Cover not available
Part of
Challenges in Corpus Linguistics: Rethinking corpus compilation and analysis
Edited by Mark Kaunisto and Marco Schilk
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 118] 2024
► pp. 127–142

Corpus genre categories

Issues at the intersection of linguistics and literature

| Linnaeus University

This chapter highlights genre categorizations as a pitfall at the intersection of corpus linguistics and literature and problematizes the use of the genre category from the perspectives afforded by both fields. The intention is for the paper to argue for a more explicit communication of our genre categorization practices, and by doing so suggest ways of avoiding miscommunication and confusion due to the genre term being understood differently within different disciplines and backgrounds. The conclusion is that the wider categorizations used, such as novel or short story, are likely to be the most practical, and that studies wanting to sub-categorize further using the genre term should instead apply it according to their specific needs accompanied by explicit discussion of the implementation.

Keywords: genre, corpus linguistics, stylistics, literature, special corpora
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Looking up from the pit
  • 3.Text genre categorization in literature
  • 4.Text genre categorization in linguistics
  • 5.The genre category pitfall
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References
Allen, Robert C.
1989 Bursting bubbles: “Soap opera” audiences and the limits of genre. In Remote Control: Television, Audiences and Cultural Power, Ellen Seiter, Hans Borchers, Gabriele Kreutzner & Eva-Maria Warth (eds), 44–55. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Aquilina, Mario
2014 The Event of Style in Literature. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barthes, Roland. & Heath, Stephen
1977 Image, Music, Text: Essays. London: Fontana.Google Scholar
Berliner, Todd
2017 Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas
1988 Variation across Speech and Writing, 1st edn. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1989 A typology of English texts. Linguistics 27: 3–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 Corpus linguistics and the study of literature: Back to the future? Scientific Study of Literature 1: 15–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
BNC Consortium
2007 The British National Corpus, XML Edition. Oxford Text Archive. [URL] (20 May 2024).
Chandler, Daniel
1997 An introduction to genre theory. [URL] (15 May 2023)
Colwell, Ernest C. & Tune, Ernest
1969 Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament. Leiden: E. J. Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davies, Mark
2008 The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). [URL] (20 May 2024).
2010 The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). [URL] (20 May 2024).
Donahue, Peter
2003 The genre which is not one: Hemingway’s in our time, difference, and the short story cycle. In The Postmodern Short Story: Forms and Issues, Farhat Iftekharrudin, Joseph Boyden, Mary Rohrberger & Jaie Claudet (eds), 161–172. Westport CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Fowler, Alastair
1982 Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Granger, Sylviane, Dupont, Maïté, Meunier, Fanny, Naets, Hubert & Paquot, Magali
2020 The International Corpus of Learner English, Version 3. Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain. [URL] (20 May 2024).
Halliday, Michael A. K.
1978 Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning [Open University Set Book]. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Ihrmark, Daniel
2018 ‘Cultivating one true sentence’: A corpus stylistic analysis of Hemingway’s language. Presented at the XVIII Hemingway Society Conference, 22–28 July. Paris, France.
2019 ‘O Fudge, the looks of the girls’: A corpus-driven analysis of the female role in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction. Presented at the 15th F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Conference, 24–29 June. Toulouse, France.
Ihrmark, Daniel & Nilsson, Johan
2021 A corpus stylistic analysis of development in Hemingway’s literary production. The Hemingway Review 40: 71–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kirk, Lynne & Pearson, Henry
1996 Genres and learning to read. Literacy 30: 37–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kress, Gunther & Knapp, Peter
2008 Genre in a social theory of language. English in Education 26(2): 4–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, David Y. W.
2001 Genres, registers, text types, domains, and styles: Clarifying the concepts and navigating a path through the BNC jungle. Language Learning & Technology 5(3): 37–72.Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey & Short, Michael
2007 Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose [English Language Series], 2nd edn. New York NY: Pearson Longman.Google Scholar
Levin, Harry
1984 Review of Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes, by Alastair Fowler. Comparative Literature 36(3), 258–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Littlefair, Alison B.
1991 Reading All Types of Writing: The Importance of Genre and Register for Reading Development [Rethinking Reading]. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Mahlberg, Michaela
2007 Corpus stylistics: Bridging the gap between linguistic and literary Studies. In Text, Discourse and Corpora: Theory and Analysis, Michael Hoey, Michaela Mahlberg, Michael Stubbs & Wolfgang Teubert (eds), 219–246. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Martin, James R.
1999 Mentoring semogenesis: “Genre-based” literacy pedagogy. In Pedagogy and the Shaping of Consciousness: Linguistic and Social Processes, Frances Christie (ed.), 123–155. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Murakami, Akira, Thompson, Paul, Hunston, Susan & Vajn, Dominik
2017 “What is this corpus about?” Using topic modelling to explore a specialised corpus. Corpora 12: 243–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oberhelman, Daniel D.
2015 Distant reading, computational stylistics, and corpus linguistics: The critical theory of Digital Humanities for literature subject librarians. In Digital Humanities in the Library: Challenges and Opportunities for Subject Specialists, Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Laura Braunstein & Liorah Golomb (eds), 53–66. Chicago IL: Association of College and Research Libraries.Google Scholar
Özgür, Arzucan, Özgür, Levent & Güngör, Tunga
2005 Text categorization with class-based and corpus-based keyword selection. In Computer and Information Sciences – ISCIS 2005 [Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3733], Pinar Yolum, Tunga Güngör, Fikret Gürgen & Can Özturan (eds), 606–615. Berlin: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paltridge, Brian
1996 Genre, text type, and the language learning classroom. ELT Journal 50: 237–243. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sahin, H. Bahadir, Tirkaz, Caglar, Yildiz, Eray, Eren, Mustafa Tolga & Sonmez, Ozan
2017 Automatically annotated Turkish corpus for named entity recognition and text categorization using large-scale gazetteers. arXiv. [URL] (20 May 2024).
Sebastiani, Fabrizio
2002 Machine learning in automated text categorization. ACM Computing Surveys 34: 1–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smitterberg, Erik & Kytö, Merja
2015 English genres in diachronic corpus linguistics. In From Clerks to Corpora: Essays on the English Language Yesterday and Today, Philip Shaw, Britt Erman, Gunnel Melchers & Peter Sundkvist (eds), 117–133. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stamboltzis, Aglaia & Pumfrey, Peter
2000 Reading across genres: A review of literature. Support for Learning 15: 58–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swales, John
1990 Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings [Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series]. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Taylor, Chris
2015 How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise, revised and expanded. New York NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Todorov, Tzvetan
1990 Genres in Discourse. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Tognini-Bonelli, Elena
2010 Theoretical overview of the evolution of corpus linguistics. In The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics, Anne O’Keeffe & Michael McCarthy (eds), 14–27. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar