Carolyn R. Miller nearly lost me from the very first sentence of her piece. I understand that academic writing warrants complex sentences and elevated vocabulary, but this journal was of another world. Miller emphasizes an active definition of genre–one rooted in what you do with forms and not what they are on their own. I barely scraped out this meaning from the text, but admittedly, Miller does raise a few interesting, helpful points on genre that can be utilized for rhetors and professional writers.
What little information I did glean from this piece included a very generalized definition of rhetoric. Midway through page 155, Miller refutes the idea that genre needs to be stylish; rather, it can be as routine as the simple information it is conveying. Genre is a rhetoric component of interacting with the public. She thinks you do not have to wow your audience, but rather should focus on sharing important information. Later in the piece, she applies John Searle’s view of meaning to genre, saying that if you want your genre to be impactful, it must be both a statement of something and the proceeding action. Genre does not just mean form, it is a form that serves a particular cause. Its shape is less important than its function. To writers and rhetors, it helps you understand how to participate in what it is you want to change.
For all the sound discourse she includes, Miller’s approach to distinguishing and classifying genres is dense and easy to lose track of. For a topic that concerns how you interact with and potentially teach people, it is viewed through a muddy lens created by the author’s text. One sentence that is especially difficult to process reads, “The organizing principles (from Harrell and Linkugel), in fact, do not distinguish classes of discourse; they distinguish methods of classifying discourse” (154). I perceive this point as being totally consumed by itself so that there is little meaning to be drawn out. I feel I do not fully understand what these clauses are working toward. Also, I feel as though one of the many impenetrable sentences could have held the secret to understand more of Miller’s view of genre. On page 159, she paints genres as “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations.” I was stumped when reading this passage, and would be curious to hear what my fellow classmates made of it.
One way I believe Miller could inspire those who write publicly is her very literal call to action. Rather than emphasizing a fuss over the exact form or organization of your particular genre, Miller wants you to be ready to follow through with what you have written. Our words mean nothing if we are not willing to stand behind them. Why spend so much time on an animal rights billboard, an op-ed on the battle for marriage equality, or a white paper decrying the treatment of Foxconn employees if you are not prepared to take the next steps of your campaign? Miller’s words resonate specifically to our class, as well. Our projects need to be completed so we can pass the course, yes, but at the end of the semester, we should follow any feelings of obligation toward our causes and see just how far our words can go.
Academic writing has a notorious reputation as inaccessible, unnecessarily complex and ‘high-minded’. What a meta concept for an article about genre! Miller employs the form, the audience stumbles over the meaning of complex, rambling sentences. Is this how theory is digested? The audience choking on clunking paragraphs? Genre is the interaction between audience expectations, authors intentions and the context of the situation in which the form is employed.
You are so correct! Academic writing doesn’t need to be so convoluted. On page 159, I believe she is indicating that genre is a discourse. If we see genre as a closed form, there can be no change, which we can doesn’t occur in “real life”. Conventions are a constant discourse with past and present actions. For example the convention for wedding vows follow a set of “promises” to the future spouse, and present wedding vows sometimes make “light” of the “promises” with inside jokes.
I think the purpose of the article was to highlight the various ideas of genre. Miller could and maybe should have organized these ideas in a more accessible way. The main point, from my perception, was the genre is simply a discourse between convention and the pushing of the boundaries of convention. Genre changes with rhetorical situation. The TedTalk is similar to a lecture, but arguably more enjoyable and more accessible for an audience that may or may not be familiar with the conventions of lectures. A different example could be the evolution of plays from Shakespeare to modern plays like “one person acts”. We are in constant discourse with the past.