Genres of discourse and the definition of literature

There is a direct relation between genres of discourse and the definition of literature. A prototype‐theoretical perspective on the classification of discourse can reveal that such genres as the novel, the poem, and the play, as well as such superordinate classes of discourse as literature, advertising, and academic writing, are all distinct classes of discourse but at different levels of abstraction. More important, superordinate, basic level, and subordinate classes of discourse have different numbers of typical values for the range of possible discourse attributes. The question of the definition of literature is, hence, Telated to the literary genres from which literature is abstracted, although the study of literary genres and literature is also connected to the study of nonliterary genres and other discourse classes. Such an approach can also explain what goes wrong in some recent proposals on the definition of literary discourse.