A genre is a type of composition that encompasses defined features, follows a style or format, and reflects your purpose as a writer. For example, given the composition types romantic comedy, poetry, or documentary, you probably can think easily of features of each of these composition types. When considering the multimodal genres, you will discover that genres create conventions (standard ways of doing things) for categorizing media according to the expectations of the audience and the way the media will be consumed. Consider film media, for example; it encompasses genres including drama, documentaries, and animated shorts, to name a few. Each genre has its own conventions, or features. When you write or analyze multimodal texts, it is important to account for genre conventions.
Genre is an important consideration no matter what purpose your writing has. We always have to be aware of what purpose we want to achieve when choosing our genre. Many genres are familiar to us and so we don’t need to think about tone, voice, or format. However, writing in an unfamiliar genre can make us realize how many of those aspects we take for granted in communications like text messages, Snapchats, and notes we take for class.
When thinking about genre, consider:
Tone: does the audience know how the author feels about the topic, or are they supposed to be objective?
Voice: does the author use first person (“I feel…”) or do they use third person (“they think that…”)? What is appropriate for this genre?
Format: does the genre use headings, footnotes, sections, chapters, or images? Does it include greetings and closings? How strictly should we adhere to the format of the genre?
Multimodality: does the genre allow the author to use modes of communication in addition to written words, like images, song, colors, or charts?
Often, the genre you use is determined by your purpose. If you want to be accepted into a university program, they likely have a strict application format. If you are applying for a job, you will have to write a cover letter. Other genres, like poetry or infographics, can be a bit more flexible in their purpose and genre expectations. However, genres all have one thing in common: each genre is designed to help the author reach specific purposes. Just as you wouldn’t write your instructor a song to ask for an extension on a paper, you probably wouldn’t write an epic poem to convince your boss that you deserve a promotion.
In addition to thinking about what purpose you want to achieve, your genre will also be influenced by your audience. After all, how can your purpose for communicating succeed if your audience never reads the genre that you write?
What genres does my audience usually read?
What genres are used to discuss my topic?
What genres would be effective at delivering my message?
What multimodal elements are available in these genres?.
For students, classrooms are recurrent situations, if you think about it—while the events that occur in a classroom on any given day might differ in their details from another day, in their overall configuration, the activities of a classroom are remarkably similar over time. We might expect, in a recurrent situation, to observe, then, recurring types of communication. A teacher writes on the board; students might take notes. A teacher hands out an assignment; students respond to the assignment. Genres take their shape in recurrent situations because the communications that occur in recurrent situations tend to be remarkably similar.
Charles Bazerman, writing in Naming What We Know, says that we can see genre as
habitual responses to recurring socially bounded situations. Regularities of textual form [like the header on a memorandum or the section heads in a lab report] most lay people [i.e. not experts] experience … [are] the structural characteristics of genres [as they] emerge from … repeated instances of action and are reinforced by institutional power structures.
In other words, if you work in an office, you probably write memos, using whatever the prescribed form is in your workplace. You, as a writer in that situation, don’t precisely choose that genre, nor its formal characteristics—in a way, the situation chooses those for you, and all the people who are doing similar work to you use the same genre, in much the same way, and probably have been doing so for quite some time. This is part of what we mean when we say that genre lives in the recurrent situation—in offices, in labs, in all kinds of institutional settings. Bazerman highlights the institutional nature of genre when he says, “Genres are constructions of groups, over time, usually with the implicit or explicit sanction of organizational or institutional power.” Individual writers in institutional settings usually have somewhat limited choices when it comes to genre.
Still, writers who are really at home in a particular writing setting use genres with a great deal of fluency. As we’ve said, the genre is built into the writing situation—when you’re at home in a writing situation, the genre is simply part of your accustomed toolset, and you know very well which tool to use. But all of us are writers in multiple settings, in some of which we may be very comfortable, and in others of which we may have to do a little more thinking and prospecting—looking about, sizing up what might be the best choices for the situation, including choices about genre. In these cases, simply knowing that there are genres—typical ways of using language that recur in the situation—can help a writer assess how to respond, and to figure out what genres are typically used in that situation.
When a writer decides or intuits that a particular genre is called for by the situation, he or she takes up the genre and uses it to frame a written response to the situation. So, for instance, when a scientist has gathered enough experimental data, she will probably write some sort of report of the findings. When the Supreme Court has heard oral arguments on a particular case, eventually they will write a ruling, and often a dissent. The scientist doesn’t have to figure out whether she’ll write a report or if she’d rather write a song lyric. The Supreme Court justice writing for the majority knows that she will not write a haiku. In each instance, the situation calls for a particular genre. The writer in the situation knows this. So the writer takes up the genre and uses it to respond.
Each time a writer takes up a genre, the writer reaffirms, in a way, the stable features of the genre. But the writer also—perhaps in minuscule ways—might adapt and reshape the genre, which potentially shifts the genre’s stability. For instance, the proposal genre typically requires you to define a problem, often in a fair amount of detail, as well as provide a very well-reasoned solution, with evidence that supports the solution’s feasibility and desirability. Without these moves, what you write simply won’t be a proposal. But as you consider how you might define the problem, it occurs to you that a brief story, followed by an analysis and some data, might illuminate the problem better than a presentation of dry statistical data alone. Not everyone who writes a proposal will choose to use narrative—the narrative strategy is a way that you might imagine your audience and that audience’s response, aiming for a livelier and more engaged response.
To sum up: sometimes when you write, the genre is a choice that’s already made for you. But there are also times when you’ll have opportunities to decide upon the genres you’ll use to write in the world, and often this will be true in the writing classes you take. This requires some critical imagination and research on your part—imagining the writing situation, and the genres that might respond well in that situation. Thus, genres are both stable and to some degree fluid and evolving, just as human communication itself is both predictable and unpredictable.
Knowing about genre can provide powerful insight into how writing works in the world. We know from a fair amount of empirical study that writers learn to use genres best within contexts where they use the genres regularly—the genres in use within a particular locale will become part of the toolset writers within those locales pick up to do their work there. But even in your writing courses, you should start to become more aware of the genres that are built into the settings in which you currently find yourself—school, work, public life—as well as genres that are at work in other settings you want to be a part of.
As we discussed above, when we learn about genres as a part of a writing curriculum, it can seem like we’re describing formulas for writing instead of the situations that shape and give rise to the genres. You, as a student writer, can feel a little bit like you’re just learning an advanced sort of conceptual formatting. When you use genres in their natural settings—when you’re using the genres that are a part of your workplace, or when you’re exchanging writing with people you know well, in ways you’re comfortable with—all that situation and situatedness blooms back to life, and your ability to write competently and fluently in the genres that are part of your writing environment will have greater consequence because you’ll be better at it. So it’s worth considering: how do you learn how to use the genres that function in your particular writing environment with greater competence and fluency?
But genres don’t exist in a vacuum—they emerge in response to real needs, real audiences, and real situations. For example, a resume, a TikTok explainer, and a nonprofit PSA are all shaped by who’s supposed to receive them, what they’re meant to do, and the expectations of the setting where they’re used. In other words, genres are tools people use to get things done in particular contexts. When you’ve seen a genre in action—whether it's part of your workplace, community, or everyday media habits—you get a more intuitive understanding of how it works and why it matters. This allows you to go beyond a template and use the genre to accomplish something.
So, if you’re working on a multimodal project, you’re already dealing with a genre—or a combination of genres—that probably comes with expectations about layout, design, tone, pacing, and delivery. Think about a YouTube video, a podcast, or a social media carousel: each of these has its own rhythm, conventions, and ways of engaging an audience. Your job as a composer is to learn and apply those conventions in ways that suit your message and your goals.
Here are some questions to help you think through the genre of your project and how to get more fluent in it:
Where have I seen projects like this before? What platforms, settings, or communities use this genre?
What are the usual features of this genre? Are there expectations about visuals, tone, structure, length, or interactivity?
Who is the audience, and what do they expect from this kind of genre? What makes them keep watching, listening, reading, or engaging?
What’s the purpose of this genre? Is it meant to inform, persuade, entertain, provoke thought, build trust—or something else?
How can I use multimodal elements (images, sound, video, layout, etc.) intentionally to strengthen my message?
What challenges do I face in using this genre well—and how can I learn from real examples?
Finally, remember that becoming fluent in a genre it’s about understanding how it works so you can use it effectively. The more you immerse yourself in real examples, the better you’ll get at composing in that mode with confidence and creativity.
Adapted from:
"Multimodal Argument" by Leslie Davis and Kiley Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Changes were made to the original work.
"GENRE in the WILD: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (Eco)systems" Authored by: Lisa Bickmore Provided by SLCC English Department, Open English @ SLCC Copyright © 2016 License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).