essay on analysis of genre

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How To: Genre Analysis  

Although most of us think of music styles when we hear the word “genre,” the word simply means category of items that share the same characteristics, usually in the arts. In this context, however, we are talking about types of texts. Texts can be written, visual, or oral.  

For instance, a written genre would be blogs, such as this one, books, or news articles. A visual genre would be cartoons, videos, or posters. An oral genre would be podcasts, speeches, or songs. Each of these genres communicates differently because each genre has different rules.   

A genre analysis is an essay where you dissect texts to understand how they are working to communicate their message. This will help you understand that each genre has different requirements and limitations that we, as writers, must be aware of when using that genre to communicate.    

Sections of a genre analysis   

Like all other essays, a genre analysis has an introduction, body, and conclusion.  

In your introduction, you introduce the topic and the texts you’ll be analyzing.  

In your body, you do your analysis. This should be your longest section.  

In your conclusion, you do a short summary of everything you talked about and include any closing thoughts, such as whether you think the text accomplished its purpose and why.   

Content  

All professors ask for different things, so make sure to look at their instructions. These are some areas that will help you analyze your text and that you might want to touch base on in your essay (most professors ask for them):

1. Purpose of the text 

What did the creator of the text want to achieve with it? Why was the text created? Did something prompt the creator to make the text?  

Sometimes, the texts themselves answer these questions. Other times, we get that through clues like the language they use, the platforms the creator chose to spread their text, and so on. Make sure to include in your essay what features of the text led you to your answer.  

If we take this blog post as an example, we can say that its purpose is to inform students like you about what a genre analysis is and the content it requires. You probably figured this out through the language I’m using and the information I’m choosing to include.  

2. Intended audience 

Who is the creator of the text trying to reach? How did you figure that out?  

The audience can be as specific as a small group of people interested in a very niche topic or as broad as people curious about a common topic.   

With this blog, for example, I’m trying to reach students, particularly UTEP students who have this assignment and are trying to understand it. My causal and informative tone, as well as the fact that the blog is posted on UTEP’s Writing Center blog, probably gave this away.   

3. Structure 

How is the text organized? How does that help the creator achieve the text’s purpose?  

You need to know the information at the top of this blog post to understand what comes after, so this blog post is organized in order of complexity.   

4. Genre conventions 

Is the text following the usual characteristics of the genre? How is this helping or impeding the text to achieve its purpose?  

Like most blogs, this one is using simple language, short paragraphs, and illustrations. My use of all these elements is helping me be clear and specific so you can understand your assignment.  

5. Connection 

Do the ideas in the text come from somewhere else? Can the reader or consumer interact with the text? Is the text inviting that interaction?  

Most of the time, when the ideas come from another source, the text will make that clear by mentioning the text. In terms of interaction possible with the text, think about if it would be easy for you to say something back to the text.   

For instance, if you wanted to ask a question about this blog post, you could type it in our comment section. I might not explicitly say that many ideas in this blog come from the guidelines your professor gives you for this assignment, but you probably gathered that because I mention that these areas are things most professors are looking for.   

Hopefully, this information helps you tackle your assignment with a clearer idea of what your professor is looking for. Make sure to address any other areas the professor is asking you to.  

If you still have questions or want to make sure you are on the right path, come visit us at the University Writing Center.   

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Understanding What is Meant by the Word "Genre"

What do we mean by genre? This means a type of writing, i.e., an essay, a poem, a recipe, an email, a tweet. These are all different types (or categories) of writing, and each one has its own format, type of words, tone, and so on.  Analyzing a type of writing (or genre) is considered a genre analysis project. A genre analysis grants students the means to think critically about how a particular form of communication functions as well as a means to evaluate it.

Every genre (type of writing/writing style) has a set of conventions that allow that particular genre to be unique. These conventions include the following components:

• Tone: tone of voice, i.e. serious, humorous, scholarly, informal.
• Diction : word usage - formal or informal, i.e. “disoriented” (formal) versus “spaced out” (informal or colloquial).
•   Content : what is being discussed/demonstrated in the piece? What information is included or needs to be included?
•   Style / Format (the way it looks): long or short sentences? Bulleted list? Paragraphs? Short-hand? Abbreviations? Does punctuation and grammar matter? How detailed do you need to be? Single-spaced or double-spaced? Can pictures / should pictures be included? How long does it need to be / should be? What kind of organizational requirements are there?
•   Expected Medium of Genre : where does the genre appear? Where is it created? i.e. can be it be online (digital) or does it need to be in print (computer paper, magazine, etc)? Where does this genre occur? i.e. flyers (mostly) occur in the hallways of our school, and letters of recommendation (mostly) occur in professors’ offices.
• Genre creates an expectation in the minds of its audience and may fail or succeed depending on if that expectation is met or not.
• Many genres have built-in audiences and corresponding publications that support them, such as magazines and websites.
• The goal of the piece that is written, i.e. a newspaper entry is meant to inform and/or persuade, and a movie script is meant to entertain.
• Basically, each genre has a specific task or a specific goal that it is created to attain.
• Understanding Genre
• Understanding the Rhetorical Situation

To understand genre, one has to first understand the rhetorical situation of the communication. 

Below are some additional resources to assist you in this process:

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• How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

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Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

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See an example

Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

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The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

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Introduction

You’ve been assigned a literary analysis paper—what does that even mean? Is it like a book report that you used to write in high school? Well, not really.

A literary analysis essay asks you to make an original argument about a poem, play, or work of fiction and support that argument with research and evidence from your careful reading of the text.

It can take many forms, such as a close reading of a text, critiquing the text through a particular literary theory, comparing one text to another, or criticizing another critic’s interpretation of the text. While there are many ways to structure a literary essay, writing this kind of essay follows generally follows a similar process for everyone

Crafting a good literary analysis essay begins with good close reading of the text, in which you have kept notes and observations as you read. This will help you with the first step, which is selecting a topic to write about—what jumped out as you read, what are you genuinely interested in? The next step is to focus your topic, developing it into an argument—why is this subject or observation important? Why should your reader care about it as much as you do? The third step is to gather evidence to support your argument, for literary analysis, support comes in the form of evidence from the text and from your research on what other literary critics have said about your topic. Only after you have performed these steps, are you ready to begin actually writing your essay.

Writing a Literary Analysis Essay

How to create a topic and conduct research:.

Writing an Analysis of a Poem, Story, or Play

If you are taking a literature course, it is important that you know how to write an analysis—sometimes called an interpretation or a literary analysis or a critical reading or a critical analysis—of a story, a poem, and a play. Your instructor will probably assign such an analysis as part of the course assessment. On your mid-term or final exam, you might have to write an analysis of one or more of the poems and/or stories on your reading list. Or the dreaded “sight poem or story” might appear on an exam, a work that is not on the reading list, that you have not read before, but one your instructor includes on the exam to examine your ability to apply the active reading skills you have learned in class to produce, independently, an effective literary analysis.You might be asked to write instead or, or in addition to an analysis of a literary work, a more sophisticated essay in which you compare and contrast the protagonists of two stories, or the use of form and metaphor in two poems, or the tragic heroes in two plays.

You might learn some literary theory in your course and be asked to apply theory—feminist, Marxist, reader-response, psychoanalytic, new historicist, for example—to one or more of the works on your reading list. But the seminal assignment in a literature course is the analysis of the single poem, story, novel, or play, and, even if you do not have to complete this assignment specifically, it will form the basis of most of the other writing assignments you will be required to undertake in your literature class. There are several ways of structuring a literary analysis, and your instructor might issue specific instructions on how he or she wants this assignment done. The method presented here might not be identical to the one your instructor wants you to follow, but it will be easy enough to modify, if your instructor expects something a bit different, and it is a good default method, if your instructor does not issue more specific guidelines.You want to begin your analysis with a paragraph that provides the context of the work you are analyzing and a brief account of what you believe to be the poem or story or play’s main theme. At a minimum, your account of the work’s context will include the name of the author, the title of the work, its genre, and the date and place of publication. If there is an important biographical or historical context to the work, you should include that, as well.Try to express the work’s theme in one or two sentences. Theme, you will recall, is that insight into human experience the author offers to readers, usually revealed as the content, the drama, the plot of the poem, story, or play unfolds and the characters interact. Assessing theme can be a complex task. Authors usually show the theme; they don’t tell it. They rarely say, at the end of the story, words to this effect: “and the moral of my story is…” They tell their story, develop their characters, provide some kind of conflict—and from all of this theme emerges. Because identifying theme can be challenging and subjective, it is often a good idea to work through the rest of the analysis, then return to the beginning and assess theme in light of your analysis of the work’s other literary elements.Here is a good example of an introductory paragraph from Ben’s analysis of William Butler Yeats’ poem, “Among School Children.”

“Among School Children” was published in Yeats’ 1928 collection of poems The Tower. It was inspired by a visit Yeats made in 1926 to school in Waterford, an official visit in his capacity as a senator of the Irish Free State. In the course of the tour, Yeats reflects upon his own youth and the experiences that shaped the “sixty-year old, smiling public man” (line 8) he has become. Through his reflection, the theme of the poem emerges: a life has meaning when connections among apparently disparate experiences are forged into a unified whole.

In the body of your literature analysis, you want to guide your readers through a tour of the poem, story, or play, pausing along the way to comment on, analyze, interpret, and explain key incidents, descriptions, dialogue, symbols, the writer’s use of figurative language—any of the elements of literature that are relevant to a sound analysis of this particular work. Your main goal is to explain how the elements of literature work to elucidate, augment, and develop the theme. The elements of literature are common across genres: a story, a narrative poem, and a play all have a plot and characters. But certain genres privilege certain literary elements. In a poem, for example, form, imagery and metaphor might be especially important; in a story, setting and point-of-view might be more important than they are in a poem; in a play, dialogue, stage directions, lighting serve functions rarely relevant in the analysis of a story or poem.

The length of the body of an analysis of a literary work will usually depend upon the length of work being analyzed—the longer the work, the longer the analysis—though your instructor will likely establish a word limit for this assignment. Make certain that you do not simply paraphrase the plot of the story or play or the content of the poem. This is a common weakness in student literary analyses, especially when the analysis is of a poem or a play.

Here is a good example of two body paragraphs from Amelia’s analysis of “Araby” by James Joyce.

Within the story’s first few paragraphs occur several religious references which will accumulate as the story progresses. The narrator is a student at the Christian Brothers’ School; the former tenant of his house was a priest; he left behind books called The Abbot and The Devout Communicant. Near the end of the story’s second paragraph the narrator describes a “central apple tree” in the garden, under which is “the late tenant’s rusty bicycle pump.” We may begin to suspect the tree symbolizes the apple tree in the Garden of Eden and the bicycle pump, the snake which corrupted Eve, a stretch, perhaps, until Joyce’s fall-of-innocence theme becomes more apparent.

The narrator must continue to help his aunt with her errands, but, even when he is so occupied, his mind is on Mangan’s sister, as he tries to sort out his feelings for her. Here Joyce provides vivid insight into the mind of an adolescent boy at once elated and bewildered by his first crush. He wants to tell her of his “confused adoration,” but he does not know if he will ever have the chance. Joyce’s description of the pleasant tension consuming the narrator is conveyed in a striking simile, which continues to develop the narrator’s character, while echoing the religious imagery, so important to the story’s theme: “But my body was like a harp, and her words and gestures were like fingers, running along the wires.”

The concluding paragraph of your analysis should realize two goals. First, it should present your own opinion on the quality of the poem or story or play about which you have been writing. And, second, it should comment on the current relevance of the work. You should certainly comment on the enduring social relevance of the work you are explicating. You may comment, though you should never be obliged to do so, on the personal relevance of the work. Here is the concluding paragraph from Dao-Ming’s analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

First performed in 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest has been made into a film, as recently as 2002 and is regularly revived by professional and amateur theatre companies. It endures not only because of the comic brilliance of its characters and their dialogue, but also because its satire still resonates with contemporary audiences. I am still amazed that I see in my own Asian mother a shadow of Lady Bracknell, with her obsession with finding for her daughter a husband who will maintain, if not, ideally, increase the family’s social status. We might like to think we are more liberated and socially sophisticated than our Victorian ancestors, but the starlets and eligible bachelors who star in current reality television programs illustrate the extent to which superficial concerns still influence decisions about love and even marriage. Even now, we can turn to Oscar Wilde to help us understand and laugh at those who are earnest in name only.

Dao-Ming’s conclusion is brief, but she does manage to praise the play, reaffirm its main theme, and explain its enduring appeal. And note how her last sentence cleverly establishes that sense of closure that is also a feature of an effective analysis.

You may, of course, modify the template that is presented here. Your instructor might favour a somewhat different approach to literary analysis. Its essence, though, will be your understanding and interpretation of the theme of the poem, story, or play and the skill with which the author shapes the elements of literature—plot, character, form, diction, setting, point of view—to support the theme.

Academic Writing Tips : How to Write a Literary Analysis Paper. Authored by: eHow. Located at: https://youtu.be/8adKfLwIrVk. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube license

BC Open Textbooks: English Literature Victorians and Moderns: https://opentextbc.ca/englishliterature/back-matter/appendix-5-writing-an-analysis-of-a-poem-story-and-play/

Literary Analysis

The challenges of writing about english literature.

Writing begins with the act of reading . While this statement is true for most college papers, strong English papers tend to be the product of highly attentive reading (and rereading). When your instructors ask you to do a “close reading,” they are asking you to read not only for content, but also for structures and patterns. When you perform a close reading, then, you observe how form and content interact. In some cases, form reinforces content: for example, in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14, where the speaker invites God’s “force” “to break, blow, burn and make [him] new.” Here, the stressed monosyllables of the verbs “break,” “blow” and “burn” evoke aurally the force that the speaker invites from God. In other cases, form raises questions about content: for example, a repeated denial of guilt will likely raise questions about the speaker’s professed innocence. When you close read, take an inductive approach. Start by observing particular details in the text, such as a repeated image or word, an unexpected development, or even a contradiction. Often, a detail–such as a repeated image–can help you to identify a question about the text that warrants further examination. So annotate details that strike you as you read. Some of those details will eventually help you to work towards a thesis. And don’t worry if a detail seems trivial. If you can make a case about how an apparently trivial detail reveals something significant about the text, then your paper will have a thought-provoking thesis to argue.

Common Types of English Papers Many assignments will ask you to analyze a single text. Others, however, will ask you to read two or more texts in relation to each other, or to consider a text in light of claims made by other scholars and critics. For most assignments, close reading will be central to your paper. While some assignment guidelines will suggest topics and spell out expectations in detail, others will offer little more than a page limit. Approaching the writing process in the absence of assigned topics can be daunting, but remember that you have resources: in section, you will probably have encountered some examples of close reading; in lecture, you will have encountered some of the course’s central questions and claims. The paper is a chance for you to extend a claim offered in lecture, or to analyze a passage neglected in lecture. In either case, your analysis should do more than recapitulate claims aired in lecture and section. Because different instructors have different goals for an assignment, you should always ask your professor or TF if you have questions. These general guidelines should apply in most cases:

• A close reading of a single text: Depending on the length of the text, you will need to be more or less selective about what you choose to consider. In the case of a sonnet, you will probably have enough room to analyze the text more thoroughly than you would in the case of a novel, for example, though even here you will probably not analyze every single detail. By contrast, in the case of a novel, you might analyze a repeated scene, image, or object (for example, scenes of train travel, images of decay, or objects such as or typewriters). Alternately, you might analyze a perplexing scene (such as a novel’s ending, albeit probably in relation to an earlier moment in the novel). But even when analyzing shorter works, you will need to be selective. Although you might notice numerous interesting details as you read, not all of those details will help you to organize a focused argument about the text. For example, if you are focusing on depictions of sensory experience in Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” you probably do not need to analyze the image of a homeless Ruth in stanza 7, unless this image helps you to develop your case about sensory experience in the poem.
• A theoretically-informed close reading. In some courses, you will be asked to analyze a poem, a play, or a novel by using a critical theory (psychoanalytic, postcolonial, gender, etc). For example, you might use Kristeva’s theory of abjection to analyze mother-daughter relations in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Critical theories provide focus for your analysis; if “abjection” is the guiding concept for your paper, you should focus on the scenes in the novel that are most relevant to the concept.
• A historically-informed close reading. In courses with a historicist orientation, you might use less self-consciously literary documents, such as newspapers or devotional manuals, to develop your analysis of a literary work. For example, to analyze how Robinson Crusoe makes sense of his island experiences, you might use Puritan tracts that narrate events in terms of how God organizes them. The tracts could help you to show not only how Robinson Crusoe draws on Puritan narrative conventions, but also—more significantly—how the novel revises those conventions.
• A comparison of two texts When analyzing two texts, you might look for unexpected contrasts between apparently similar texts, or unexpected similarities between apparently dissimilar texts, or for how one text revises or transforms the other. Keep in mind that not all of the similarities, differences, and transformations you identify will be relevant to an argument about the relationship between the two texts. As you work towards a thesis, you will need to decide which of those similarities, differences, or transformations to focus on. Moreover, unless instructed otherwise, you do not need to allot equal space to each text (unless this 50/50 allocation serves your thesis well, of course). Often you will find that one text helps to develop your analysis of another text. For example, you might analyze the transformation of Ariel’s song from The Tempest in T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land. Insofar as this analysis is interested in the afterlife of Ariel’s song in a later poem, you would likely allot more space to analyzing allusions to Ariel’s song in The Waste Land (after initially establishing the song’s significance in Shakespeare’s play, of course).
• A response paper A response paper is a great opportunity to practice your close reading skills without having to develop an entire argument. In most cases, a solid approach is to select a rich passage that rewards analysis (for example, one that depicts an important scene or a recurring image) and close read it. While response papers are a flexible genre, they are not invitations for impressionistic accounts of whether you liked the work or a particular character. Instead, you might use your close reading to raise a question about the text—to open up further investigation, rather than to supply a solution.
• A research paper. In most cases, you will receive guidance from the professor on the scope of the research paper. It is likely that you will be expected to consult sources other than the assigned readings. Hollis is your best bet for book titles, and the MLA bibliography (available through e-resources) for articles. When reading articles, make sure that they have been peer reviewed; you might also ask your TF to recommend reputable journals in the field.

Harvard College Writing Program: https://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu/files/hwp/files/bg_writing_english.pdf

In the same way that we talk with our friends about the latest episode of Game of Thrones or newest Marvel movie, scholars communicate their ideas and interpretations of literature through written literary analysis essays. Literary analysis essays make us better readers of literature.

Only through careful reading and well-argued analysis can we reach new understandings and interpretations of texts that are sometimes hundreds of years old. Literary analysis brings new meaning and can shed new light on texts. Building from careful reading and selecting a topic that you are genuinely interested in, your argument supports how you read and understand a text. Using examples from the text you are discussing in the form of textual evidence further supports your reading. Well-researched literary analysis also includes information about what other scholars have written about a specific text or topic.

Literary analysis helps us to refine our ideas, question what we think we know, and often generates new knowledge about literature. Literary analysis essays allow you to discuss your own interpretation of a given text through careful examination of the choices the original author made in the text.

ENG134 – Literary Genres Copyright © by The American Women's College and Jessica Egan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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English Studies

This website is dedicated to English Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, English Language and its teaching and learning.

Genre Theory: Critics and Argument

Genre theory, a fundamental concept in literary and media studies, analyzes how texts are classified into distinct categories.

Introduction

Table of Contents

Genre theory, or theory of genre, a fundamental concept in English Studies and literary theory, analyzes how texts are classified into distinct categories based on shared characteristics and conventions. To respond to question what is genre theory means to answer it what it provides. In fact, it provides a systematic framework to understand how genres function as communication tools, shaping audience expectations and responses. By identifying recurring patterns and structures within genres, scholars can explore the underlying cultural, social, and historical implications embedded within them. Furthermore, genre theory enables a nuanced examination of how creators draw on established conventions while also innovating, leading to the evolution of genres over time. Through its interdisciplinary approach, encompassing elements from linguistics, psychology, and sociology, genre theory serves as a valuable analytical lens for comprehending the role of genres in shaping both individual and collective cultural identities and practices.

Critics, Works and Arguments: Criticism Against Genre Theory

• Relevance in the Digital Age: Some critics argue genre theory struggles to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of digital media and the proliferation of new media forms, which often defy traditional genre categorizations.
• Overemphasis on Conventions: Certain scholars contend that genre theory places excessive emphasis on rigid conventions, potentially stifling creativity and innovation within artistic works.
• Homogenization of Artistic Expression: Critics suggest that strict genre categorizations may lead to the homogenization of artistic expression, limiting the potential for cross-genre experimentation and boundary-breaking creations.
• Inadequate Representation of Hybrid Genres: Genre theory has been challenged for its inability to effectively account for hybrid genres, which blend elements from multiple traditional genres, thus presenting difficulties in classifying such works accurately.
• Cultural Relativity: Some argue that classification criteria of genre theory might be culturally biased, leading to a skewed understanding of genres from non-Western or marginalized cultural contexts.
• Neglect of Individuality: Critics contend that its focus on shared characteristics overlooks the uniqueness and individuality of each work, potentially diminishing the significance of singular artistic accomplishments.
• Limited Socio-Historical Context: Certain scholars point out that emphasis of this theory on formal features may overlook the rich socio-historical contexts that influence the emergence and development of genres over time.
• Challenges in Defining Boundaries: Critics raise concerns about the difficulties in defining clear boundaries between genres, as some works may blur the lines between different categories, making definitive categorization problematic.
• Dismissal of Genre Defying Works: Genre theory has been criticized for its tendency to dismiss or marginalize works that defy traditional genre classifications, as they may not neatly fit within established frameworks.

Works and Arguments Against Genre Theory:

• Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation by Marie-Laure Ryan: In this work, Ryan challenges the traditional understanding of genre and argues for a more dynamic and flexible approach that considers the narrative and ludic aspects of texts in shaping genres.
• The Death of Genre by John Frow: Frow’s essay questions the relevance of genre theory in contemporary literary studies and suggests that genres are better understood as constantly evolving and contextual, rather than fixed and prescriptive categories.
• Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology by Barry Keith Grant: Grant offers a critical analysis of the limitations of genre theory in film studies and advocates for a more comprehensive examination of ideologies and cultural contexts in shaping film genres.

Examples of Genre Theory

Keywords in Genre Theory

Some keywords associated with genre theory include:

• Genre: It is a distinct category or type of literary work characterized by shared conventions, themes, and stylistic features.
• Conventions: It means recurring elements and techniques commonly found within a particular genre, contributing to its recognizable identity.
• Hybridity: It means the blending of elements from multiple genres, resulting in works that defy easy categorization and challenge traditional genre boundaries.
• Evolution: It is the dynamic and changing nature of genres over time, influenced by cultural shifts, societal changes, and artistic innovations.
• Expectations: It means assumptions and anticipations formed by readers or audiences based on the conventions and patterns associated with a specific genre.
• Canon: It means the established and widely recognized set of influential works within a specific genre, contributing to the shaping of literary traditions.
• Intertextuality: It means the interconnectedness between different texts, genres, or literary works, often involving references, allusions, or adaptations of prior works.
• Audience Reception: It means how audiences respond to and interpret literary works based on their genre expectations and prior genre-related experiences.
• Generic Transformation: It means the process through which genres evolve and adapt to new contexts, incorporating elements from other genres or modifying existing conventions.
• Cultural Context: It means the broader societal, historical, and cultural factors that influence the emergence, development, and reception of genres in literature.

Suggested Readings

• Altman, Rick. Film/Genre . BFI Publishing, 1999.
• Derrida, Jacques. The Law of Genre . Critical Inquiry, vol. 7, no.1, 1980, pp. 55-81.
• Frow, John. Genre . Routledge, 2015.
• Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation . Routledge, 2006.
• Miller, Nancy K. The Heroine’s Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 1722-1782 . Columbia University Press, 1980.
• Neale, Steve. Genre and Hollywood . Routledge, 2000.
• Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology . University of Nebraska Press, 1987.
• Rabinowitz, Peter J., and Michael W. Smith, editors. Authorizing Readers: Resistance and Respect in the Teaching of Literature . Teachers College Press, 1998.
• Stam, Robert, et al. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation . Blackwell Publishing, 2005.
• Swales, John. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings . Cambridge University Press, 1990.

More from Literary Theory:

• Genre theory – 1
• Cognitive Poetics-1
• Cognitive Poetics-2

Related posts:

• Marxism Literary Theory
• Russian Formalism
• English Studies Part-2
• Globalization Theory, Theorists and Arguments

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14.3 Methods for Studying Genres

The previous section outlined some key terms and definitions for the study of writing. This section builds on that by providing an overview of research tools that can be used to better understand writing-in-context. Some of these tools–like an interview–may seem more familiar to you than others (such as genre analysis). At the same time, an activity you probably engage in every day–observation–achieves importance when done in the context of research and analysis.

There is no one right way to “do” writing research. Choosing the right tools depends on what it is you hope to learn. As you study a genre, whether it is a resume, a report, a procedural, or a complaint letter, think creatively about which of the following methods might help you learn more about it.

Genre/Textual Analysis

If genres are the key object of study for writing researchers, then genre analysis is the key tool for studying those objects–for unlocking their meaning. While it is true that we can learn a great deal about genres by observing people using them and even asking their users about them (which I detail in the next section), there is often important meaning that goes unnoticed by the producers and users of a genre. This meaning is what writing researchers try to access by studying the genres themselves. To put it another way, genres often have embedded in them a kind of code or shorthand that can reveal important information about the context in which they are used. As someone learning to write in that context, such information can help you to advance in your writing skills more quickly.

So how do writing researchers do this analysis? In short, genre analysis involves picking apart and noting the various features of a particular text in order to figure out what they mean (i.e., why they are significant) for the people who use that genre. In that sense, writing researchers act as detectives, revealing clues in order to then piece them all together and generate a cohesive story about what those clues mean.

It probably will not surprise you to know that, once again, curiosity plays an important role in conducting genre analysis. While it can be tempting when looking at a text to think there is not much to say about it (this is especially true when you take something as everyday as your grocery list or the menu at a coffee shop), when we begin to ask questions, the complexity of a text (and the genre it represents) is pretty quickly revealed.

A precursor to genre analysis is what researchers call “document collection.” While it is true that the more samples of a genre you find the more reliable and extensive your analysis can and will be, analyzing even one text can reveal a great deal. So, if genre analysis sounds kind of overwhelming or challenging, start by looking at a single sample text rather than many.

The following questions can get you thinking about (and taking notes on) how you would describe a sample text, by focusing on its content , its form , and its presentation :

• Who and what is referenced in the document?
• What information is included in the document? How much?
• What is the rhetorical purpose of the document?
• How is information organized, from beginning to end? In other words, what appears where?
• What kinds of sentences are used (questions, statements, commands, etc.)?
• What do you notice about the kind of language that is used?
• How would you describe the tone of the writing?
• How does the text use rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos)?
• Are section headings used in the document?
• Does the document include text only, or text and images? What is the layout like?
• What font size and style is used?
• How would you describe the “look” of the document?

Figure 1 provides a sample police incident report and is followed by some notes you would be likely to make based on the suggested questions above. Alternate formats:  Word version of incident report ;  PDF version of incident report .

Case Study, Part One: Notes on the Incident Report

• When the incident occurred
• Where the incident occurred
• Who was involved
• How many were involved
• Who was interviewed
• What happened (narrative)
• Which precinct is responsible for investigating
• Type of incident, people involved (victims/suspects), and location
• Filing information (case and incident numbers)
• Three distinct sections
• Logistical info appears first, “associated persons” appears second, narrative of the event appears third
• Narrative uses simple declarative statements, typically with people occupying the place of subject
• Use of verbs is active but primarily neutral, with a focus on communication that transpired (“responded,” “spoke,” “admitted,” “realized,” “advised”), with two instances of the use of passive voice (“was advised”)
• Narrative is described with a neutral tone and feels formal
• Focus of narrative is on actions taken that
• Narrative is described in chronological order, beginning with officer responding to incident, moving through the incident, and providing information on follow-up
• Items used for referential or filing reasons are numbered
• Information is organized into boxes and tables
• Each section is clearly labeled
• Abbreviations are used throughout
• Report is typed

After you have answered these questions, it is time to start looking for patterns and connections that will help you draw conclusions about what these features mean. Doing so involves a kind of creative thinking that is best done by someone who has been involved in studying or practicing the profession under investigation. Generally speaking, it is best to give some consideration to how the features of a particular genre might be connected to goals, objectives, and values of a particular position, organization, and/or context, since it is that context that produced the need for that genre in the first place.

Case Study, Part Two: Analysis of the Incident Report

The content, form, and presentation of the police incident report form work together to present a verifiable , objective account. Used internally, the design of the form helps to create uniformity by directing the officer to include the information that is likely to prove most salient for police purposes and for easy retrieval should future incidents occur. This streamlined approach to documentation keeps the focus on material and factual evidence, which clearly relates to the fact that this is a document that may be used in a legal context.

Generally speaking, a document that pays little attention to design, but has a great deal of detailed content, might derive from a situation where people place heavy emphasis on the development of ideas but don’t necessarily need to act on those ideas; on the other hand, if a document makes heavy use of section headings in order to direct the reader more carefully, it might suggest a need for greater efficiency of time and/or a number of readers with different background knowledge. Of course, there are genres that will do both: include a great number of complex ideas, neatly organized into easily accessible sections. No matter what you find, there is an interpretation to be discovered and explained with evidence from the text itself. The connecting of evidence to interpretation/conclusion is genre analysis.

[ Genre Analysis Essay video without captions ;  Genre Analysis Essay video with captions ]

Interviewing is something that happens informally all the time when we query colleagues or supervisors about how to write in a new genre. But a formal interview is a particular kind of research method that takes a bit of practice and can be quite difficult if you have never done it before. With a question we ask of a colleague, we usually have something very specific we want to know, but as a research method, interviews are usually used in order to answer a research question –and it is that distinction that you need to keep in mind.

A good research question, as you may have already learned in other college-level classes, does not have an easy answer. In fact, it usually does not have a single answer either; instead, it is a question that requires interpretation and that might be answered differently depending on who you ask. That said, it is answerable, meaning that given the right collection of evidence, you would be able to craft a response of some kind. In writing research, the interview is one way to collect just such evidence, since talking to someone about how, when, and why they use writing in their profession can provide all kinds of insight that you might miss if you were to analyze a text all by itself. Typically, these kinds of questions (of the “how,” “when,” and “why” variety) help writing researchers to understand the particular importance of writing to a specific profession, industry, organization, or even economy.

It is not uncommon for people in workplace settings not to realize just how much writing is a part of their everyday work practices. In the course of being asked questions, though, they often reveal the way that writing helps them accomplish their jobs successfully and make sure the company or organization runs effectively and achieves its goals. This is true whether you are interviewing a doctor, a firefighter, a restaurant manager, an electrician, a politician, a general contractor, or a computer specialist.

Here are some general advice and reminders for getting organized to conduct an interview:

• Practice good manners when scheduling the interview. This is an opportunity to practice being professional in your communication: everything you know about audience analysis should come into play as you request someone’s time and input.
• Be sure to practice your interview questions ahead of time. Questions that seem straightforward to you might not be clear to someone else; alternatively, they might clearly call for a different kind of answer than what you anticipated. The best way to know is to practice them on someone who is not your intended interviewee. Then, revise accordingly.
• Request permission to record the interview. You will be glad to have a record to return to if your interviewee says yes. Whether or not you record the interview, though, be sure to take notes in the interview (this is something you can and should practice in your practice interview as well). Recording devices can fail; writing during the interview can also help you to focus on what your interviewee is saying and to think of new, sometimes clarifying questions, as the interview proceeds.

Observation

Another powerful research tool is simply observing where the writing of a particular profession takes place. The values of a company or organization, the expectations they hold for their employees and various working conditions are often on display if you only look for them. For example:

• Is the workplace open to the public, or does it require secure entry?
• Do people work in offices or cubicles? Or maybe there is no individual work space at all?
• How many meeting rooms are there? How big are they?
• Are people milling around, or are they mostly on computers?
• How is the workplace decorated?
• What is the dress code?

The answers to these questions can lead to new insight regarding how genres are used and produced and help develop new questions for you to consider. Furthermore, observation also helps with imagining texts in use, which is so crucial to an effective analysis of your audience.

Genre Ecology Maps

A Genre Ecology Map, or GEM, is a visual representation of genres in action, interacting with one another. Let’s consider an earlier example: the job description. We could explain, using words, that the job description leads to job applications, which (often) lead to interviews and background checks, the hiring of an individual and all the associated paperwork, as well as training materials. But if we wanted to represent that visually, it would look something like Figure 2. Alternate formats:  Word version of Job Application GEM ;  PDF version of Job Application GEM .

All of a sudden, with a visual illustration, we have a slightly different understanding of the complexity involved in the production and circulation of different kinds of writing. Figure 3 provides another example, one that captures the intersection of different writers, positions, and stakeholders (put another way: the intersection of different genre sets in the college classroom). Alternate formats:  Word version of Classroom GEM ;  PDF version of Classroom GEM .

Particularly if you are a visual learner, maps like those above can help you to “see” genres in a way you might not otherwise and to reinforce what I have noted in sections above about how writing is not static but actually performs “actions” in various workplace settings.

CHAPTER ATTRIBUTION INFORMATION

This chapter was written by Allison Gross, Portland Community College, and is licensed  CC-BY 4.0 .

Technical Writing Copyright © 2017 by Allison Gross, Annemarie Hamlin, Billy Merck, Chris Rubio, Jodi Naas, Megan Savage, and Michele DeSilva is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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16.3 Glance at Genre: Print or Textual Analysis

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define key terms and organizational patterns of textual analysis.
• Explain how genre conventions are shaped by purpose, culture, and expectation.

As a genre —or literary category in which works feature similar forms, styles, or subject matter—textual analysis is less of a genre in itself and more of an exploration and interpretation of other genres. That is, textual analysis is explanatory and interpretive. When you receive an assignment to analyze a text, you focus on the elements that give it meaning. Usually your instructor will assign a specific writing task: to analyze and explain certain aspects of a text, to compare or contrast certain elements within a single text or in two or more texts, or to relate certain text elements to historical context or current events (as student writer Gwyn Garrison has done in the Annotated Student Sample ). These writing tasks thus explore genre characteristics of fiction, drama, poetry, literary nonfiction, film, and other forms of literary language.

When you write a textual analysis, ask yourself questions such as these:

• In what ways can this text be read?
• What are some different ways of reading it?
• Which reading makes the most sense to me?
• Which passages in the text support this reading?
• Whom does my analysis need to convince? (Who is my audience?)

Textual Analysis and Interpretive Communities

How you read and analyze a text depends on who you are. Who you are depends on the influences that have shaped you, or the communities to which you belong. Everyone belongs to various communities: families, social and economic groups (e.g., students or teachers, middle or working class), organizations (e.g., Democratic or Republican Party, Masons, Habitat for Humanity), geographic locales (e.g., rural or urban, north or south), and institutions (e.g., school, church, fraternity). Your membership in one or more communities may determine how you view and respond to the world. The communities that influence you most are called interpretive communities ; they influence the meaning you make of the world. People who belong to the same community may well have similar assumptions and therefore are likely to analyze texts in similar ways.

Before writing an interpretive or textual analysis essay, it is helpful to ask, Who am I when writing this piece? Be aware of your age, gender, race, ethnic identity, economic class, geographic location, educational level, or political or religious persuasion. Ask to what extent and for what purpose any of these identities emerges in your writing. Readers will examine the biases you may bring to your work, understanding that everyone views the world—and, consequently, texts—from their own vantage point.

College is, of course, a large interpretive community. The various smaller communities that exist within it are called disciplines: English, history, biology, business, art, and so on. Established ways of interpreting texts exist within disciplines. Often when you write a textual analysis, you will do so from the perspective of a traditional academic interpretive community or from the perspective of one who challenges that community.

Whether you deliberately identify yourself and any biases you might bring with you in your essay depends on the assignment you are given. Some assignments ask you to remove your personal perspective as much as possible from your writing, others ask that you acknowledge and explain it, and others fall somewhere in between.

Conventions of Textual Analysis

When asked to analyze or interpret a literary work, whether fiction or nonfiction, you will likely focus on some of these literary elements to explain how an author uses them to make meaning.

• Alliteration: literary device consisting of repetition of initial consonant sounds. (“Away from the steamy sidewalk, the children sat in a circle.”)
• Analysis: close examination and explanation of a text, supported by reasoning and evidence.
• Antagonist: character or force opposing the main character (protagonist) in a story.
• Climax: moment of emotional or intellectual intensity or a point in the plot when one opposing force overcomes another and the conflict is resolved.
• Epiphany: flash of intuitive understanding by the narrator or a character in a story.
• Figurative language: language that suggests special meanings or effects. Similes and metaphors are examples of figurative, rather than literal, language. (“She stands like a tree, solid and rooted.”)
• Imagery: language that appeals to one (or more) of the five senses. (“The cicadas hummed nonstop all day, but never loud enough to dull the roar of the leaf blowers.)
• Metaphor: direct comparison between two unlike things. (“She is a sly fox in her undercover work for the government.”)
• Narrator: someone who tells a story. A character narrator is a part of the story, whereas an omniscient narrator tells a story about others.
• Persona: mask to disguise or cover the author’s real self when presenting a story or other literary work.
• Plot: sequence of events in a story or play.
• Point of view: vantage point from which a story or event is perceived and told. The most frequently used points of view are first person and third person. In first person, the narrator is a character or observer in the story (fiction) or the author of it (nonfiction). In third person, the narrator has no part in the story other than telling it.
• Protagonist: main character or hero in a story.
• Rhyme: repetition of sounds, usually at the ends of lines in poems, but also occurring at other intervals in a line.
• Rhythm: rise and fall of stressed sounds within sentences, paragraphs, and stanzas.
• Simile: indirect comparison of unlike things using the word as or like . (“When he does undercover work, he is as sly as a fox.”)
• Symbol: object that represents itself and something else at the same time. A red rose is both a rose of a certain color and the suggestion of something romantic.
• Theme: meaning or thesis of a literary text.

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What is Genre?

“Wanna go to a movie this weekend?” a friend asks you. “One just came out in theaters that everyone’s talking about.”

You like movies. Who doesn’t? You also like watching movies in the theater. Popcorn, soda, candy, jumbo screen, and those comfy leather reclining chairs at the new theater—what’s not to like?

Still you ask, “What’s the movie?” because you might not want to pay the theater price if it’s not the kind of movie you enjoy.  And maybe some movies are the kind you’d see in the theaters on a date, but not with a friend. Maybe you’re a loud crier or easily startled and don’t like making a scene, in which case you might choose to see cry-or scare-inducing movies at home.

In any case, before your friend has even had a chance to respond, you’ve already begun assigning a complex set of expectations to deciding whether or not you will go to this movie with your friend, and you have constructed that set of expectations over a number of years and across a diverse range of movie-watching experiences.

So when your friend says they can’t remember the exact name of the movie, you might respond by asking, “Well, what type of movie is it?”

“It’s a horror movie,” they reply and, depending on your interest in or knowledge of horror movies, you might respond, “What sort of horror movie?” After all, horror movies can be broken down into slashers, hauntings, or psychological thrillers, to name a few. What makes them all horror is they’re all supposed to scare you, though the kind of fear they induce might differ.  But despite their variations, they do all follow a similar plot: a protagonist transgresses some invisible boundary—a woods they shouldn’t have camped in, a door they shouldn’t have opened—and encounters a force that defies the laws of reason, nature, ethics, and/or religion. That force, whether a deranged killer or evil spirit, challenges the protagonist’s understanding of their own reality to such an extent that they risk losing their mind, if not their life. To survive with body and mind intact, the protagonist must make sense of that which appears to defy sense-making and restore order.

When your friend finally reveals that the movie they’re recommending the two of you go see is a haunting, you pretty much know what to expect—even down to how you expect to be surprised. However, if the movie takes a completely unexpected turn and ends up not being a haunting at all but an alien invasion, it’s possible that if done in just the right way, you might appreciate how the creators of the movie played with your expectations.

Regardless of how the movie turns out, your expectations were all grounded in your understanding of genre : the typical set of functions and features that form when communication occurs within a similar set of circumstances over time. Movies, after all, are a form of communication, and they are viewed and riffed upon by filmmakers and movie watchers alike, all within particular cultures with their own values and beliefs. Even if you aren’t a fan of horror films, you still probably know quite a lot about the genres and subgenres of horror movies because they are such an important part of popular culture.

As with movies, you also know a lot about genres of writing. In your other college writing classes, you may have already started thinking about what you were reading and writing in terms of genre. Before then, you were likely familiar with literary genres, whether dystopian novels like 1984 , tragic plays like Romeo and Juliet , or epic poems like The Odyssey . But as you probably discovered in How Writing Works , genres don’t have to be works of art, and most of the writing you do is not meant to display your artistic genius. Texts, tweets, grocery lists, menus, resumes, lecture notes, reports, and research papers—these are all genres of writing, too. Each possesses a typical set of functions and features that accomplish particular goals within particular contexts. And they all have formed over time to meet the rhetorical and communicative needs and expectations of particular discourse communities.

So if you’re designing a menu for, say, an upscale Asian fusion restaurant, you’re probably thinking about what sort of menu design would most effectively capture the spirit of the restaurant and appeal to the kinds of patrons you want to attract. Furthermore, even if you’ve eaten at hundreds of Asian fusion restaurants before, you would probably spend some time researching their menus online, analyzing and evaluating each one to identify the features that work and the ones that don’t. Afterward, you’re likely to try to emulate the best qualities of the best menus while nevertheless trying to design a menu that looks uniquely your own.

By now, you can see that analyzing and evaluating genres to effectively communicate your purpose is something everyone does almost instinctively. But watching and understanding a movie is not the same thing as knowing how to direct a film. Writers, like directors, need to know the components of the genre they are working with so they can to put those components together in recognizable ways.

The point is, when it comes to much of the writing you will be doing in academic, professional, and public contexts, learning to write well means learning to recognize different genres of writing, their various shapes and purpose, and the audience expectations that come with them. Whether it’s an email, report, resume, blog post, tweet, or essay—composing any type of text begins with genre awareness.

Some Tips on Analyzing and Evaluating Genres

• An analysis explains how something works by breaking it down into its component parts, and genre analysis is no different.
• You can’t explain how a genre works by considering only its features. You also have to consider its functions, or how particular examples of a particular genre are “taken up” by particular people for particular reasons within particular cultural and historical contexts.
• You’re not just analyzing the text of the genre but the context: the values, beliefs, and material conditions that shape a genre’s features and functions over time.
• A genre is in many respects a complex living organism that exists in a dynamic relationship with its environment. Your analysis of a given genre should take that relationship into account, and it should keep in mind that like any other organism, a genre either evolves to respond to changes in its environment, or it dies.
• Sometimes, it’s difficult to understand how something works until it stops working. Consider that you probably don’t think much about your pancreas, unless your pancreas isn’t producing enough insulin to help your body process sugar. In fact, you might not even know that’s what your pancreas does unless you have diabetes. Similarly, it can be helpful to look not just at effective examples of a particular genre but at ineffective ones, too. This is where evaluation comes into play: it can help you understand not just how a particular genre works but why, or, in the case of an ineffective example, why not.

Additional Information

What is a genre: a literary guide for english students and teachers.

Activity: Academic Genres Brainstorm

Make a table with two columns. In the first column, make a list of writing assignments you have had to do for classes directly related to your major. For example, if your major is economics, in this column you would list the writing assignments you have done in your economics classes. In the second column, make a list of writing assignments you have had to do for your other classes.

Then answer these questions:

• What similarities do you notice in the types of writing in the left column? Be specific.
• Are there similarities between the writings in the left and right columns? What are they?
• Genre. By : Brian Hendrickson, Roger Williams University Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, Composition. Located at : https://rwu.pressbooks.pub/wtng225/chapter/genre/  Project : Introduction to Professional and Public Writing. License :  CC BY NC SA
• Activity added by Stephanie Frame

Genre Copyright © 2023 by Brian Hendrickson, PhD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Genre in Action: The Impossibility and Value of Genre Analysis

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This chapter stresses that genre has remained a central reference point within media studies, in contrast to authorship, that mainstay of critical post-war writing in film and media studies. Though the applications are wider, both authorship and genre were concepts developed and refined largely in relation to commercial, typically Hollywood, cinema. Both are equally concerned with patterns of continuity and discontinuity and both, it can be argued, are premised on an impossible idea of knowledge. Yet the impossibility of genre—how can a particular genre ever be fully known or defined?—has impacted its continuing use in the way that we see happening with the impossibility of authorship. This chapter seeks to explore why that might be the case, revisiting some key 1960s Anglophone writings on genre in order to reflect on the continuing resonance of genre as a category. Whether implicitly or explicitly, it contrasts the range of action as a generic space to more limited categories defined by subject matter or iconography. Reflecting on what is implicit in this work on action, and reading this through key early writings on genre, it raises questions about the flexibility of genre as a concept. Given its very extensiveness, it uses action film and television as a test case for exploring both the impossibility and the value of genre as a concept for contemporary critical analysis of media texts.

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Tasker, Y. (2021). Genre in Action: The Impossibility and Value of Genre Analysis. In: Ritzer, I. (eds) Media and Genre. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69866-9_2

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Writing with artificial intelligence.

• © 2023 by Joseph M. Moxley - Professor of English - USF

Genre may reference  a type of writing, art, or musical composition; socially-agreed upon expectations about how writers and speakers should respond to particular rhetorical situations; the cultural values; the epistemological assumptions about what constitutes a knowledge claim or authoritative research method; the discourse conventions of a particular discourse community . This article reviews research and theory on 6 different definitions of genre, explains how to engage in genre analysis, and explores when during the writing process authors should consider genre conventions. Develop your genre knowledge so you can discern which genres are appropriate to use—and when you need to remix genres to ensure your communications are both clear and persuasive.

Table of Contents

Genre Definition

G enre may refer to

• by the  aim  of discourse
• by discourse conventions
• by  discourse communities
• by a type of technology
• a social construct
• the situated actions of writers and readers
• the situated practices and epistemological assumptions of discourse communities
• a form of  literacy .

Related Concepts: Deductive Order, Deductive Reasoning, Deductive Writing ; Interpretation ; Literacy ; Mode of Discourse ; Organizational Schema; Rhetorical Analysis ; Rhetorical Reasoning ; Voice ; Tone ; Persona

Genre Knowledge – What You Need to Know about Genre

Genre plays a foundational role in meaning-making activities, including interpretation , reading , writing, and speaking.

In order to communicate with clarity , writers and speakers need to understand the expectations of their audiences regarding the appropriate content, style, design, citation style, and medium. Genres facilitate communication between writers and readers, authors and audiences, and writers/speakers and readers/listeners. Genre and genre knowledge increase the likelihood of clarity in communications .

Writers use their knowledge of genre to jumpstart composing: a genre presumes a formula for how to organize a document, how to develop and present a research question , how to substantiate claims–and more. For writers, genres are an efficient way to respond to recurring situations . Rather than reinvent the wheel every time, writers save time by considering how others have responded in the same or a similar situation . Genres are like big Lego chunks that can be re-used to start a new Lego creation that is similar to past Lego creations you’ve created.

In turn, readers use genres to more quickly scan information . Because they know the formula, because they share with the author as members of a discourse community a common language, common topoi , archive , canonical texts , and expectations about what to say and how to say it in, they can skip through a document and grab the highlights.

Six Definitions of Genre

1. genre refers to a naming and categorization scheme for sorting types of writing.

“… [L]et me define “genres” as types of writing produced every day in our culture, types of writing that make possible certain kinds of learning and social interaction.” (Cooper 1999, p. 25)

G enre  refers to types of writing, art, and musical compositions. For instance

• alphabetical texts may be categorized as Expository Writing, Descriptive Writing, Persuasive Writing, or Narrative Writing .
• movies may be categorized as Action & Adventure, Children & Family Movies, Comedies, Documentaries, Dramas.
• music may be categorized as Artist, Album, Country, New Age, Jazz, and so on.

There are many different ways to define and sort genres. For instance, genres may defined based on their content, organization, and style. Or, genres may be defined and categorized based on

• Examples: Drama, Fable, Fairy Tale, etc.
• Move 1 Establish a territory
• Move 2 Establish a niche
• Move 3 Occupy the niche (Swales and Feak 2004)
• A research article written for a scientific audience most likely uses some for of an “IMRAC structure”–i.e., an introduction, methods, results, and conclusion
• An article in the sciences and social sciences would use APA  style for citations
• by the type of technology used by the sender and the receiver of the information.

2. Genre is a Social Construct

“Genres are conventions, and that means they are social – socially defined and socially learned.” (Bomer 1995:112) “… [A] genre is a socially standard strategy, embodied in a typical form of discourse, that has evolved for responding to a recurring type of rhetorical situation.” (Coe and Freedman 1998, p. 137)

Genre is more than a way to sort types of texts by discourse aim or some other classification scheme: Genres are social, cultural, rhetorical constructs. For example,

• writers draw on their expectations about what they believe their readers will know about a genre–how it’s structured ( what it’s formula is! ) and when it’s socially useful.
• readers draw on their past experiences as readers and as members of particular discourse communities. They hold expectations about the appropriate use of particular textual patterns in specific situations.

Or, consider this example: in the social situation of seeking a job, an applicant knows from  the archive , the culture,  the conversations about job seeking , that they are expected to create a  letter of application  and a  résumé . More than that, they know the  point of view  they are to take as well as the  tone –and more.

Writers and readers develop textual expectations tacitly — by reading and speaking with others — and formally: by studying genres in school. Students are inculcated in textual practices of particular disciplines (e.g., engineering or biology) as part of their academic and professional training.

3. Genres Reflect the Situated Actions of Writers and Readers

“a rhetorically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish” (Miller 1984, p. 151)

Carolyn Miller (1984) extends this social view of genre in her article Genre as Social Action by operationalizing genre from a rhetorical perspective. Miller asserts genres are the embodiment of situated actions. In her rhetorical model of genre, Miller theorizes

• writers enter a rhetorical situation guided by aims (e.g., to persuade users to support a proposal ). The writer assesses the rhetorical situation (e.g., considers audience , purpose , voice , style ) to more fully understand the situation and the motives of stakeholders.
• For instance, a researcher could dip into a research study seeking empirical support for a claim . A graphic designer could open a magazine looking for layout ideas.

4. Genres Embody the Situated Practices and Values of Discourse Communities

“Genre not only allows the scholar to report her research, but its conventions and constraints also give structure to the actual investigations she is reporting” (Joliffe 1996, p. 283).

The textual practices of discourse communities reflect the epistemological assumptions of practitioners regarding what constitutes an appropriate rhetorical stance , research method , or knowledge claim . For instance, a scientist doesn’t insert their subjective opinions into the methods section of a lab report because they understand their audience expect them to follow empirical methods and an academic writing prose style

Academic documents, business documents, legal briefs, medical records—these sorts of texts are grounded in the situated practices of members of particular discourse communities . Practitioners — e.g., scientists in a research lab, accountants in an accountancy firm, or engineers in an engineering firm— share assumptions, conventions, and values about how documents should be researched, written, and shared. Discourse communities develop unique ways of communicating with one another. Their daily work, their situated practices, reflect their assumptions about what constitutes knowledge , appropriate research methods, or authoritative sources . Genres reflect the values of communities . They provide a roadmap to rhetors for how to engage with community members in expected ways. (For more on this, see Research ).

5. Genre Knowledge Constitutes a Form of Literacy

Genres  are created in the forge of recurring  rhetorical situations . Particular  exigencies  call for particular  genres . Applying for a job? Well, then, a résumé and cover letter are called for. Trying to report on an experiment in organic chemistry? Well, then a lab report is due. Thus, being able to recognize which  genre  is called for by  a particular exigency, a particular call to write , is  a form of literacy : If you’re unfamiliar with a genre and your reader’s expectations for that genre, then you may as well be from mars.

Genre Analysis – How to Engage in Genre Analysis

When we enter a rhetorical situation , guided by a sense of purpose like an explorer clutching a compass, we invariably compare the present situation to past situations. We reflect on whether we have read the work of other writers who have also addressed the same or somewhat equivalent rhetorical situation , the topic, we’re facing. If you have a proposal due, for instance, it helps to look at some samples of past proposals–particularly if you can access proposals funded by the organization from whom you are seeking support. 

For genre theorists, these are acts of typification –a moment where we typify a situation: “What recurs is not a material situation (a real, objective, factual event) but our construal of a type” (Miller 157).

In other words, genres are conceptual tools, ways we relate situated actions to recurring rhetorical situations. When first entering a situation, we assess whether this is a recurring rhetorical situation and whether past responses will work equally well for this new situation—or if we’ll need to tweak our response, our text, a bit. For instance, if applying for a job, you might look at previous drafts of job application letters

Genres are like prefabricated Lego pieces that we can use to jumpstart a new Lego masterpiece.

We abbreviate the experiences of our lives by creating idealized versions–i.e., metatexts that capture the gist of those experiences. Or, we access the archive , or our memory of the archive, and seek exemplars — canonical texts , the works of others who addressed similar exigencies , similar rhetorical situations.

To make this less abstract, let’s consider what might go through the mind of a writer who wants to write a New Year’s party invitation. If the writer were an American, they might reflect on the ritual ball drop in Times Square in New York City. They might recall past texts associated with New Year’s celebrations (party invitations, menus, greeting cards, party hats, songs, and resolutions) as well as rituals (fireworks, champagne, or a New Year’s kiss). They might even conduct an internet search for New Year’s Eve party invitations or download a party template from Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Over time, that writer’s sense of the ideal New Year’s party invitation becomes typified —a condensation of the texts and rituals and stories.

Because we tend to have unique experiences and because we have different personalities, motives, and aims , our sense of an ideal New Year’s Eve invitation might be somewhat different from those of our friends and family—or even the broader society. Rather than assuming it’s a good time to go out and party and dance, you may think it’s a good time to stay home and meditate. After all, as writers, we experience events, texts and rituals subjectively and uniquely. Thus, we don’t all have the same ideas about what should happen at a New Year’s party or even what the best party invite should look like. Still, when we sit down to write a party invitation for New Year’s Eve, this is a reoccurring situation for us, and we cannot help but be influenced by all of the past invitations we’ve received, what our friends and loved ones have recommended, and what we see online for party invite templates (if we engage in strategic searching).

Sample Genre Analysis

Below are some sample questions and perspectives you may consider when engaging in Genre Analysis.

1. When During Composing Should I Engage in Genre Analysis?

Early in the writing process — during prewriting — you are wise to identify the genre your audience expects you to follow. Then, engage in strategic searching to identify exemplars and canonical texts that typify the genre.

Next, you might begin your first draft by outlining the sections of discourse associated with the genre you’re writing in. For example, if you are writing an Aristotelian argument for a school paper, you might jumpstart your first draft by listing the rhetorical moves associated with Aristotelian argument as your subject headings:

• Introduce the Topic
• Introduce Claims
• Appeal to Ethos & Persona to Establish an Appropriate Tone
• Appeal to Emotions
• Appeal to Logic
• Present Counterarguments
• Search for a Compromise and Call for a Higher Interest
• Speculate About Implications in Conclusions

That said, it’s important to note that some people prefer not to think about genre at all during drafting. Research in writing studies has found that there is no single, ideal writing process . Instead, our personalities, rhetorical stance , openness to information , rhetorical situation (e.g., contextual factors such as time available and access to information )–and more — influence how we compose.

You may not want to think much about genre when

• You’re the type of writer who needs to write your way to meaning. For you, writing is rewriting
• Your audience may have specific expectations in mind that you haven’t addressed. You may be unfamiliar with how other writers have addressed that situation in the past. You may lack access to the information you need to research how others typically respond to the rhetorical situation you are facing

In summary, thinking about genre and reading the works of other writers addressing similar rhetorical situations will probably help you jumpstart a writing project. However, at the end of the day, only you can decide how to work with genres of discourse.

Coe, R., & Freedman, A. (1998). Genre theory: Australian and North American approaches. In M. L. Kennedy (ed), Theorizing composition: A critical sourcebook of theory and scholarship in contemporary composition studies (p p. 136-147). Greenwood Press.

Joliffe, D. A. (1996). Genre. In T. Enos (ed), Encyclopedia of rhetoric and composition: Communication from ancient times to the information age (pp . 279-284). Garland Publishing.

Miller, R. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70 , 151-167.

Swales, J., & C. Feak (2004). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills . University of Michigan Press

Related Articles:

Annotated bibliography.

Argument - Argumentation

Autobiography, conclusions - how to write compelling conclusions, cover letter, letter of transmittal.

Dialogue - The Difficulty of Speaking

Executive summary, formal reports, how to write a research proposal, infographics, instructions & processes.

Introductions

Presentations, problem definition, progress reports, recommendation reports, research protocol.

Reviews and Recommendations

Subjects & concepts, team charter, recommended.

Academic Writing – How to Write for the Academic Community

Structured Revision – How to Revise Your Work

Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

Credibility & Authority – How to Be Credible & Authoritative in Research, Speech & Writing

Citation Guide – Learn How to Cite Sources in Academic and Professional Writing

Page Design – How to Design Messages for Maximum Impact

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Comparative genre analysis.

In the University Writing Seminar, the Comparative Genre Analysis (CGA) unit asks students to read writing from varying disciplines. The goal of the CGA is to prepare students for writing in their courses across the disciplines, as well as in their future careers. The CGA acts as an important introduction to the fact that, while elements of writing (e.g., evidence, motive) exist in all disciplines and genres, these elements often look different.

Over a 2-3 class sequence, students work independently and in groups to identify how writing across the disciplines varies and is similar in content, style, and organization. Instructors select four academic articles, typically one from the humanities, one from the sciences, and two from the social sciences (ideally one more humanistic social science, such as cultural anthropology or history, and one more quantitative social science, such as sociology or economics). These articles become the foundation for observing similarities in differences in writing. Class discussion on the final day of the CGA highlights not just HOW academic writing varies but WHY this variation exists.

At the end of the CGA class sequence, as well as at the end of the semester, students are asked to write reflections on what they have learned about writing across the disciplines and about what this might mean for them in future courses. Student reflections suggest that the CGA is effective in beginning the conversation about how writing is similar and different across the disciplines ( Sample Student Reflection below).

What does this mean for Writing Intensive (WI) classes?

• Your students know that the writing in your discipline may be different in some/many ways from the writing they did in UWS or in previous courses.
• Your students have the tools to start to predict how writing in a new discipline may be different. Because they understand, for example, why name/date citations are used in one discipline and name/page number citations are used in another, they can anticipate what a new discipline will require.
• If you identify a writing convention in your discipline, students should be able to fit this into the larger conversation around writing similarities and differences that they participated in during UWS.
• Students have discussed and reflected on what questions they might need to ask their professors / teaching assistants when writing in a new discipline (e.g., What citation style should be used? Is the first person allowed?).
• WI instructors can facilitate the writing process for students by 1) identifying what element of writing they are discussing, using UWS language, and 2) explicitly describing the disciplinary-specific expectations for this element and reiterating why this convention is used.   

Sample Student Reflection  I believe the absolute most important thing a writer should consider is their intended audience. Whichever discipline the essay is for they all have a distinct and diverse readership. This readership cannot be overlooked when creating an argument. In future writing, no matter the subject, I will try to build a firm foundation of the writing in a discipline. By reading academic articles from respected sources, it will allow me to grasp the different ways the argument is presented in that particular field. I would also open a discussion with my class, colleagues, or teacher about the different ways they are approaching this discipline. When presenting their ideas in writing, I think the most important thing for scholars to consider is the audience who they are presenting it to. When writing, audience can affect multiple facets of any article or paper. For example, when presenting to a scientific audience, technical language can be used and an expectation for certain background knowledge can be considered. However, when presenting to a broader audience such as a public awareness piece, the writer may choose to use language that isn’t quite so technical and complex, making the paper more accessible to its desired audience. The CGA exercise has made me more aware of the types of data used in different disciplines when writing. For example, scientific pieces do not usually use many quotes because it’s not so much what was said that was important, rather the actual conclusion that can be drawn from the data. In more humanities focused pieces, quotes can play a major role in the focus of the paper while numerical data and experiments may not. The CGA exercise also made me more aware of how different disciplines require varying levels of formality in the presentation of ideas or information and differences in determining when to use a thesis or a hypothesis. Although we only examined four disciplines within our analysis, as I approach other disciples in the future, I feel that this exercise has given me a good base. I know that in the future I will approach the writing by first determining what matters most to my audience that I am writing for and the relationship between my audience and the motive behind my writing. In future classes when I need to know the writing style of a new discipline, I will ask the professor the writing style I should use and what format I should do my works cited in. I could also ask what the structure should be, what the length should be, and if I should be concise or more flowery. I could also ask if the essay should be personal and opinionated or more impartial. The CGA exercise has made me more aware that different disciplines have their own style of writing. It has made me realize that I cannot just carry over my writing style from a biology or physics paper and use that same style in an English essay. I am also aware that citation style is very important to writing papers. The differences in structure in the different disciplines is also very important when it comes to writing papers.

Elissa Jacobs and Paige Eggebrecht

• Resources for Students
• Research and Pedagogy

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Essay Writing

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This resource begins with a general description of essay writing and moves to a discussion of common essay genres students may encounter across the curriculum. The four genres of essays (description, narration, exposition, and argumentation) are common paper assignments you may encounter in your writing classes. Although these genres, also known as the modes of discourse, have been criticized by some composition scholars, the Purdue OWL recognizes the wide spread use of these genres and students’ need to understand and produce these types of essays. We hope these resources will help.

The essay is a commonly assigned form of writing that every student will encounter while in academia. Therefore, it is wise for the student to become capable and comfortable with this type of writing early on in her training.

Essays can be a rewarding and challenging type of writing and are often assigned either to be done in class, which requires previous planning and practice (and a bit of creativity) on the part of the student, or as homework, which likewise demands a certain amount of preparation. Many poorly crafted essays have been produced on account of a lack of preparation and confidence. However, students can avoid the discomfort often associated with essay writing by understanding some common genres.

Before delving into its various genres, let’s begin with a basic definition of the essay.

What is an essay?

Though the word essay has come to be understood as a type of writing in Modern English, its origins provide us with some useful insights. The word comes into the English language through the French influence on Middle English; tracing it back further, we find that the French form of the word comes from the Latin verb exigere , which means "to examine, test, or (literally) to drive out." Through the excavation of this ancient word, we are able to unearth the essence of the academic essay: to encourage students to test or examine their ideas concerning a particular topic.

Essays are shorter pieces of writing that often require the student to hone a number of skills such as close reading, analysis, comparison and contrast, persuasion, conciseness, clarity, and exposition. As is evidenced by this list of attributes, there is much to be gained by the student who strives to succeed at essay writing.

The purpose of an essay is to encourage students to develop ideas and concepts in their writing with the direction of little more than their own thoughts (it may be helpful to view the essay as the converse of a research paper). Therefore, essays are (by nature) concise and require clarity in purpose and direction. This means that there is no room for the student’s thoughts to wander or stray from his or her purpose; the writing must be deliberate and interesting.

This handout should help students become familiar and comfortable with the process of essay composition through the introduction of some common essay genres.

This handout includes a brief introduction to the following genres of essay writing:

• Expository essays
• Descriptive essays
• Narrative essays
• Argumentative (Persuasive) essays

To deepen our understanding of discourse community concepts, we will analyze both traditional and multimedia documents as genres.  A genre is a form of communication such as a book, a billboard, or a blog. When we conduct a genre analysis, then, we are looking at the of two different texts within or across discourse communities.  The purposes of this assignment are to help you understand the importance of genre and discourse community knowledge to writers. Additionally, this assignment will reinforce your understanding of the ways writing differs among genres and allow you to strengthen your skills in writing in the genre of a textual analysis.    :  Locate and photocopy (or print, save, link, or scan) two types of genres on the same issue or topic.  Consider our discussion on the concept of genre, how to recognize different genres, and the features that differentiate one genre from another. You should begin the process by creating a matrix that shows the differences and similarities through the four areas of genre analysis: rhetorical issues, content, structure, and style/language as a way to formulate/outline the content in the body of the essay.     As you begin, read about different genres such as posters, documentary photography, instruction sets, editorial and opinion pieces, essays, and comics in Section 3, pages 315-509 in your textbook:  . Carefully for your genre analysis essay.    Address the following areas, and use evidence from the genres to support your discussion, and maintain person voice throughout:     ·        Start with a brief discussion of the subject/topic that the two genres are focusing on.  Include the title of each piece, the genre type, and the author or company name of each in the introduction.  ·        State the thesis, either implied or stated, in each genre.  Your thesis, which goes in the last paragraph, is the synthesis of the two genres.     :    ·        Who is the intended audience for each genre? ·        What discourse community (or communities) is this audience in? ·        What is the audience likely to know? Want to know? Why? ·        How much time will this audience want to spend with the information presented in the genres? ·        What is the purpose of the information presented in the genres? (inform, persuade, entertain)   ·        How does each genre help to establish the information's credibility?  Is it effective? ·        How does each genre help to evoke an emotional response from the audience?  Which emotions?  Why? ·        What types of evidence are used to support the claims of the information in the genres? Is it appropriate? Why or why not?    ·        How is the information shaped by the genre (s)? (Consider the limitations/freedoms of space, time, layout, audience, and so on.) ·        How are the genres organized to convey its message? ·        How does the structure facilitate the purpose of the information in the genre(s)?      ·        How formal/informal is the language? ·        What specialized vocabulary is used? ·        What other language features do you notice?   ·        Which genre was more effective in conveying its message?  Why? ·        Offer a final comment on the impact of genres on discourse.     You will receive comments on drafts through peer review, the Writing Center, the evaluators, and/or your instructor.     : Submit a 4-6 page essay in which you analyze and compare two genres on the same subject/topic.  Maintain person voice throughout.        Submit both a rough draft and the final draft as well as copies of both genres (can be a link) to the submission area in Blackboard.  Save your paper using your last name, and the word, "genre,” and “draft” or “final” depending on the version of the paper you are submitting.    ·        Use 12 pt. font, Times New Roman, Arial, or Georgia style, double space, and use appropriate voice/tone for an analysis essay.    ·        Provide a Reference page and use in-text citation when referring to specific passages or examples of each genre.  ·        Use  person voice.   :  person voice.   Assessment Rubric for Genre Analysis               30 pts.     Specific, developed analysis and insightful  comparisons between the genres. Appropriate choice of genres.   Analysis is generally sound but could be more specific in some areas. Insightful  comparison between the genres. Appropriate choice of genres.   General and/or undevelop-ed analysis and some comparison between the genres. Appropriate choice of genres.   Analysis is sparse; almost no comparison between the genres and/or   Question-able   choice of genres.   No relevant analysis and compare-sons made between the genres and/or inappro-priate choice of genres.             20 pts.   Support information is related to analysis and supportive of the topic/sub-ject.   Support information has minor weaknesses relative to analysis and/or support of the topic/sub-ject.   Support information has major weaknesses relative to analysis and/or support of the topic/sub-ject.   An attempt has been made to add support information, but it was unrelated or confusing.   No support informa-tion found or irrelevant.           20 pts.   Maintains focus on topic/sub-ject throughout response.   May exhibit minor lapses in focus on topic/sub-ject.   May lose or may exhibit major lapses in focus on topic/sub-ject.   May fail to establish focus on topic/sub-ject.   No analytical focus found.         15  pts.   Demon-strates skillful writing fluency, exhibits few or no mechanical errors.   Demon-strates reasonable writing fluency, exhibits few mechanical errors.     Writing fluency is lacking, exhibits several mechanical errors.     Demon-strates minimal writing fluency, exhibits numerous mechanical errors.     Writing is not fluent-- unreadable.             15 pts.   Sources are cited correctly in the document and on the reference page.   Sources are cited, but there are a few errors in the format.   Sources are cited, but there are several errors in the format.   Some of the sources are not cited and/or the format is not correct.   Sources are not cited at all. * Rubrics are subject to minor changes. Students will be notified if changes occur. 145 IMAGES 📌 Essay Sample on Genre Conventions in Literature Science Fiction Film Genre Analysis Paper Free Essay Example Teaching Writing Through Genre Analysis Essay "Essay On Musical Genre In Film And Its Origins" (PDF) The Realization of Genre Analysis on Students' Essay: A Classroom Genre analysis COMMENTS How To: Genre Analysis Like all other essays, a genre analysis has an introduction, body, and conclusion. In your introduction, you introduce the topic and the texts you'll be analyzing. In your body, you do your analysis. This should be your longest section. In your conclusion, you do a short summary of everything you talked about and include any closing thoughts ... Understanding Genre and Genre Analysis This means a type of writing, i.e., an essay, a poem, a recipe, an email, a tweet. These are all different types (or categories) of writing, and each one has its own format, type of words, tone, and so on. Analyzing a type of writing (or genre) is considered a genre analysis project. A genre analysis grants students the means to think ... Genre Analysis & Reverse Outlining Genre analysis is a way of examining a type or style of writing in order to better understand the conventions, expectations, purpose, and target audience for that genre. This handout briefly outlines some steps for two approaches to genre analysis: (1) the global vs. local approach, which analyzes what a style of writing is doing on a large and ... How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay Table of contents. Step 1: Reading the text and identifying literary devices. Step 2: Coming up with a thesis. Step 3: Writing a title and introduction. Step 4: Writing the body of the essay. Step 5: Writing a conclusion. Other interesting articles. Writing a Literary Analysis Essay Well, not really. A literary analysis essay asks you to make an original argument about a poem, play, or work of fiction and support that argument with research and evidence from your careful reading of the text. It can take many forms, such as a close reading of a text, critiquing the text through a particular literary theory, comparing one ... 18.3 Glance at Genre: Genre, Audience, Purpose, Organization 16.3 Glance at Genre: Print or Textual Analysis; 16.4 Annotated Student Sample: "Artists at Work" by Gwyn Garrison; 16.5 Writing Process: ... The multimodal genres of writing are based on the idea that modes work in different ways, with different outcomes, to create various vehicles for communication. By layering, or combining, modes, an author ... Genre Theory: Critics and Argument The Death of Genre by John Frow: Frow's essay questions the relevance of genre theory in contemporary literary studies and suggests that genres are better understood as constantly evolving and contextual, ... Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge University Press, 1990. More from Literary Theory: Genre theory - 1; 7.3 Glance at Genre: Criteria, Evidence, Evaluation Evaluation: judgment based on analysis. Fandom: community of admirers who follow their favorite works and discuss them online as a group. Genre: broad category of artistic compositions that share similar characteristics such as form, subject matter, or style. For example, horror, suspense, and drama are common film and literary genres. A Review of Genre Analysis of Academic Writings Abstract. Genre analysis has emerged as a crucial tool in deciphering and delineating the linguistic features of scholarly research articles. This article presents a comprehensive review of genre ... 14.3 Methods for Studying Genres 14.3 Methods for Studying Genres. The previous section outlined some key terms and definitions for the study of writing. This section builds on that by providing an overview of research tools that can be used to better understand writing-in-context. Some of these tools-like an interview-may seem more familiar to you than others (such as ... 16.3 Glance at Genre: Print or Textual Analysis As a genre —or literary category in which works feature similar forms, styles, or subject matter—textual analysis is less of a genre in itself and more of an exploration and interpretation of other genres. That is, textual analysis is explanatory and interpretive. ... Before writing an interpretive or textual analysis essay, it is helpful ... PDF Rhetorical Genre Analysis Pedagogical Purposes: To gain experience using the methods and tools of in-depth rhetorical analysis. To gain insight into the usefulness of a knowledge of genre. To deepen your ability to use the terminology and concepts of rhetorical analysis. To practice writing to an audience less informed about the method/tools than you are. Genre Whether it's an email, report, resume, blog post, tweet, or essay—composing any type of text begins with genre awareness. Some Tips on Analyzing and Evaluating Genres An analysis explains how something works by breaking it down into its component parts, and genre analysis is no different. PDF Questions for Genre Analysis Genre analysis focuses on what the author is doing (as opposed to the content or what they are saying). What is the author doing at the rhetorical or sentence level that allows a reader to understand the text as part of the target genre? For instance, think about the differences between a resume and a cover letter, or Genre in Discourse, Discourse in Genre: A New Approach to the Study of Mikhail Bakhtin (1986), whose work on genre has influenced a number of education researchers (Gee, 2005; Kress, 2009; Luke, 1996), expands traditional genre analysis to take in everyday genres, such as personal conversations, as well as literary genres, such as the novel. Crucially, he situates genres in the shifting realms of the social and ... 12.14: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap. City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative. Table of contents. Example 1: Poetry. Example 2: Fiction. Example 3: Poetry. Attribution. The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work. Genre in Action: The Impossibility and Value of Genre Analysis Unlike the gangster film, to which Bazin refers as an established entity in his 1946 essay, action is a much more recent genre category. With respect to American cinema, the genre designation "action cinema" comes to prominence during the 1980s following in the wake of the New Hollywood of the 1970s which Lichtenfeld explores so effectively ... Genre Definition Genre Knowledge - What You Need to Know about Genre. Genre plays a foundational role in meaning-making activities, including interpretation, reading, writing, and speaking.. In order to communicate with clarity, writers and speakers need to understand the expectations of their audiences regarding the appropriate content, style, design, citation style, and medium. Genre Analysis Essay Genre Analysis Principles. principles of genre analysis. These principles include: Beaufort's five domains of knowledge, discourse community attitudes and values, rhetorical and other textual features. The rhetorical and other textual features can be divided into sub-principles such as content, function, format and different rhetoric appeals. Comparative Genre Analysis Comparative Genre Analysis. In the University Writing Seminar, the Comparative Genre Analysis (CGA) unit asks students to read writing from varying disciplines. The goal of the CGA is to prepare students for writing in their courses across the disciplines, as well as in their future careers. ... I could also ask if the essay should be personal ... PDF Genre analysis of personal statements: Analysis of moves in application This study was conducted using the framework of genre analysis to explore move struc-tures, underlying patterns, text-audience relations, and communicative purposes of the personal statement as a genre. 1.1. Literature review As a defining treatise in genre theory, Carolyn Miller's (1984) essay, ''Genre as Social Essay Writing Essays are shorter pieces of writing that often require the student to hone a number of skills such as close reading, analysis, comparison and contrast, persuasion, conciseness, clarity, and exposition. As is evidenced by this list of attributes, there is much to be gained by the student who strives to succeed at essay writing. ENGL 1312 Genre Analysis Assignment Genre Analysis Essay. Genre Analysis preliminary draft due 2/3/10 at 1:30 pm. Genre Analysis final draft due 2/17/10 1:30 p.m. To deepen our understanding of discourse community concepts, we will analyze both traditional and multimedia documents as genres. A genre is a form of communication such as a book, a billboard, or a blog. assignment essay homework phd report resume review speech thesis