Miller, Burke and Bitzer on Genre

In "Genre as Social Action," Miller analyses the definition of genre and how it applies to specific pieces of rhetoric. Miller struggles with the diversity among different genre definitions: including similarities in forms of discourse, audience, modes of thinking, and rhetorical situations (Miller 151). Miller's ideas about genre raise a large question, is their one set way to categorize genre? Miller calls on the opinions of other literary critics to try to answer this, analyzing them and commenting on them. 

Personally, I see two main questions that are raised to Miller's argument, the solidarity of genre and its rhetorical purpose. Miller explains how as humans we are drawn to categorization, how we crave to label everything, but when examining rhetoric there is almost too much to take into consideration. 

Burke and Bitzer are two theorists that Miller looks to find the definition of genre. Miller uses Burke's idea of motive compared to Bitzer's definition of exigence to further her analysis of rhetorical situation. Bitzer's definition of rhetorical situation as a "complex of persons, events, objects, and relations" supports Miller's view even better than Burke's does (Miller 152). Burke’s idea of human action verse Bitzer’s idea of human reaction is another point that Miller’s argument delves into. The idea that situations warrant responses supports Miller’s claim that situated actions do not define genre, but more open analysis may be better in defining a rhetorical situation:

“In sum, what I am proposing so far is that in rhetoric the term “genre” be limited to a particular type of discourse classification, a classification bases on rhetorical practice and consequently open rather than closed and organized around situated actions” (Miller 155)

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