ABSTRACT
In its most general sense, ‘genre’ simply means a sort, or type, of text: thriller, horror movie, musical, autobiography, tragedy, etc. The word comes from the Latin word ‘genus’, meaning ‘kind’ or ‘type’ of anything, not just literary or artistic works. (‘Genus’, in fact, is still used to describe a technical sense of type, in the classification of species; and ‘generic’ is sometimes used to mean ‘broad’ or ‘with the properties of a whole type or class’.) There is an obvious convenience in being able to label texts. We can fit any given text into a class that offers a convenient shorthand in which to describe what it is like: it resembles others that people already know. The notion is useful when applied not only to literary works but also to non-literary discourse, distinguishing the typical features of, say, a shopping list from those of food labelling, a menu or a recipe.
