The "daily reminder" as genre

Over on Twitter, I've assumed the identity of a cheerleader as a function of my participation in the debate over Brexit. Placed squarely on the sideline, I try to cheer those on the fields by doing remarkable poses, yells and dance moves to that effect. In the cheerleader-role, I've been running what I call my "daily reminder". Each day I post

"This is your daily reminder that you have millions of friends and allies in the EU."

And then I add some new remark which I feel—for whatever reason—is fitting for the day. Usually these are fairly upbeat; as fits the point of the reminder (see below), but they don´t have to be wholly without teeth.

A ”reminder”, Merriam-Webster usefully reminds us, is “something that calls a memory or thought to the mind”. Our spouse can remind us to remember the car keys, or we can remind ourselves to call the mayor before sunset. The reminder, thus has a clear social and cognitive function, it returns information to us that we might need for one reason or another. The reminder also has a negative side of course, it can bring back memories we’d rather keep away. “The sight of Marie in the crowd was an unwelcome reminder to Lucy of love lost”. However, there is a recurrent element between the two: the reminder aligns the mind with reality; brings back something that for whatever reason, had been pushed in the background. That is the function of the genre.

How about the daily reminder? Well, going by what has already been written it must be something important that tends to get lost or steps into the background every day, and which should be brought to the foreground again. (BTW: I DuckDuckGo’ed “daily reminder”; there’s a lot of motivational claptrap coming up; stay on this channel – don´t google it either; it’s probably even worse.) So, the “daily” reminder has to be there, because something gets lost and lost and lost and lost.

In the case at hand, there are many things that tend to get lost in the brouhaha of the Brexit debate, and many things one might want to use as a daily reminder. For me, one of those most close at hand is the fact that Brexit is an utterly pointless exercise. There is no necessity in it. It is voluntary; an unforced choice of something immensely damaging. And when you look at the consequences of Brexit, the question arises: why do this? This very important banality tends to get lost in the daily exchanges and thus could need a reminder. It’s a little harsh, but many people who have spent time in therapy know, that a hash fact stubbornly held on to can be quite healing. 

However, I chose another daily reminder, “that you have millions of friends and allies in the EU”. Why? First of all, because in a crisis like this with tempers flaring and fates, futures, and lives at stake, there is less kindness to go around than needed. I can’t vote, I can’t demonstrate, I can’t even sign the central petitions. I can, however, show a little kindness. And every day, someone seems to need it. It would take me a long time to count the number of times someone has expressed that they needed exactly that reminder on exactly that day. Most of the time, I don´t even know, why they need it; but they do, and I'm fine with that.

This is, in one important aspect simply reverse trolling. Just as the trolls and bots (remember to block them!!!) use your empathy to tear into people's feelings, because they know that we automatically establish a human connection around their awful utterance and treat it as if is is somehow meaningful, even when it is just hateful, I use peoples' empathy to soothe their feelings, because I know that they automatically establish a human connection around my consoling utterance and see it as meaningful, and thus put more into the words than I can. Empathy is a superpower—and can be harnessed for good.

However, there is a second—even more genre-like point: the recurrence makes the reminder move in time. You had one yesterday, and the day before that, you recognize it today, and you know it will return again tomorrow.  In my terms, you recognize it as a #genre and it works on you as such. And so, the recurrence adds power to the simple, apparently insignificant message. Just like nagging or criticism can wear you down, drip by drip, my little reminder accumulates impact, because it always returns. 

(Well, always and always. You get the point.)

It’s slightly pavlovian, of course, I am aiming for a conditioned response, but if that response is that someone smiles, feels better, and can handle what the world throws at them a little better, I’ll take it. 

NB: Again, this post was originally a twitter thread. You can see it here.

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When does a high-impact study make its impact?

The epithome of a high-impact article in my field is Carolyn Miller's "Genre as Social Action" from 1984. It is to a wide extent the center piece of genre research. It is so influential that you cannot simply insert it into an article as "Miller (1984)". You have to call it something along the line of "Miller's groundbreaking/trailblazing/influential/seminal 1984-study". 

You don't write that just to pay homage (though homage is indeed due), but more to demonstrate that you know the field well enough to be aware that this is the study you have to pay homage to. It's sort of a rite of passage. 

Moreover, with too many texts to read and too little time to read them, it is also an excellent shibboleth to protect your time. If a text on genre does not have Miller on its bibliography, it is well-nigh certain that it's not worth your time to read. Miller may be replaced by a solid line-up of other central genre researchers, Freadman, Devitt, Bakhtin, Bazerman, Schryer, and others (see, for instance, this list), but still, there is a kind of vacuum present in a genre research-article that does not somehow quote Miller. 

So, the article is as influential as such things ever get. However, the article's impact wasn't immediate. It would require a thorough bibliometric tracking to trace its full reception history, but insofar as I have been able to determine, "Genre as Social Action" did not conquer the center stage until after the publication of another crucial work, Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway's anthology Genre and the New Rhetoric. It did have quite a lot of happy readers before that, but Freedman and Medway's anthology seems to mark the turning point after which Miller's study had become so crucial it could no longer be simply "Miller (1984)".

So, the question presents itself: When do you know that a study is high-impact? If you measure a study's impact as something taking place within a certain window, how do you know that you actually have the right window? If high-impact is what you are looking for, then to a certain extent you cannot even know when a study is taken up and suddenly gets hurled towards the academic stardom of the "trailblazing" study?

This is particularly relevant since funding bodies, promotion commitees etc will look to promote researcher's who can make an impact, but often this means that anything older than, say five, years, is counted less because it does not reflect the current stature of the researcher, and its impact is already in the past. 

But don´t trust the administrators. (Quoth the administrator). Research itself seems to be a much more patient endeavor, and in particular within the Humanities the possibility always remains that somewhere a long time ago, somebody wrote just that article that will blaze your trail, break your ground, or be your seminal influence. 

Oh, and if you are interested in narratives, I did a slightly backwards, literary homage to Miller here.