Carolyn R. Miller

Genre as social action

This essay proposes a conception of genre based on conventionalized social motives which are found in recurrent situation‐types. The thesis is that genre must be conceived in terms of rhetorical action rather than substance or form.

IText: Future Directions for Research on the Relationship between Information Technology and Writing.

Most people who use information technology (IT) every day use IT in text-centered interactions. In e-mail, we compose and read texts. On the Web, we read (and often compose) texts. And when we crea...Most people who use information technology (IT) every day use IT in text-centered interactions. In e-mail, we compose and read texts. On the Web, we read (and often compose) texts. And when we create and refer to the appointments and notes in our personal digital assistants, we use texts. Texts are deeply embedded in cultural, cognitive, and material arrangements that go back thousands of years. Information technologies with texts at their core are, by contrast, a relatively recent development. To participate with other information researchers in shaping the evolution of these ITexts, researchers and scholars must build on a knowledge base and articulate issues, a task undertaken in this article. The authors begin by reviewing the existing foundations for a research program in IText and then scope out issues for research over the next five to seven years. They direct particular attention to the evolving character of ITexts and to their impact on society. By undertaking this research, the authors urge the continuing evolution of technologies of text.

What Can Automation Tell Us About Agency

Computerized systems for automated assessment of writing and speaking create a situation in which Burkean symbolic action confronts nonsymbolic motion. What is at stake in such confrontations is rhetorical agency. In this article, an informal survey that asked teachers of writing and speaking about automated assessment informs an analysis of agency that contrasts writing and speaking along the dimensions of performance, audience, and interaction. The analysis suggests that agency can be understood as the kinetic energy of performance that is generated through a process of mutual attribution between rhetor and audience. Agency is thus a property of the rhetorical event, not of agents, and can best be located between the two traditional ways of defining agency: as rhetorical capacity and as rhetorical effectivity. Unwillingness to attribute agency to automated assessment systems makes them rhetorically ineffective and morally problematic.

Technology as a form of consciousness: A study of contemporary ethos

Technology as a cultural force lends itself to rhetorical investigation through the concept of ethos. Ethos, in discourse, is the expression of character, or consciousness, which in turn has been shaped by action. Examining the actions fundamental to technology reveals features of technological consciousness. Primitive, or low‐context, technology leads to ends‐means confusion, objectivism, and cause‐and‐effect reasoning. Advanced, or high‐context, technology has impressed on our character an ideology of efficiency, organizational procedure, closed‐system thinking, and optimism. These features of modern consciousness formulate an ethos of strict logic, expertise, and objectivity.

Opportunity, opportunism, and progress:Kairos in the rhetoric of technology

As the principle of timing or opportunity,kairos serves both as a powerful theme within technological discourse and as an analytical concept that explains some of the suasory force by which such discourse maintains itself and its position in our culture. This essay makes a case for a rhetoric of technology that is distinct from the rhetoric of science and illustrates the value of the classical vocabulary for understanding contemporary rhetoric. This case is made by examining images and models of technological change that underlie and justify the thematizations ofkairos that appear in so much technological discourse and by exploring the phenomenon of “technological forecasting,” in which the characterization and construction of moments in the present are crucial to the projection of the future. One example of forecasting is examined in detail: the Japanese “Fifth Generation” computer project, which illustrates the twin themes of opportunity and threat.

Learning from History: World War II and the Culture of High Technology.

Rhetorical study of technology will benefit from a broad view of technology that considers it as a cultural phenomenon, including epistemic, artifactual, technical, economic, aesthetic, and political aspects. To understand twentieth-century American technology this way, it is useful to gain some historical perspective on its development, particularly in the past 50 years. Many accounts mark World War II as a turning point in the role of technology in our culture and in the relations of technology with government, science, and industry. This article synthesizes some of these accounts and concludes with four ways that technology should prove to be rhetorically distinct from science.

Ionizing Radiation: Effect of Irradiated Medium on Synthetic Processes

The incorporation of uracil-C14 into macromolecules in Escherichia coli cells is decreased by doses of ionizing radiation when the cells are in very dilute suspension. The decrease results from an action of irradiated medium on the cells, and a similar reaction is observed during the incorporation of thymine (indication of DNA synthesis) and of proline and valine (indicative of protein synthesis). Irradiated medium reduces the formation of β-galactosidase but does not cause the degradation of DNA.

Rules, Context, and Technical Communication

The concept of “rule,” derived from linguistics and anthropology, provides a way of understanding the relationship between context, purpose, and message production and interpretation. “Rules” are shared expectations which structure situations and guide individual action. This paper reviews some of the concepts that have come out of rules theory in communication research and suggests their particular relevance and utility to understanding the problems and situations in technical communication.

Discourse Classifications in Nineteenth-Century Rhetorical Pedagogy.

An analysis of nineteenth‐century discourse classifications, together with the discourse “types” presented by classical pedagogy, helps to explain what was involved in the transformation of rhetoric into composition as it is taught in the American college curriculum. The difference between rhetoric and composition is in essence the difference between social action and academic artifact; this difference is analogous to the difference between rhetorical genre and compositional mode. Although formalism dominates pedagogy and classroom practice invites formalist reduction of social knowledge, genre theory invites us to look to the rhetorical situation the student is actually in and the rhetorical situations we want students to learn how to handle.

Genre: Permanence and Change

During the past 30 years, genre conceptualized as social action has been a generative framework for scholars, teachers, and rhetors alike. As a mid-level, mediating concept, genre balances stability and innovation, connecting theory and practice, agency and structure, form and substance. Genre is multimodal, providing an analytical and explanatory framework across semiotic modes and media and thus across communication technologies; multidisciplinary, of interest across traditions of rhetoric, as well as many other disciplines; multidimensional, incorporating many perspectives on situated, mediated, motivated communicative interaction; and multimethodological, yielding to multiple empirical and interpretive approaches. Because genre both shapes and is shaped by its communities, it provides insight into both ideological conformity and resistance, lends itself to multiple pedagogical agendas, and provokes questions about media, materiality, ethics, circulation, affect, and comparison.