Subjective Meaning

You tell me the word ‘Genre’ and the first thing I think about is music. The fact that people utilize that word to classify music, I will automatically think about the terms “classification” or “categorization”. In order to classify or categorize music, certain standards are crucial and must be met. But like everything else some standards in music are very subjective and sometimes it depends on the person who’s doing the classification. For example, some may think that Nicki Minaj is Hip Hop because of the bass in her music while others may consider her Pop because of her lyrics and music videos.  Just like people may get confused about Rihanna’s genre. I just chose to utilize music as an example of mine to help better understand where Millers review on genre seems to stem from. It is difficult to obtain common standards even within different fields of study. Even within rhetoric, we just can’t seem to find one true classification of what it truly means, and where it falls.

Thus, “to make rhetorical genre a stable classifying concept” (Miller 151) is urgent and meaningful, and by doing so, Miller builds up a solid ground for the discussion of “genre”. In this article, Miller views  “genre as a social action” people “encounter, interpret, react to, and create particular texts” so that readers may better comprehend. Miller is proposing that “genre” is limited to a type of discourse classification based on rhetorical practice and open rather than closed; in addition, she requires that genre is organized around situated actions (Miller 155). Genre being an expandable just like the term rhetoric, when it is combined, the endless confusion it can create. 

Miller does expand on the fact that there is a problem in defining this term because of the complexity in both terms separately as well as combined. I somewhat feel that this all depends on the implications of the words and the use of the language along with the intended meaning. “Situations are social constructions that are the result, not of ‘perception,’ but of ‘definition.’  Because human action is based on and guided by meaning, not by material causes, at the center of action is a process of interpretation” (Miller 156) 

In the end, the common problem, or situation I see happening is that it all depends on how you interpret things based off of our social interactions. And because we interpret things differently our perceptions will always be different from someone else’s.  Would terms like ‘genre’ and ‘Rhetoric’ really ever be defined? Will we ever have a true understanding of these terms ?

Works Cited

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