Notes/Quotes on Genre Theory

I found the following notes on genre theory while cleaning out my harddrive. I have no idea from where they are, but I wanted to store them here. “[CUE]” means I associated the note with constrained universes of expression. Here:

‘The concept of genre offers the possibility of recognizing similarities even in the midst of great diversity.’ (Shepherd & Watters, 1998, pp 97)

dates back to classical philosophy, where it was used in the sphere of classification

The concept of genre was introduced to the IS field by Yates and Orlikowski (1992). The authors introduced the concept as a way of identifying types of organizational communication. ... According to the authors a genre has a pattern from which an instance is recognized as member of a specific genre within the community. A genre is formed by, and evolves within the community.

Yates and Orlikowski (1992) suggest that a genre could be characterized by having similarities in substance and form. Substance refers social motives, themes and topics and form refers to observable physical and linguistic features; structural, medium and language or symbol system.

The potential of genre modification is inherent in every act of communication (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). [CUE] This is described as a recursive cycle with every act being maintaining, elaborating or modifying.

According to Ericksson (1997) change of media may even speed up the evolution of a genre.

These genre rules may operate tacitly or may be codified into standards on different levels stated by individuals or medium (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). Genres are reproduced when individuals draw on rules. This reinforces and sustains the rules. [CUE]

Genres are produced, reproduced and changed over time (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992). If a new pattern is invoked only by a single individual it may be of interest as stages of evolution, but not considered as genre change. If more individuals follow the new pattern and the pattern eventually becomes ‘taken for granted’ it will change the genre rules. When changes to established genres become widely shared among members of a community, genre variants or even new genres may emerge (Shepherd & Watters, 1999).

Watters and Shepherd (1997) mean that digital genre provide recognized contexts for both form and content which enables users to shape models or understandings of the genre … [gives them] a framework of familiarity. This also provides user expectations.

The term cyber genre was introduced by Shepherd and Watters (1998). In their taxonomy that describes genre evolution, cyber genres are divided into two classes of sub genres; extant and novel. Extant genres are based on existing genres in other media that have been transferred into the digital media. Novel genres are fully dependent on the digital media and have no counterparts in other media.