Genre Theory:

what is a genre?
'Genre' is a critical tool which helps us study texts and audience responses to texts by dividing them into categories based on common elements;

Daniel Chandler (2001)
He argues that the word genre comes from the french word for 'kind' or 'class' the term is widely used in rhetorical literary theory, to refer to a distinctive type of 'text'
All genre's have sub genres (a genre within a genre) this means that they are divided into more specific categories that allow audiences to identify them more specfically by there familiar and what becomes reconisable characteristics similar to Barry Keith Grant (1995).

However Steve Weale (1995) stresses that 'genre's are not 'system' they are processes of systematation' meaning that they are dynamic and evolve over time.