Miller's Multi-Layered Claims

As soon as I realized Miller's text played heavily on the work of Campbell (and Jamieson), I took a second to go back in our syllabus to check in what section we had previously read her work, and what work that was. In mid- September we read Campbell's Agency: Promiscuous and Protean, and I can kind of connect that reading with Miller's because of the notion that Campbell and Jamieson might possibly say that genre is also promiscuous. However, I also get the sense that Miller wants to relinquish that promiscuity.     

Miller builds off of Campbell and Jamieson who draw on Burkean ideals: "a genre is composed of a constellation of recognizable forms bound together by an internal dynamic" (152). From this statement, I believe that Miller is trying to say that genre consists of many levels making it such a dynamic. The levels I speak of could be related to Walter Fisher's discussion on genre theory which Miller points out. "Fisher presents four levels of genre constitution. The most general level distinguishes rhetoric from other types of discourse; the second level includes classifications within rhetoric; the third contains the rhetorical forms that are commonly identified as genres; and the fourth consists of categories in terms on style" (154). Genre, in my opinion, seems to be a never-ending cycle of classification, classification that is similar, but at the same time quite intricate. However, Miller clearly states that all the theories of genre have their shortcomings which seems valid when there isn't a firm definition of genre as a complex term.      

In reference to Burke and Bitzer, I am curious of the difference between motive and exigence. Both motive and exigence produce some sort of action, but from where does the action stem, and is this action genre? Miller states that motive is a human action, and that exigence arises from an external cause of discourse (155). The difference lies on the level of social action. Bitzer describes exigence as being independent of human awareness (156) which means that it is different from motives which are driven. Some questions I pose now:

• Is there anyway to count all the types of genres in a given society?

• Are genres solely defined by the "complexity and diversity of the society?"

• Do certain societies have certain genres attached to them?

• Is there a tension between private and public in reference to genre?

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