GENRE THEORY DEFINITIONS

Stephen Neale – A British philosopher and specialist in the philosophy of language who has written extensively about meaning, information, interpretation, and communication, and more generally about issues at the intersection of philosophy and linguistics.

Repertoire of Elements – The theory that a certain genre of film will have similar characters e.g. in a crime film there will often be the Italian mobster.

Hybridisation – A term used to describe a type of media convergence whereby a new mode emerges containing elements of combined media.

Corpus –  A large and structured set of texts.

Historic Specificity – The suggestion that social movements should be treated as self-conscious and successful attempts to introduce innovations into a social system raises the question of whether they are historically specific, in the sense in which modern, scientific and technological innovations are historically specific: namely, that there have been historical periods when they have been favoured and powerful and others in which they have been ignored and weak.

Repetition and Sameness – The simple repeating of a word, within a short space of words, with no particular placement of the words to secure emphasis.

Variation and Change – A change or slight difference in condition, amount, or level, typically within certain limits.

Narrative Image – Narrative is to tell a story using the power of the visual image to ignite imaginations, evoke emotions and capture universal cultural truths and aspirations.

Expectations and Hypothesis – A proposed explanation for a phenomenon.

Suspend Disbelief – Willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe something surreal; sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment

Generic Regime of Verisimilitude – The appearance of being true or real. Mise-en-Scene.

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