Genre

What is genre? A genre is something that describes the theme of what a story or piece of writing will be about. For example, a story of a detective searching for a missing boy and trying to figure out what happened to him would be defined as a mystery.

Throughout my past experiences of reading and writing, I have come to the conclusion that a genre is something that gives a theme to writing. It’s something that creates a setting and a mood for a piece of writing.

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In Charles Bazerman’s “Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems: How Texts Organize Activity and People” he describes genre as “recognizable, self-reinforcing forms of communication”.

My definition and Bazerman’s definition relate in some ways. His is more straightforward and to the point whereas mine kind of drags on. However, they’re both on the same track. Genre is something that communicates a theme for a story or piece of writing.

Bazerman’s definition seems to lean more towards communication and ways to communicate through writing, whereas other definitions I’ve seen say that genre is a way of characterizing writing.

This author slightly diverges from my own in the way that he seems to lean more towards forms of communication when to comes to genre rather than just characterizing a form of writing.