Genre As Social Action

“Rhetorical criticism has not provided firm guidance on what constitutes a genre.” (151) In this first line, Carolyn Miller attempts to layer multiple claims from other theorists on the subject of genre.  The first claim that Miller comes to is from Kinneavy and Fisher stating that genre comes from an open classification that is “organized around situated actions.” (155) Genre is pragmatic in the sense that it is based on intention by focusing on four components of communication. These four components are sender, receiver, code, and reality. Miller claims that genre is ethnomethodological, a big word that explains the social interactions and activities. She gets to this claim by putting genre into categories based upon what is being discussed in the discourse. We create categories with every day language because we are immersed in our situations. Genre is rhetorical action in its context, the way in which it combines the situation with formal features, and the way genre is classified in the four components of communication.      

Burke is to Bitzer as motive is to exigence as human action is to reaction.  Bitzer, Brinton, and Patton describe situation as consisting of external and internal, objective and subjective, and factual and interest components. (156)  Miller claims that it is important to know that the rhetorical situations that theorize genre recur. The recurrence becomes knowledge when our understanding of the situation is comparable to others. This adds to the idea of genre as a social action because recurrence is social occurrence. The situation is not materialistic but comes from a type of real, objective, factual event that we understand. This is a typification of situation and its participants and their successful communication. (157)

            
The next claim that Miller makes is that exigence is located in the social world as a form of social knowledge. (157) Exigence provides rhetorical purpose but is not intention. “Exigence provides the rhetor with a socially recognizable way to make his or her intentions known.” (158) Miller explains that presidents would recognize exigence as having to do with national interest and obtaining justice. Exigence is based upon intentions that are motivated socially. The words used to communicate don’t mean anything but their syntactic relationships in a sentence gain meaning and this is a pragmatic action. “A particular kind of fusion of substance and form is essential to symbolic meaning.” (159) Substance is a common experience that participants share to define a genre. Form is the way in which substance is symbolized. Form shapes how to perceive and interpret and is in a way is meta-information with informational and formal value. 

Miller, Carolyn. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984): 151-169.