Hi, folks . . . Rob sent this to me yesterday but for some reason it just arrived in my inbox today . . . he suggested I forward it if I wanted to, and I want to . . . Marcy ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Date: Tuesday, May 21, 2002 12:26 PM -0400 From: Rob Irish <[log in to unmask]> To: Marcy Bauman <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Authentic writing Marcy: One distinction Bakhtin makes -- in "discourse in the novel" is between the authoritative voice and the internally persuasive one. He puts it this way (_p.342 in the Dialogic Imagination_): "Both the authority of discourse and its internal persuasiveness may be united in a single word -- one that is simultaneously authoritative and internally persuasive -- despite the profound differences between these two categories of alien discourse. But such unity is rarely given -- it happens more frequently that an individual's become, an ideological process, is characterized by a sharp gap between these two categories: in one the authoritative word (religious, political, moral, the word of a father, of adults and of teachers etc.) that does not know internal persuasiveness, in the other the internally persuasive word that is denied all privilege, backed up by no authority at all, and is frequently not even acknowledged in society... The struggle and dialogic interrelationships of these categories of ideological discourse are what usually determin the history of an individual ideological consciousness." Sorry for the long quote, but it's helping me sort this idea related to my own research. Bringing this back to our students and the discussion of various writing, I think that it is only when the two voices come together that students can be confident in their success. Paul Prior has an article in RTE looking at this for a grad student in sociology. More generally, students are trying as they write to enter a discourse world. As they get feedback about their writing, one of the points they are given is an assessment of how successful they have been at that step. Typically, the comments they get may cover a myriad of different writing concerns: expression, focus of ideas, development or support of argument, validity of argument etc. So, the student is trying to enter the discourse community (Geertz's "intellectual village"). They are trying to write their way in. The prof or TA marking the paper is the gatekeeper who decides whether to let them into the outskirts of town or thrust them into the village square (or maybe it's the centre circle of hell). Anyway, if we see our students as working dialogically to reconcile these two voices, then we can respond differently. We can respond not so much as gatekeepers as perhaps the welcome wagon, or at least the information centre. If you think this is worth sharing with others, you can post it. I wasn't sure if others were interested in pushing this further. Rob -- ************************************** Dr. Robert Irish, Director Language Across the Curriculum Applied Science and Engineering University of Toronto SF B670 416.978.6708 http://www.ecf.utoronto.ca/~writing ************************************* ---------- End Forwarded Message ---------- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Marcy Bauman Media Consultant College of Pharmacy University of Michigan 734-647-2227 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to [log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties, write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask] For the list archives and information about the organization, its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-