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Media Crit Spr2010 Session10

Mini-lecture: Genre Theory

Genre Theory

Genre is the French Word for type
- A lot of what we've done so far has been concerned with types
- So it can be assumed that we mean something special when we talk about genre theory
  - Types of Content
  - there is no single "genre theory"
- Hope to move towards a synthesis today
  - To use genre to answer the question why audiences watch the same narrative over and over
Three methodological elements common to all variants of genre analysis
1. Identification of types of content within a medium
2. Identification of the characteristics common to content of a given type
3. An attempt to understand why those characteristics recur within the type
There should be others
1. What audiences are associated with the genre
2. What needs the genre fills for those audiences and other participants
Genre theory has generally been systematically applied within a small number of media (GenreAndMedia)
In theory, genre analysis can be applied to any medium
- Identifying types of content within that medium
- Identifying a body of content that exemplifies that type
- Finding patterns that occur across content within the genre
- Finding reasons why those patterns occur within the genre
In practice, genre theory has been applied to very few media
- But it’s easy to identify genres of:
  - mail (business letters, personal letters, love letters, bills, advertising, solicitations)
  - e-mail (personal, SPAM)
  - instant messaging (conversation, coordination, question and answer)
  - computer conferencing (see my Ph.D. dissertation or Baym's "Tune In, Log On")
  - Speech Acts (see Bakhtin's "The Problem with Speech Genres"

-- Last edited March 17, 2010

Unless otherwise noted, the contents of this page were written by participants on the Media Space Wiki, operated by Davis Foulger, and should be cited accordingly. For example (APA):
Foulger, D. and other participants. (March 17, 2010). Media Crit Spr2010 Session10. MediaSpaceWiki. Retrieved on from http://evolutionarymedia.com/wiki.htm?MediaCritSpr2010Session10.