Miller

==Miller, Carolyn. “Genre as Social Action.” //Quarterly Journal of Speech // 70 (1984): 151-67. ==
 * Miller argues that “ a rhetorical sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish” this action “must involve situation and motive”
 * Draws from Kenneth Burke, claims that we must focus on the rhetorical situation, not on materialist scene that “empowers external, objective elements of situation” because the scene can reduce action to motion. Compares Campbell and Jamieson’s genre definition (Burke, Bitzer, Aristotle – organizing principle is situation) and Harrell and Linkugel “common factors” (organizing principle NOT situation, but modes of thinking) and Fisher “motive states”
 * Recurrence is not material – recurrence is an intersubjective phenomenon – not material
 * Situations are social constructs of definition – an act of interpretation. If rhetorical situation is social construct – how do we understand exigence – has to be located in the social world – not private, not material – exigence is a form of social knowledge (very different from Bitzer’s “defect or danger”)
 * To comprehend exigence is to to have a motive (Burke—motives are distinctly linguistic products – discern situational patterns…but motivation is “liquid”)
 * Agents typify rhetorical situations: we “determine” a situation by finding commonalities, similarities, or analogies among situations; once we typify a situation, we have created the recurrence.
 * “what recurs is not a material situation (a real, objective, factual event) but our construal of a type”
 * Because genre is not solely defined by form but by recurrence of social situations and actions, genres are fluid and there is no set list of genres, but rather “an open class with new members evolving, old ones decaying”
 * Advocates understanding of “rhetorical genre” in the conventions of discourse that society establishes as ways of acting together – NOT a taxonomy
 * Genre refers to conventional category of discourse (large scale) – as action it acquires meaning from situation and social context of situation
 * As meaningful action, genre is interpretable by rules; genre rules occur at high level on hierarchy of rules for symbolic interaction
 * Genre is distinct from form – form is general term used at all levels – genre is fusion of forms of characteristic substance
 * Genre is substance of forms – recurrent patterns of language use, genre helps to constitute substance of our cultural life
 * Genre is rhetorical means for mediating private intentions and social exigence; it motivates by connecting the private with the public, the singular with the recurrent


 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">“We cannot just learn “a pattern of forms or even a method of achieving our own ends, but rather we may learn the variety of possible ends, an understanding of the situation, potentials for failures and successes. For the Student, she concludes, genres serve as keys to understanding how to participate in the actions of a community