Genre means 'the type' or 'category'. It is generally seen as a fusion of semantic and syntactic features that over time become conventional to the audience.
There are 3 approached to Genre analysis. Aesthetic approaches, Ritual Approaches, Ideological approaches.
Aesthetic approaches - focuses on formal, stylistic features and innovations. It typically looks at narrative structures and ignores other syntactic features. It also usually provides limited insight into the genre's rhetorical force.
Ritual approaches - Focus on underlying mythic, culture-typal themes. It often use semiotic/structural analysis. Use enduring or changing features of popular generic texts to explore cultural tensions, rules, roles and efficacy of social myths.
Ideological approaches - Focuses on how ideas, roles, norms that 'naturalise' current inequitable distribution of economic, social, political power and resources are expressed in text. Use semiotic/structural and ideological critical terms and concepts. It provides insight into how genre texts question or celebrate the social , political, economic and cultural status quo of society.
