In modem literary theory, few concepts have proved more problematic and unstable than that

of genre. Having functioned since Aristotle as a basic assumption of Western literary

discourse, shaping critical theory and creative practice for more than two thousand years, the
notion of genre is one whose meaning, validity and purpose have been repeatedly questioned
in the last two hundred. Although Henry James could still speak in 1908 of the literary 'kinds'
as being 'the very life of literature'/ the modem period has been more typically characterised
by a steady erosion of the perception of genre, and by the emergence of aesthetic programmes
which have sought to dispense altogether with the doctrine of literary kinds or genres. If the
death of the author has been a familiar refrain of modem literary theory, so too has the
dissolution of genres, an apparently liberating ambition that links the otherwise radically
opposed poetics of Romanticism and Modernism, attracting authors, readers and critics alike.
To the modern ear, the word genre - in the sphere of literature at least carries unmistakable
associations of authority and pedantry. Even when there is no mention of 'rules' or
'conventions' (its usual corollary), the term seems almost by definition to deny the autonomy
of the author, deny the uniqueness of the text, deny spontaneity, originality and selfexpression. Most of us have an instinctive or ideological attachment to one or more of these
values, and most of us are therefore at some level resistant to, or suspicious of, the concept of
genre. As we enter the twenty-first century, however, there are indications that this resistance
is beginning to abate. The anti-generic tendencies of Romanticism and Modernism have given
way to an aesthetic stance which is more hospitable to notions of genre, and which no longer
sees as incompatible the pursuit of individuality and the espousal of 'generic' identities, of
whatever sort. This may have something to do
1
Modern Genre Theory with the elevation of popular culture which is so conspicuous a feature
of Postmodernism/ involving as it does a recognition that a much more favourable estimate of
the value of genre has always prevailed in the popular sphere, despite the apparent rejection of
the concept by the literary avant-garde. At the same time, the increasing cultural dominance of
the popular genres themselves (in literature, film and television), and of the labels and
labelling systems that accompany them, have ensured that it is less and less plausible to
portray our own era as one that has, in any decisive sense, moved 'beyond genre'.4 Indeed, the
word genre now seems to have lost most of its negative charge, and to be operating instead as
a valorising term, signalling not prescription and exclusion but opportunity and common
purpose: genre as the enabling device, the vehicle for the acquisition of competence. Thus
redefined and democratised, not only is the term enjoying renewed currency in literary
discourse; it also shows signs of becoming a general cultural buzzword, used in contexts
increasingly remote from literary criticism, and applied to forms of writing and speech that
have little or no relation to literary genres.5 Duff
There are several ways to approach genre classifications. Fishelov (1993: 1-2) summarises
four main sets of analogies through which the literary genres were conceived by the
twentieth-century critics: the biological species, the family resemblance, the social institution,
and the speech act. Beebee (1994: 3 cited in Frow 2005: 52) considers that there are four
stages of genre criticism since the Renaissance, in which genre is understood successively as

rules, as organically developing species, as patterns of textual features, and as conventions of

reading. Altman (1999: 14) sees the concept of genre in film theory working as a blueprint, as
a structure, as a label, and as a contract regulating relations with audience. 52
Propp is widely acknowledged as, in effect, the inventor of narratology, unquestionably one of
the most successful branches of literary structuralism. However, Propp himself did not
intended to extend his analysis of the folk tale to other genres, it has been applied in numerous
fields, however his analytic method seems to work less well when applied to more complex
types of literature.
Paltridge:
During the Victorian period, criticism saw a return to Aristotelian concerns, as Arnold's (1960)
On the Classical Tradition, although perhaps with more of a degree of flexibility than earlier
adoptions of his position (Dubrow 1982).
Beebee, T. O. (1994) The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability.
University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press
Early work carried out this century in the analysis of literary genres was, as with folklore
studies, strongly influenced by structural narrative theory, such as in the work of Propp
([1928] 1969), Levi-Strauss ([1966] 1983), Greimas (1966), Genette (1966) and Todorov
(1975,1977). Later work in the analysis of literary genres has, however, been more influenced
by the work of postructuralist theorists such as Barthes ([1966] 1977a, [1968] 1977b), and
Derrida ([1967] 1978), and, in particular, the notion of the indeterminacy of the text; that is,
the impossibility, in their view, of presenting a precise and objective single reading of a
literary work. Poststructuralist theory has also sought to explore relations between "genre and
gender, genre and power, genre and institutions, genre and discipline, and genre and the
teaching of literacy (Threadgold 1994: 1408)." These areas of interest have also been taken up
in
APPROACHES TO GENRE 19
work which is generally referred to as 'critical discourse analysis' (see e.g. Kress 1990, van
Dijk 1993, Fairclough 1995) which explores the ways in which particular ideological
positions are both constructed and reflected in texts. Other important influences in twentieth
century examinations of literary genres include reader-oriented theories such as Jauss' ([1974]
1982) reception theory which considers the contribution that a reader makes to the meaning of
a text, and Iser's (1978) notions of the 'implied reader' and the 'actual reader' of a text. Kress
(1989) discusses the tension between these positions, arguing that certain reading positions
are constructed by authors but that readers need not necessarily comply with the demands of
these reading positions. For Kress, the task of a writer "is to construct a text that will most
efficiently coerce the reader into accepting the constructed text (1989: 40)." Readers need not,
however, enter the particular reading position, but should, nonetheless, aim to see its
'constructedness' whilst, at the same time, 'reconstructing' the text in a manner useful to
themselves (Kress 1989). The notion of genre is important in much of current literary theory,

again, through the work of Bakhtin ([1935] 1981, [1936] 1986), as well as through the work
of Julia Kristeva (1980, 1982) who was influential in making Bakhtin's work known to the
West. Parallels can also be felt between Bakhtin's work and areas such as reader response
theory in the view that meaning is the effect of interaction between the author and the
audience of a text rather residing in the text itself (Bakhtin/Volosinov [1929] 1973, Bakhtin
and Medvedev [1928] 1985). Bakhtin's work also has interesting parallels with later
developments in pragmatics in his rejection of the analysis of texts as though they were "self
contained units whose meaning could be established independently of context (Lechte 1994:
10-11)." The notion of genre is also important in literary theory in discussions of the
Bakhtinian view of the way in which the meanings we make through and between texts are
made "against the background of other texts, and the discourses of other occasions" (Lemke
1992: 257); that is, the intertextual relations between instances of particular genres, as well as
through the notion of 'mixed' genres (Bakhtin [1940] 1965/1968, Derrida 1980). Another
Russian theorist whose work is relevant to contemporary discussions of genre is the
semiotician Lotman and his conception of the 'cultural text'; that is, the notion of texts, or
genres, as channels for the communication of information which is the essence of a particular
culture
20 GENRE, FRAMES AND WRITING IN RESEARCH SETTINGS
(Lotman et al. 1975, Lotman 1977), or, in other words, the 'social stock of knowledge' (Schutz
and Luckmann 1984, Luckmann 1992) of a particular community. For Lotman, culture
represents "a system of collective memory and collective consciousness (Lotman and
Uspenskii 1985: 30)." This 'essence of culture', further, "becomes fixed in cultural memory,
and acquires a permanent, if background presence (Lotman and Uspenskii 1985: 65)." The
past, thus, does not disappear but, rather, is united with the present, and its future, through the
collective memory. For Lotman, the act of production and reception represents the
intersection of the structural organisation of the sign (or genre) itself, and the external
circumstances in which it is created or perceived; that is, the context in which it is produced
(see e.g. Lotman 1977). Genres, thus, in this view, are not defined by reference to linguistic
properties on their own, but in relation to wider systems of meaning, to other texts, codes,
norms, experiences, and to society as a whole. The meaning of a text, further, always engages
the reader and is relative to their 'horizon of expectations' (Jauss [1974] 1982) as well as a
"horizon of already constituted knowledge and practice (Hanks 1996: 165)." In this respect,
the work of Lotman and what has become known as the 'Tartu School' (see e.g. Lotman 1968,
Lotman et al. 1975) anticipates work in reader reception theory (see e.g. Ingarden 1973, Jauss
[19741 1982) which explores the criteria readers use to judge and interpret particular texts.
These judgements, and interpretations, in this view, depend not just on present instances, but
also on the histories of previous instances, experiences, and interpretations of particular texts.
The interpretation of texts, thus, for Lotman, as for Bakhtin, involves an intertextual
relationship with both the present and past.
Generic conventions, for Fishelov, "might be viewed as a challenge, or a horizon, against
which the writer and his reader have to define themselves (1993: 82)." Thus, a writer may
stretch generic rules, or produce an unpredicted 'match' between different existing

conventions. In either case, Fishelov argues, the text still remains part of the particular genre
category. 33
Cultural context is also crucial to genre studies in linguistic anthropology which examine
relations between language, culture, and society within the context of particular discourse
communities. Culture is also important in the ethnography of speaking which examines sets of
"norms, operating principles, strategies, and values which guide the production and
interpretation of speech" (Bauman and Sherzer 1974b: 7) in particular cultural contexts. In
conversation analysis, cultural context, like social context, is not seen as a key informing
factor. Emphasis is given, rather, in conversation analysis, to the conversations themselves
and what they reveal about social and, in turn, cultural interactions and practices. Relations
between cultural context and genre are explored in early work in the area of rhetoric in terms
of, for example, information expectancies, emotional appeal, textual structures and expressive
style (Kinneavy 1971) and in the more recent work of the new rhetoric in terms of, for
example, the way
40 GENRE, FRAMES AND WRITING IN RESEARCH SETTINGS
genres respond to socio-cultural phenomena in particular contexts of use (see e.g. Bazerman
1988, Yates 1989, Zimmerman 1994, Giltrow 1994). Miller (1994), in the new rhetoric,
describes genre as a 'cultural artefact'; that is, bearers of "knowledge of the aesthetics,
economics, politics, religious beliefs and all the various dimensions of what we know as
human culture (Miller 1994: 69)." For Miller, we cannot fully understand genres without
further understanding the culture of which they are part. In literary theory, Lotman (Lotman et
al. 1975, Lotman and Uspenskii 1985) presents the important notion of cultural memory; that
is, the view of culture as "a system of collective memory and collective consciousness
(Lotman and Uspenskii 1985: 30)." In the ethnography of speaking, communicative events are
described in terms of the social and cultural contexts in which they occur. The relationship
between genre and culture is also discussed in systemic genre studies where 'genre' is seen by
most analysts to represent the context of culture (see, however, Halliday and Hasan 1989 and
Matthiessen 1988 where this is not the case) as opposed to 'register' which, in systemic terms,
represents the context of situation (Macken 1989, Eggins 1994).
Bawarshi: In arguing that genres constitute all communicative action, I offer genre as an
alternative to what Michel Foucault in "What Is an Author?" calls the "author- function." In
his essay, Foucault attempts to locate and articulate the "space left empty by the author's
disappearance" (345) in structuralist and poststructuralist lit- erary theory. If the author can no
longer be said to constitute a work, Foucault won- ders, then what does? What is it that
delimits discourse so that it becomes recognized as a work that has certain value and status?
Sans the author, in short, what is it that plays "the role of the regulator of the fictive" (353)?
For Foucault, the answer is the
The Genre Function 337
"author-function." The author-function does not refer to the real writer, the indi- vidual with
the proper name who precedes and exists independently of the work. Instead, it refers to the

author's name, which, in addition to being a proper name, is also a literary name, a name that
exists only in relation to the work associated with it. The author-function, then, endows a
work with a certain cultural status and value. At the same time, the author-function also
endows the idea of "author" with a certain cultural status and value. So the author-function not
only consti- tutes the work, but it also constitutes the author of that work, the "rational being
that we call 'author'" (347) as opposed to the real writer with "just a proper name like the rest"
(345). The author-function delimits what works we recognize as valuable and how we
interpret them at the same time it accords the status of author to certain writers: "these aspects
of an individual which we designate as making him an author are only a projection, in more or
less psychologizing terms, of the operations that we force texts to undergo" (Foucault 347).
The role of author, therefore, becomes akin to a subject position regulated, as much as the
work itself, by the author-function. Constituted by the author-function, the "real writer"
becomes positioned as an author, "a variable and complex function of discourse" (352).
Within this position, "the author does not pre- cede the works; he is a certain functional
principle by which, in our culture, one lim- its, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one
impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition, and
recomposition of fiction" (352-53). Conceptually, the author-function helps delimit what
Foucault calls a "certain discursive construct" (346) within which a work and its author
function, so that the way we recognize a certain text and its author as deserving of a
privileged status-a text worthy of our study, say, rather than simply to be "used"-is regulated
by the author-function. Not only does the author-function, then, play a classificatory role,
helping us organize and define texts (346), but more significantly, Foucault explains, it marks
off "the edges of the text, revealing, or at least characterizing, its mode of being. The author's
name manifests the appearance of a certain discursive set and indicates the status of this
discourse within a society and a culture" (346; emphasis added). Insofar as the authorfunction characterizes a text's "mode of being," it con- stitutes it and its author, providing a
text and its author with a cultural identity and significance not accorded to texts that exist
outside its purview. As Foucault explains, "The author-function is. . . characteristic of the
mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses within a society" (346;
emphasis added). For exam- ple, he identifies such texts as private letters and contracts, even
though they are writ- ten by someone, as not having "authors," and, as such, as not constituted
by the author-function, ostensibly meaning that their mode of being is regulated not by an
author's name but by some other function. 338
'Linguistically, the author is never more than the instance writing', Barthes insists
We can see, then, that patterns in genre are socio-culturally based but nevertheless cognitive
matters. In genre studies, a hierarchy has been suggested as follows:
-

Mode: poetry, prose, drama, conversation, song, etc.

Genre: comedy, tragedy, gothic, surrealism, etc.
Sub-genre: mock-epic, comic opera, airport fiction, war novel, political memoir, etc.
Type: sonnet, ballad, email, one-act play, short story, etc.
Register: reporting language, letter-writing, narrative, lyricism, etc.

Applying prototype theory to this, mode seems to be the basic level category, or (put the
other way around) the categories that people tend to use most readily and which often consist
of one-word descriptions are then seen as the basic genre level. I can imagine linguists and
literary critics taking issue with this, and perhaps for them genre is basic, but I would argue
that the cultural models that they share as experts means that their judgement in this regard is
non-normal. (Stockwell 2005: 34)
The psychologist Jung, used the concept of archetype in his theory of the human psyche. He
believed that archetypes understood as universal, mythic characters, reside within the
collective unconscious of people. Archetypes, in his opinion, represent fundamental human
motifs that evoke deep emotions. Although there are many different archetypes, Jung defined
twelve primary types that symbolize basic human motivations. Each type has its own set of
values, meanings and personality traits.
Frow 37 - modes
Bazerman, C., Bonini, A., Figueiredo, D. (eds.) (2009) Genre in a Changing World. West
Lafayette, Indiana: Parlor Press
A further key notion which is central to an understanding of the relationship between frames
is intetextuality. De Beaugrande and Dressier describe intertextuality as "the factors which
make the utilisation of one text dependent upon knowledge of one or more previously
encountered texts" (de Beaugrande and Dressier 1981: 10), including the way in which a
given text "may more or less implicitly or explicitly cite, refer to, or allude to some other
text[s] (Thibault 1994b: 1751)." The notion of intertextuality draws from the work of Bakhtin
who presents the view that: The linguistic significance of a given utterance is understood
against the background of language, while its actual meaning is understood against the
background of other concrete utterances on the same theme; a background made up of
contradictory opinions, points of view, and value judgements (Bahktin 1935/1981: 281).
(Paltridge 1997: 58)
That is, "we make sense of every word, every utterance, or act against the background of
(some) other words, utterances, acts of a similar kind (Lemke 1995: 23)." The actual term
'intertextuality' is usually attributed to Julia Kristeva (1967, 1980) who brought the work of
Bakhtin to the west. Kristeva argues that a text is kind of a 'productivity' in which various
semiotic codes, genres, and meaning relations are both combined and transformed. Kristeva,
thus, as do Bakhtin ([1929] 1973), Barthes ([1970] 1974) and others (see e.g. Plett 1991, Mai
1991), sees all texts as being constituted out of, and understood in relation to, other texts in
the same social formation (Thibault 1994b). This notion of intertextuality is crucial to
Fillmore's model in that it accounts for the relationship within and between scenes (which
include scenarios) and frames (Fillmore 1977). Fillmore describes scenes as including
scenarios as well as other sorts of visual scenes, interpersonal interactions, familiar layouts,
institutional structures, enactive experiences and body images. That is, "any kind of coherent
segment, large or small of human belief, actions, experiences or imaginings (Fillmore 1977:
63)." For Fillmore, scenes and frames operate in such a way that a certain frame may activate
a particular scene, which may in turn activate another frame which may, then, activate yet

another scene, and so on (frame-scene, sceneframe, scene-scene, frame-frame etc) (SnellHornby 1988). This interaction and activation process between scenes and frames illustrates
in one further way why Fillmore's model is again more satisfactory than either schema theory
or script theory in the pursuit of an explanation for genre assignment: it provides a framework
for explaining the complexity of the activation process in situations where, working with
schema or script theory alone, it would not always be clear which frame might be selected to
guide comprehension or production. Fillmore does not, however, restrict the notion of
intertextuality to whole texts or to areas of background knowledge as might perhaps be
inferred from the statements presented above. He, rather, extends the notion of intertextuality
to words within scenes and frames. Fillmore points out that we "sometimes find that a single
word has concurrently more than one frame, even though the same history of experiences was
responsible for both frames" (1976: 26) so that "any sentence containing one of these words
could have the effect of introducing other frames (Fillmore 1976: 28)." Examples Fillmore
provides of
(Paltridge 1997: 59)
this process is the use of the words 'breakfast' and 'money'. Each of these may be common to a
large number of different frames and may bring up different frames for different people. An
equally important example of intertextuality is provided by Griffith who, in Literary Theory
and English Teaching, discusses the notion thus: If someone says "The word 'fanbelt' makes
me think of strawberries", that can perhaps be written off as a quirk or aberration. ... However,
if I use the word 'fanbelt' a couple of pages from now, there is some slight possibility that you
will think of strawberries as a result or reading that passage. ... In this fairly trivial example,
then, we can see a very simple instance of the way in which one text can leave traces on
another (Griffith 1987: 42).
Indeed, it is in the area of critical theory, rather than in linguistics, that the notion of
intertextuality is further developed. For example, the American deconstructionist Bloom
(1973) regards every text as inherently an intertext which is inescapably influenced by its
precursors. Other poststructural analysts (see e.g. Kristeva 1967, 1980, Barthes [1973] 1981),
equally, see texts as being located in 'inevitable and inescapable networks' which draw from
an infiltration of "prior practices, concepts, conventions, unconscious practices and texts
(Leitch 1983: 161)." Writing, thus, is not seen as being a private or free creative process, but
rather the activation of a complex 'historical archive' that effectively delimits what may or
may not occur in a text, to whom it may be addressed and so on (Leitch 1983). For Foucault
([1969] 1972), intertextuality includes all "historically situated economic, social, intellectual,
ideological, moral, institutional, and political thoughts and limitations that constitute and
regulate the life of society (Leitch 1983: 157)." This "comprehensive cultural discourse", thus,
"determines the production of any new text" (Leitch 1983: 157) and" emerges out of, through
and back into (this) complex cultural network (Leitch 1983: 157)." Genres, thus, "may
confirm or disconfirm the expectations they generate, but they can never escape the
intertextual network they are always already caught in (Peim 1994: 58)." Finally, the notion of
intertextuality is further extended by Derrida ([1967] 1978) and Barthes ([1968] 1977, 1975)
who, in their discussion of readings of texts, argue that there is no such thing as the single

meaning, correct or right meaning of a text but rather only an individual's own reading, or
intertextuality. In this view, "no matter how appropriate you think your reading
(Paltridge 1997: 60)
to be, there is no way that you can make that reading the 'correct' one by implying or
declaring it to be the same as the writer's (Birch 1989: 25)." Not all literary theorists are,
however, in complete agreement with this position. Eco (1979), for example, argues that every
literary work proposes a 'model reader' who corresponds to the various possibilities set out by
the text. An author, thus, has to foresee a model of a possible reader who, nonetheless, may
read the text in a 'naive way', or in a critical way (Eco 1979). Kress (1989), equally, takes a
similar position, arguing that a reader may recognise the position an author presents in a text
but not necessarily enter into it. Similar views are present in Jauss' ([1974] 1982) reader
reception theory and Iser's (1978) notions of the 'implied' and the 'actual' reader. These views
do, however, highlight the important place of the author and audience of a text, apart from just
the text itself, within a framework for genre analysis, in that both the audience and the text
each 'come into being' through the other (Bakhtin [1929] 1973, Barthes [1970] 1974). The
notion of intertextuality is, thus, crucial to the concept of frames in that it accounts for the
relationship within and between frames, as well as between instances of genres in the
production and interpretation of texts. It also places the author and audience of a text firmly
within a frameworkf or genre analysis and identification.