After reading Peter Elbow’s How to Get Power through Voice I wonder: Do I have a voice anymore? The article advocates free writing exercises in which you forget about an audience but I wonder: Is this practical? It seems to me that we are always writing for some audience. Right now we are writing for our professors, thesis committees, dissertation committees, and various journals. Our success depends on how these audiences perceive our writing.
I absolutely agree with Elbow when he says that the “reason people don’t use real voice is that it makes them feel exposed and vulnerable”(3). My voice is often suppressed by fear of rejection. Unfortunately, this often results in an inability to express ideas. I will sit at my computer and destroy an idea in an effort to sculpt it in terms of “academic voice”. Something as simple as blogging is extremely difficult. If I didn’t believe that I had at least some semblance of anonymity I probably would not be so free with my opinions and ideas. Even as I write this blog I am considering who is going to read it and how they (meaning you) will respond to it. I am not entirely sure that free writing exercises are going to be able to break this wall down or even if it is worth trying.
As current or future teachers Is it really important to teach our students to find their voice or is it more important to teach them how to write in an “academic voice”? Is it possible to teach multiple voices? At this point in my life I feel the “academic voice” is more important.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I know it might sound like oxymoron, but I would argue that the goal in graduate school should be to develop an academic voice that is also your own. Your short blog post here shows me that you have been able to do that to some degree. The writing is sophisticated and the word choice is evocative and precise, yet it clearly has a unique voice.
Your sentence that I quote below is an example of what I would see as a fine voice, with well-chosen evocative words like "sculpt". It would be pretty easy to imagine this sentence in an academic article with just a few modifications, which I add here as an experiment:
"I will sit at my computer and destroy an idea in an effort to sculpt it in terms of “academic voice”, a practice that Jones would refer to as X,Y,Z" (32).
Just adding the citation turns this well-wrought sentence into an example of academic writing. But it is writing that is a pleasure to read because it has a natural flow. Never sacrifice that flow in order to sound erudite, or you will squelch a natural gift.
Post a Comment