An Introduction to Genre Theory

        Daniel Chandler

        References and suggested reading

        • Abercrombie, Nicholas (1996): Television and Society. Cambridge: Polity Press
        • Allen, Robert (1989): 'Bursting bubbles: "Soap opera" audiences and the limits of genre'. In Ellen Seiter, Hans Borchers, Gabriele Kreutzner & Eva-Maria Warth (Eds.): Remote Control: Television, Audiences and Cultural Power. London: Routledge, pp. 44-55
        • Altheide, D L & R P Snow (1979): Media Logic. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage
        • Barthes, Roland (1975): S/Z. London: Cape
        • Bignell, Jonathan (1997): Media Semiotics: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press
        • Bordwell, David (1989): Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
        • Brooks, Cleanth & Robert Penn Warren (1972): Modern Rhetoric (Shorter 3rd Edn.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
        • Buckingham, David (1993): Children Talking Television: The Making of Television Literacy. London: Falmer Press (Chapter 6: 'Sorting Out TV: Categorization and Genre', pp. 135-55)
        • Casey, Bernadette (1993): 'Genre'. In Kenneth McLeish (Ed.): Key Ideas in Human Thought. London: Bloomsbury
        • Chandler, Daniel (1997): 'Children's understanding of what is "real" on television: a review of the literature', Journal of Educational Media 23(1): 65-80
        • Corner, John (1991): 'Meaning, genre and context: the problematics of "public knowledge" in the new audience studies'. In James Curran & Michael Gurevitch (Eds.): Mass Media and Society. London: Edward Arnold
        • Derrida, Jacques (1981): 'The law of genre'. In W J T Mitchell (Ed.): On Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
        • Fairclough, Norman (1995): Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold (Chapter 5)
        • Feuer, Jane (1992): 'Genre study and television'. In Robert C Allen (Ed.): Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism. London: Routledge, pp. 138-59
        • Fiske, John (1987): Television Culture. London: Routledge (Chapter 7: 'Intertextuality')
        • Fowler, Alastair (1982): Kinds of Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press [exclusively literary]
        • Fowler, Alastair (1989): 'Genre'. In Erik Barnouw (Ed.): International Encyclopedia of Communications, Vol. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 215-7
        • Freedman, Aviva & Peter Medway (Eds.) (1994a): Genre and the New Rhetoric. London: Taylor & Francis
        • Freedman, Aviva & Peter Medway (Eds.) (1994b): Learning and Teaching Genre. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook
        • Frye, Northrop (1957): The Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press
        • Gledhill, Christine (1985): 'Genre'. In Pam Cook (Ed.): The Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute
        • Hayward, Susan (1996): Key Concepts in Cinema Studies. London: Routledge
        • Hodge, Robert & Gunther Kress (1988): Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity
        • Jaglom, Leona M & Howard Gardner (1981a): ‘Decoding the worlds of television’, Studies in Visual Communication 7(1): 33-47
        • Jaglom, Leona M & Howard Gardner (1981b): ‘The preschool television viewer as anthropologist’. In Hope Kelly & Howard Gardner (Eds.): Viewing Children Through Television (New Directions for Child Development 13). San Francisco,CA: Jossey-Bass, pp. 9-30
        • Jensen, Klaus Bruhn (1995): The Social Semiotics of Mass Communication. London: Sage
        • Knight, Deborah (1994): 'Making sense of genre', Film and Philosophy 2 [WWW document] URL http://www.hanover.edu/philos/film/vol_02/knight.htm
        • Konigsberg, Ira (1987): The Complete Film Dictionary. London: Bloomsbury
        • Kress, Gunther (1988): Communication and Culture: An Introduction. Kensington, NSW: New South Wales University Press
        • Langholz Leymore, Varda (1975): Hidden Myth: Structure and Symbolism is Advertising. New York: Basic Books
        • Lichter, S Robert, Linda S Lichter & Stanley Rothman (1991): Watching America: What Television Tells Us About Our Lives. New York: Prentice Hall
        • Livingstone, Sonia M (1990): Making Sense of Television: The Psychology of Audience Interpretation. London: Pergamon
        • Livingstone, Sonia M (1994): 'The rise and fall of audience research: an old story with a new ending'. In Mark R Levy & Michael Gurevitch (Eds.) Defining Media Studies: Reflectiions on the Future of the Field. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 247-54
        • McQuail, Denis (1987): Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction (2nd Edn.). London: Sage
        • Miller, Carolyn R (1984): 'Genre as social action', Quarterly Journal of Speech 70: 151-67; reprinted in Freedman & Medway (1994a, op. cit.), pp. 23-42
        • Morley, David (1980): The 'Nationwide' Audience: Structure and Decoding. London: British Film Institute
        • Neale, Stephen (1980): Genre. London: British Film Institute [solely concerned with film]; an extract can be found in Tony Bennett, Susan Boyd-Bowman, Colin Mercer & Janet Woollacott (Eds.) (1981): Popular Television and Film. London: British Film Institute/Open University Press
        • Neale, Stephen ([1990] 1995): 'Questions of genre'. In Oliver Boyd-Barrett & Chris Newbold (Eds.) Approaches to Media: A Reader. London: Arnold, pp. 460-72
        • O'Sullivan, Tim, John Hartley, Danny Saunders, Martin Montgomery & John Fiske (1994): Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge
        • Sobchack, Thomas & Vivian C Sobchack (1980): An Introduction to Film. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co.
        • Solomon, Stanley J ([1976] 1995): Extract from Beyond Formula: American Film Genres. In Oliver Boyd-Barrett & Chris Newbold (Eds.) Approaches to Media: A Reader. London: Arnold, pp. 453-9
        • Stam, Robert (2000): Film Theory. Oxford: Blackwell
        • Swales, John M (1990): Genre Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [primarily linguistic in focus]
        • Thwaites, Tony, Lloyd Davis & Warwick Mules (1994): Tools for Cultural Studies: An Introduction. South Melbourne: Macmillan (Chapter 5)
        • Tolson, Andrew (1996): Mediations: Text and Discourse in Media Studies. London: Arnold (Chapter 4: 'Genre')
        • Tudor, Andrew (1974): Image and Influence: Studies in the Sociology of Film. London: George Allen & Unwin
        • Wales, Katie (1989): A Dictionary of Stylistics. London: Longman
        • Wellek, René & Austin Warren (1963): Theory of Literature. Harmondsworth: Penguin (Chapter 17: 'Literary Genres')
        • Williams, Raymond (1977): Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press

        Daniel Chandler
        August 1997

        The preferred form of citation for the online version of this paper is as follows:

        • Chandler, Daniel (1997): 'An Introduction to Genre Theory' [WWW document] URL http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre.html [Date of Visit]

        Contents

        • Contents page
        • The problem of definition
        • Working within genres
        • Constructing the audience
        • Advantages of generic analysis
        • D.I.Y. Generic analysis
        • Appendix 1: Taxonomies of genres
        • Appendix 2: Generic textual features of film and television
        • References and suggested reading
        • Genre Theory Links