I find Carol Miller’s point very interesting about determining a genre based on the events surrounding it. The specific example she mentioned was a eulogy in this case “We should recognize a lecture or a eulogy or a technical manual or a public proceeding by our type of the typified rhetorical situation.” This is a very realistic argument, because if we let every audience decide to make their own observations about genre on the given rhetoric, then it is likely that different responses with emerge. This is difficult to say though, because if we really want to categorize all types of rhetoric into genres should we only go off one person’s opinion. In that case what would happen if that person’s opinion on the specific genre is not one of common belief. However, using a large audience when deciding a genre could not necessarily be a bad thing. In most cases in writing or even just everyday occurrences, I would prefer a larger audience to bounce ideas off of to come up with a more precise and succinct conclusion. I do agree with Miller on the fact that genre should not be decided like a formula, like it is this length long, touches on these topics, and uses this language then it has to be this genre. She makes a good point though that “form and substance thus bear a heirarchical relationship to each other”. Since these two factors are in tandem with each other, can we make assumptions of genre when we see a specific pattern of form and substance. This of course would be slipping back into the hole where we make genres based on these commonplace tools. However, it is later after Miller compared all her sources that she concluded that not just the typical “hierarchical levels” make up the genre. Other contexts such as speech and what happens outside of the text that decides the genre. This could indicate that the audience does matter though since Miller says to reference other sources. In many cases though the intended genre can be interpreted differently. For example, if I write a creative poem and my audience interprets it in a very factual or theoretical way, should the poem really be considered of the creative genre. This is where it gets sticky, because there are infinite ways to interpret rhetoric and the author might have different expected intentions of the interpretations. It is so difficult, there is never a clear line, because genre cannot be write or wrong nor can it be absolute. There are many different ways to go about this and I suppose the best way to do it is to stay away from all the structural implications that piece may have, because writers can manipulate those tools very easily to make you believe something else than is intended of the true genre. That is why I think the audience is always the best decision maker. We have learned from Booth that one of the most important relationships in writing is between writer and audience. Since this is such a fundamental relationship in writing we should apply it to assigning genre too. Between these two groups there is a strong connection to the piece in interest. Specifically, for writing in public I would suggest to have my audience decide the genre, because public writing is arguably a very writer-audience based type of writing.
2 thoughts on “Assigning Genre by the Audience”
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I agree with most you have written, but would like to extrapolate on a few lines in particular. “This is a very realistic argument, because if we let every audience decide to make their own observations about genre on the given rhetoric, then it is likely that different responses with emerge.” I fundamentally agree with this statement, it is near impossible to gage the exact responses of an entire audience in response to different forms of writings, speeches, etcetera. Which is why the general idea of the audience not really having an impact on the genre is appealing, because it would almost solely leave the genre categorization to the author’s thought on each specific genera and the way his or her writing fits. On the other hand, my personal opinion, which aligns with yours as well, is that the genre classification must be a joint effort between the audience and writer. My main justification for this analysis is because, especially in the public writing atmosphere, the two can only coexist. There is no area in public writing where there is not a audience/writer relationship. While this cannot be said about every single form of writing it can be said about most of them, which is why this is how it should be.
At the beginning of this post, you wrote, “This is a very realistic argument, because if we let every audience decide to make their own observations about genre on the given rhetoric, then it is likely that different responses with emerge. This is difficult to say though, because if we really want to categorize all types of rhetoric into genres should we only go off one person’s opinion. In that case what would happen if that person’s opinion on the specific genre is not one of common belief. However, using a large audience when deciding a genre could not necessarily be a bad thing.”
I think I understand what you are saying, but I’m confused about your support for your claim. You say that it is difficult to divide rhetoric into categories based off of a large audience, but then you say that it might not be a bad thing to use a large audience to make that decision. I think that you have hit one of the points that Miller is trying to make: genre differs between author to author, not necessarily audience to audience. And this is a good thing! If every author chose the same genre to stake their claim in their argument, many audiences would not be swayed. Although I do not think that the audience is the be all and end all for deciding how to characterize genre, they obviously do and should play a role in this decision. I believe that the author can use his or her strengths and weaknesses while writing publicly/professionally to use genre to his or her own advantage.
Overall, I agree with your other observations on the Miller article, especially when you wrote, “For example, if I write a creative poem and my audience interprets it in a very factual or theoretical way, should the poem really be considered of the creative genre. This is where it gets sticky, because there are infinite ways to interpret rhetoric and the author might have different expected intentions of the interpretations. It is so difficult, there is never a clear line, because genre cannot be right or wrong nor can it be absolute.” Something that is often disregarded is individual interpretation, and this plays an important role in genre as well as audience and author. While one person might interact with a text or piece of writing in the form of one genre, another might read it in a completely different way.