Practice question · True or false
Fowler argues that a genre can be real even when no single feature is shared by all its members.
Hints
- His model is Wittgenstein's family resemblance.
- Overlapping similarities can bind a family with no feature common to every member.
Show the answer
True
Why
True. Family resemblance binds a set by overlapping chains rather than a shared core, so demanding a defining feature is the wrong test. This is why definitional attacks on genre keep succeeding and keep failing to matter, a genre can be entirely real without being definable.
Practise Genre Theory
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