratives, characters, settings, style)
2. Through the underlying structure of values that the genre puts into play
3. Through the articulations of texts that define a particular set of intertextual relations

Daniel Chandler provides an in-depth analysis of the complexity of genre theory. He examines the problems with the definition of genres and explains that there are no exact criteria for each genre as it is becoming increasingly common that genres overlap. Chandler points out that genres evolve overtime and the conventions that define them also change; therefore, genres are constantly created and re-created with new genres being created, existing genres being transformed, and some genres being abandoned. He points out that the advantage of generic analysis is that it "situates texts and social contexts, underlining the social nature of the production and reading of texts (1997)." Genres also construct the audiences and what is expected and desired from a particular genre. Overall, Chandler is delivering the message that genres are complex and that there is no one-way of interpreting or recognizing a genre as they are constantly undergoing changes. However, the knowledge that audiences do have about genres is useful both to the creators and readers of texts as they set the expectations and help in the process of interpreting meaning.