ABSTRACT
Most of the knowledge required to read and understand this text is knowledge about the kind of writing it is: knowledge about its genre. Some of the knowledge required of the reader looks like knowledge about the real world rather than knowledge about texts and genres. It may be that the reader does not have it, of course: they may not be able to read, they may be a child, or they may just not have heard about the previous story: they may not belong, that is to say, to the discourse community which is invoked and renewed by this hoarding. Embodied in sorting mechanisms that are continuously reinforced by discussion, by use, even by contestation, generic classification is at once conceptual and material. This is to say that genre is not just a matter of codes and conventions, but that it also calls into play systems of use, durable social institutions, and the organisation of physical space.
