R. Fowler's Classification of Genres: A Delicate Breakdown of Social Communication Activities

As early as 1970, R. Fowler regarded genres in language use as categories of social communication activities. He pointed out that 'people can delicately and precisely decompose social communication activities into thousands of categories - including television commercials, sonnets, workshop manuals, cookbooks, hymns, supernatural lyrics, obituaries, product specifications, political speeches, textbooks, academic papers, sermons, news broadcasts, short stories, labels, notices, vulgar jokes, classical dramas, Mozart-style operas, weather forecasts, heroic epics, sports commentary, and so on.'