Miller's Typifications of Genre and Customs Forms

Sorry about how late this post is happening ya'll!

As I read Miller's "Genre of Social Action"on a flight back into our blessed country, I made sense of her system of typification in relation to the curse that is Custom Forms. For Miller situations we experience socially are interpreted instead of perceived. Our understanding therefore is based from a pool of defined situations or "typifications," in Miller's terms, she states, "our stock knowledge is useful only insofar as it can be brought to bear upon new experience: the new is made familiar through the recognition of relevant similarities; those similarities become a constituted as a type. A new type is formed from typifications already on hand when they are not adequate to determine a new situation" (Miller 156-7).

So for Miller new genres are created through this process of typification. So when encountering your first Custom Form (Note this was not my first, certainly not my last!) as a new genre you work through its intricacies by referring to your stock knowledge of other official forms. You think to yourself, just as with any other official form, like taxes perhaps, I should try to be as honest as possible in this document, because I don't want to cause myself any problems. You diligently try to remember how much money you spent abroad. You worry yourself sick about the clause that asks you if you are bringing food with you into the country, and decide it's best to lie because Moroccan Coffee is worth it, and you save this experience in your Custom Form Genre Pool. As you breeze through American customs because you are not a racial profile, Miller would argue you place the this specific situation into a more general type of situation, perhaps "traveling abroad" and for your next experience with this genre you will open this file to find many subcategories including "how to say please and thank you in various languages,"and "Custom forms."