Carolyn R. Miller
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