Corpus genre categories

Abstract

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.