Taxonomy Of Genres Research Articles

Проблема жанровой классификации фэнтези как вида приключенческой литературы

The paper addresses the issue of genre attribution of today’s Russian fantasy literature. The author attempts to build a taxonomy of fantasy genres upon their subject or themes, and upon artistic functions as suggested by M.S. Kagan, with a focus on the flaws of these approaches. Instead, the author suggests to use genetic-typological method based on tracing the evolution of adventure fiction as a whole. Since fantasy comes as the newest stage in the evolution of adventure literature, such an approach is the most relevant. Making use of the works by A.Z. Vulis and D.D. Blagoy on the history and genre taxonomy of adventure novel, the author concludes that a large-scale adventure meta-genre must be recognized. Its theoretical conceptualization only begins in the 18th–19th centuries, with the coming of a new literary movement — that of realism. The first kind of novel which is considered to be true ‘adventure novel’ in the modern sense is the Robinsonade. Thus, the taxonomy of the meta-genre can be divided into two parts: historical (describing its evolution before Defoe) and typological (covering the fiction from the 19th to 21st centuries). While the first part is structured with the use of genetic approach, the approach for the second part is mainly thematic. Modern fantasy literature combines both key types of adventure, geographical and historical, conflating a ‘travel’ novel of the Robinsonade with a historical adventure novel. Fantasy literature thus ‘retracts’ the outgrown genre subtypes. This trend is exemplified by the following movements in contemporary Russian literature: ‘sword and sorcery’ fantasy (“The Keeper of Swords” by N. Perumov; “Wolfhound” by M. Semyonova); historical and pseudo-historical fantasy (“Heavens Rejoice” by A. Valentinov; “Gleams of Aeterna” by V. Kamsha); and ‘rogue’ fantasy (“Chronicles of Siala” by A. Pekhov) which is derived from picaresque novel and piracy novel. Romance gives birth to romantic fantasy (“Anachron” by V. Benkovskiy and E. Khaetskaya); the field of crime literature can be linked to the forming of detective fantasy (“Under the Sign of Manticore” and “The Mockingbird” by A. Pekhov). Gothic novel gives rise to all sorts of ‘dark’ fantasy (“Senor’s Wanderings” by A. Dashkov; “The Nightwatcher” by O. Divov) and science fiction to ‘science’ fantasy and steampunk (“The Clandestine City” by V. Panov). Finally, social adventure novel, with the introduction of mythopoeia, becomes what in modern publishing practice is known as urban fantasy (the “Watches” hexalogy by S. Lukyanenko). A typological approach reveals that true fantasy subgenres have little originality of their own: each proves to be nothing more than a recent stage in the evolution of some branch of the whole adventure fiction meta-genre. Most rapid development happens where mythopoeia as a speculative device is organic and integral. On the contrary, romance and crime story traditions are originally endowed with another set of intentions, which does not allow the fantasy elements to dominate without ruining the structure of suspense natural of this or that genre.

Jornalismo de serviço: um aporte teórico em construção

This article aims to relate the theories of communication in order to formulate an appropriate theoretical contribution with the specifics of a journalism genre, the service journalism, which is listed as a category present in brazilian journalism, whose recognition in taxonomy of journalism genres is recent in Brazil, dating from the late 20th century, requiring more contributions to the consolidation of this theme within academic. In this study, journalism and its elementary characteristics are provided through bibliographic reference, to discuss this specific mode of mass communication and also to highlight the importance of the specificities of journalism according to the theory about genres. Instead of exhausting the topic, the study proposes relationships between theories that can establish readings of this object in the field of scientific communication.

Jácaras and Narcocorridos in Context: What Early Modern Spain Can Tell Us about Today’s Narco-culture

CHARACTERIZING the entirety of narco-culture, let alone any culture, is quite difficult, but by analyzing a discrete musical-literary genre, the narcocorrido --a ballad-form mostly popularized in Mexico, the Borderlands, and the Southwestern United States--one can more easily characterize the culture's principal artistic manifestation. In its simplest definition, the narcocorrido is a song that recounts the exploits of narcos, meaning drug smugglers and their bosses. (1) Since the narcocorrido's existence as a specific genre is dependent on specific historical and social circumstances, the study of the genre also tends to focus on these. It is perhaps for this reason that comparative studies of the narcocorrido are relatively rare; and yet a brief comparison between the narcocorrido of the last several decades, and a very similar genre, the seventeenth-century Spanish (or romance de germania), can be very useful. By making a parallel selective taxonomy of both genres, I hope to provide enough material to create a general backdrop that can be used for further study to examine whether a generic element is the product of a Zeitgeist or is perhaps inherent in songs about criminals in the Hispanic world. Long before the word became a common term in Spain, the form existed as part of the romance tradition. In the late medieval period, alongside musical stories of martial heroes, there were songs about outlaws, the sort that occurs throughout much of Western culture, from Icelandic sagas (Barraclough 368) to Calabrian canto di malavita (Deaglio 359). What eventually made distinct from other Spanish ballads in the seventeenth century was their use of criminal jargon, called germania. In 1609, this distinction was formally announced when Juan Hidalgo published his compilation of anonymous works titled Romances de germania. In the vocabulario (glossary) included at the end of the collection, Hidalgo defines jacarandina as rufianesca o junta de rufianes, o ladrones (Hill 116). The individual who most firmly established the genre's popularity, and whose works were called jacaras after his death, was the master satirist Francisco de Quevedo. While he was not included as a named poet in the Romances de germania collection, his sarcastic criminal ballads were likely circulating in manuscript form around the same time (Pedraza Jimenez 84). Within the next twentyfive years, jacara would become a generic designation quite separate from any old-fashioned romance. This is reflected in Lope's Gatomaquia, published in 1634, as Gilard has pointed out (27): y en medio de lo grave del romance suave, les dijo con despejo, pareciendole versos a lo viejo, que cantasen picaresca. (335) In similar fashion, the narcocorrido is a ballad tradition transformed. Its very name reveals it as an offshoot of the traditional Mexican corrido, a ballad-form that shares many striking similarities with the late-medieval Spanish romance, just like the 300 years before. (2) Also like the jacara, much of the form and content for the narcocorrido existed many decades before that designation came into use. In Mexico, the revolutionary heroes of historic corridos were replaced by Prohibition-era smugglers, and eventually by traffickers in stuff harder than alcohol. Leading up to the consolidation of the narcocorrido as a genre in the 1970's, some mid-century corridos came closer to the in their content than in their later manifestations. These two works below, separated by about 300 years, have been placed side-byside for ease of comparison: Voy a cantar un corrido, escuchen con atencion! de las mujeres galantes, viciosos y malhechores, de Juarez hay de a monton. A unos los han desterrado, otros dejan la carrera, otros que por mala suerte han encontrado la muerte en la mentada Piedrera. Fernandez, con su dinero que de nada le sirvio, la muerte se le acercaba. …

The Epideictic Agōn and Aristotle's Elusive Third Genre

Aristotle's statement that the spectator of epideictic rhetoric judges dynamis ( Rhetoric 1.3, 1358b5-6) is problematic because it seems to direct audience judgment towards the ability of the speaker as opposed to the subject-matter of his speech. I argue that, as a reference to the speaker's ability, the remark indexes the peculiar competitive structure in which speeches of praise and blame are conventionally involved. Thus understood, it is essential to Aristotle's taxonomy of genres and helps resolve the dilemma created by naming the genre of praise and blame after a mode of performance, epideixis , compatible with speeches of any formal description.

Synthesizing Identity: Gestures of Filiation and Affiliation in Turkish Popular Music

Synthesizing Identity: Gestures of Filiation and Affiliation in Turkish Popular Music Songül Karahasanoğlu (bio) and Gabriel Skoog (bio) This piece is an analysis of the process of spontaneous synthesis in Turkish popular music. Utilizing Edward Said’s distinction between filiation and affiliation and paying particular attention to instrumentation and the kürdi makam/Phrygian mode duality as a connotative element in Turkish popular music, we will examine the ways by which musicians create, maintain, and modify a musical identity. The development of Turkish popular music over the last 100 years has been impacted both by influences from within, such as the foundation of the Republic and the coup of 1980, and influences from abroad, particularly those mediated through ever-changing media technologies. While our analysis is based upon popular musical recordings from the late 1990s, as we shall see, musical synthesis has been a key feature of Turkish music since the establishment of the Republic in 1923. Consequently, we will start by briefly outlining the development of four historical, influential currents in Turkish popular music: Ottoman music, folk music, Arabesk, and European popular music, before turning to the evaluation of late 20th century popular music in Turkey. These larger musical currents have and continue to impact popular music in Turkey, and in many ways the various forms of popular music found today are extensions of these four larger overarching categories. One should bear in mind that any tidy taxonomy of musical genres is, while useful for analysis, suspect from the start, and as we shall see, musicians can and do draw freely from a wide range of musical styles and motifs. Nevertheless, before examining the ways in which popular musicians actively affiliate themselves with different musical traditions, it is best to establish some sort of baseline for analysis; first, by establishing what is meant exactly by a “spontaneous synthesis” before moving on to outline some theoretical tools useful for understanding the process. One of the greatest factors for musical change in Turkey was the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the new Turkish republic after the First World War. Kemal Atatürk and his compatriots set into motion a process of modernization and secularization that would eventually touch all aspects of Turkish life. Music was no exception to this. While the state-sponsored, modernizing process drew heavily upon European polyphonic art music, there was a strong [End Page 52] emphasis on preserving core “Turkish” features of music. This is not uncommon in instances of musical modernization around the world, and as Nettl has pointed out, musical modernization does not necessarily mean only the adaptation of Euro-American technology and culture, but can simultaneously include an insistence on the maintenance of core cultural features (Nettl 1983, 348). The new Turkish State chose to emulate the West, which “was considered the domain of modernity and was therefore taken as a model, its putative value measured against an ‘East’ which was considered as standing for backwardness itself ” (Tekelioğlu 1996, 195). This proactive musical restructuring by the state would have dramatic effect and at times brought about changes that were not in line with the official vision of Turkish music. One of the main architects of the new Turkish music was the writer, social theorist, and Turkish nationalist Ziya Gökalp (Gökalp 1923). Gökalp, along with others, encouraged the development of a new Turkish music based not in the Byzantine and Arabic traditions of the Ottoman Empire, but instead in “ . . . synthesis of traditional folk music with principles borrowed from European art musical systems” (Markoff 1990/1991, 130). It was the writings of Gökalp that dissected Turkish music into categories of eastern and western, modern and old, Ottoman and Turkish (O’Connell 2000, 123), and his Principles of Turkism, published in 1923, “ . . . in a way constitutes a manual for sketching out how . . . the fusion of the Origin (Turkish culture) with the West was to be executed” (Tekelioğlu 1996, 201). Active attempts by the state to control the establishment of a new national Turkish music would ultimately be undermined, if not wholly subverted, by “spontaneous syntheses,” such as Arabesk, coming from the people (Tekelioğlu 1996, 197, 203). Orhan...

Of myth and mantra: The slippery taxonomy of printed and oral Vrat Kathas

This paper examines how printed vrat kathas (stories associated with Hindu women's domestic rituals) present categories of myth, mantra and their internal "oral logic." The paper will articulate three things: (1) that vrat kathas deserve to be included in the more elevated category of "myth" because of the way they function within the Hindu women's ritual structure and world-view; (2) these stories are modeled on an understanding of mantra as a speech act; and (3) even when printed, these stories maintain an "oral logic" in structure, presentation of narrative and intention. Thus, printed pamphlets can also qualify, ironically, as "speech" acts. All of this indicates the difficulty inherent in creating a water-tight taxonomy of genres and suggests that a more appropriate understanding is as localities on a continuum.

Reality-Based Genre Preferences Do Not Direct Personal Involvement

Although it seems plausible that people who prefer a particular genre would appreciate characters from that category more than those from other genres, this appears not to be the case. We devised a parsimonious reality-based genre taxonomy that differentiates nonfiction, realism, fantasy, and humor. In Study 1, evidence from film viewers' genre preferences prompted slight adjustments in that taxonomy. In Study 2, however, we found that their reality-based genre preferences did not predict personal involvement with, distance from, or liking for the protagonist in the preferred genre. Instead, the represented and, particularly, the perceived realism of the character did affect personal involvement, but irrespective of genre preferences. We discuss the implications of these results for the rationale behind a genre typology and for engaging with fictional characters to explain personal involvement and character appreciation, especially in motion pictures.

Genre taxonomy

We propose a genre taxonomy as a knowledge repository of communicative structures or "typified actions" enacted by organizational members. The genre taxonomy is intended to help people make sense of diverse types of communicative actions and provide ideas for improving work processes that coordinate the communication of information. It engages several features to achieve this objective. First, the genre taxonomy represents the elements of both genres and genre systems as embedded in a social context reflecting the communicative questions why, what, who, when, where, and how (5W1H). In other words, the genre taxonomy represents the purpose, content, participants, timing, location, and form of communicative action. Second, the genre taxonomy distinguishes between widely recognized genres such as a report and specific genres such as a particular company's technical report, because the difference sheds light on the context of genre use. Third, the genre taxonomy represents use and evolution of a genre over time to help people understand how a genre is used and changed by a community over time. Fourth, the genre taxonomy represents aspects of information coordination via genres, thus providing ideas for improving work processes using genres. We have constructed a prototype of such a genre taxonomy using the Process Handbook, a process knowledge repository developed at MIT. We have included both widely recognized genres such as the memo and specific genres such as those used in the Process Handbook itself. We suggest that this genre taxonomy may be useful in the innovation of new document templates or methods for communication because it helps to clarify different possible uses of similar genres and explicates how genres play a coordination role among people and between people and their tasks.

Paradigmatic Psychology in Narrative Perspective

Structural and conceptual parallels between paradigmatic and narrative discourse are drawn and a single taxonomy of genres is applied to each. In particular, we argue that narrative depictions of person, place, and time, as reflected in Bakhtin's account of novelistic genres, find their parallels in the paradigmatic discourse of scientific psychology. In the first part of the paper we provide illustrations of the application of Bakhtin's description of narratives of adventure and ordeal to naturalistic and experimental reports in psychology. In the second part of the paper we turn to the theoretical discourse of psychology and illustrate the relevance of Bakhtin's historical typology of the Bildungsroman to various ways in which the notion of development is inscribed in psychological theory. In each case we consider the ways in which implicit narrative structures and themes enable and constrain practice and theory in paradigmatic science.

Designing an Epistolary Corpus of Victorian Women Writers' Letters: Challenges and Opportunities

This article describes a database corpus of approximately 2,000 letters written by or to nineteenth-century women writers in the period from 1820 to 1870. Almost all the letters are unpublished and have been transcribed from manuscripts in archives across Great Britain, the United States and Canada. Around twenty-five women writers are represented including well-known figures such as Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Mary Russell Mitford, Fanny Kemble, Florence Nightingale, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. We discuss in particular the question of a design for the corpus that would render it suitable for both literary and linguistic research. Linguists and literary scholars, generally speaking, come at language from opposite directions: linguists from the word and phrase level up to text or discourse level, literary scholars from the text level down to the word and phrase level. They meet each other somewhere in the fluid regions of discourse analysis, literary stylistics, and genre typology and taxonomy. The corpus is described here from a linguistic perspective and from a literary point of view.