Relating Ridolfo and Rife’s Terms to Miller’s Definition of Genre

While none of the four main terms from Ridolfo and Rife’s “Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright” exactly mirror Carolyn Miller’s description of what we should consider “genre”, some of the terms seem to relate to Miller’s definition, in particular “delivery” and “rhetorical velocity”. The other two, “appropriation” and “recomposition”, are actions, but are only some what related to “genre”. They don’t seem to be parts of Miller’s definition of genre.

Miller says that genre is “to take seriously the rhetoric in which we are immersed and the situations in which we find ourselves” (155). For Miller, genre is related to Burke’s theories of classification on situation and response. Except, Miller focuses more closely on action and response. Genre, she says, needs to be organized around “situated actions” - that is it genre needs to encompass a group of similar, concrete actions or approaches to a subject/discourse. But, the second half to understanding a genre is looking into the knowledge that is created by that action. She says genre “seeks to explicate the knowledge that practice creates”. Genre is a two-fold method of classification: it observes both the delivery of discourse and the type of knowledge that is gained from that delivery.

So, returning to Ridolfo and Rife’s terms, “delivery” seems to fit one half of Miller’s definition. Ridolfo and Rife use delivery to describe the format or way in which something (an image, story, text) is presented. “Delivery” is the concrete action that is taken in presentation. It’s the first part of the equation of classifying a genre. In Maggie Ryan’s case, Michigan State University delivered the picture on a website, with context that implied students were simply having fun playing in snow outside. But Maggie’s intended delivery would have been that she was with a group of students engaging in social activism. Yet, that is only one part of “genre”, according to Miller.

“Rhetorical Velocity” isn’t so much a part of “genre”, but rather it is a method to thinking about potential genres. Ridolfo and Rife define rhetorical velocity as “a strategic concept of delivery in which a rhetor theorizes the possibilities for recomposition of a text based on how s/he anticipates how the text might later be used” (229). So, people think of different ways they can “deliver” an image or text or other thing and then contemplate how people might respond to it and how they can use that new delivery. This is essentially contemplating how a text can be presented in a new genre. Rhetorical Velocity is putting a subject in a new context and thinking about reactions, the two parts to Miller’s genre.

“Recomposition” and “appropriation” can be associated with genres, but they aren’t directly involved in the definition of genre. “Recomposition”, according to Ridolfo and Rife, is changing the delivery of a subject. It’s taking a subject out of one context and putting it into another context. The MSU workers “recomposed” Maggie Ryan’s image to serve their own purposes. As I understand it, “appropriation” is the act of claiming ownership of, or almost seizing, the right to use some subject, which in Maggie’s case is her image. Appropriation can then involves using that image in some different way than intended.