ABSTRACT
Let us take as our starting point the assumption that all genres possess historically specific and variable expressive capacities: they offer frameworks for constructing meaning and value in one or another medium. These frameworks are alternative to each other, and choices between them have to do with my valuing of certain expressive qualities over others in a particular set of circumstances: I choose to make or to watch a documentary rather than a feature film, or rather than writing or reading a newspaper article, because that genre allows me to activate certain possibilities of meaning and value rather than others.
