ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. This book is about the kinds or genres of speech, writing, images, and organised sound: forms of talk and writing, of drawing and painting and sculpting, of architecture, of music, and mixed forms like film, television, opera, drama, and digital games. It is a book about how genres organise verbal and non-verbal discourse, together with the actions that accompany them, and how they contribute to the social structuring of meaning. Thus the author speak of genre films, meaning strongly defined genres such as the Western or the heist movie; of genre painting, meaning a style of representation of everyday scenes, defined by opposition to paintings on larger historical themes. And of genre fiction, meaning for the most part such popular genres as the detective story or science fiction.
