What is genre theory in simplified terms

As readers, we often think of genre in terms of writing styles: comedy, romance, mystery, drama, and tragedy. We are trained to recognize the conventions and hallmarks of these forms. Genre also includes broad categories like poetry, novels, and plays. After all, we rely on specific conventions and expectations in our responses to a text. A person screaming in a café is interpreted differently in a comedy than in a tragedy because of the context. These distinctions represent genres or forms of writing.

Current genre theory, however, delves deeper. It describes genre as a response to a specific and recurrent social situation. Recurring social/rhetorical situations give rise to genres and genre, thus, depends heavily on the intertextuality of discourse (Devitt 576). In the case of an academic article, for example, this intertextuality means that scholars are guided by, refer back to, and engage with previous work.

Carolyn Miller describes genre as a social construct and social action, providing the writer with a socially recognizable way to make his or her intentions known (157-58). Genre theory offers a way of thinking about how language depends on context.

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