Carolyn R. Miller is an American rhetoric scholar at North Carolina State University whose work on genre theory reshaped how technical communication and writing studies understand text types.
Core ideas
- Genre as social action: Miller argued that genres aren’t defined by formal features (structure, length, tone) but by the social actions they perform. An essay, a term definition, and a specification are different genres not because they look different but because they respond to different recurring situations and accomplish different purposes for their communities [@miller1984].
- Recurrent rhetorical situations: genres arise because certain situations recur. When writers repeatedly face similar needs — defining a term, reporting results, requesting action — their responses stabilize into recognizable types. Genre is the typification of those responses.
- Implications for technical writing: if genre is social action, then teaching someone to write a genre means teaching them to recognize the situation it responds to, not just to follow its formal template. This shifts technical writing instruction from templates to rhetorical awareness.
Notable works
- “Genre as Social Action” (1984)
- “Rhetorical Community: The Cultural Basis of Genre” (1994)
- “Writing in a Culture of Simulation” (1998)
Related
- genre — the concept her work redefined
- technical writing — the discipline her genre theory informs