The Inkshed Listserv on Voice (a selection)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 10:07:24 MST
From: Doug Brent <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: "Voice"
I'm trying to put my finger on some of the literature that's come out since
the 70's on authorial "voice." In particular I'm interested in specific
material on how a writer manages voice in a text, what it means to have an
authentic voice etc. A lot of this grows out of the expressivist school,
but the concentration of "voice" as a root metaphor then seems to me to go
underground. The metaphor shifts from voice to rhetorical situation,
audience etc. The emphasis on persona as "speaker" gets a bit fuzzy. Any
suggestions on where the idea of writer as metaphorical "speaker" crops up
in later literature?
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 15:00:20 EST
From: Graham Smart <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Voice"
Doug, One idea that comes to mind re your question of what happens to the
individual speaker and persona in a social theory of writing: Bakhtin
posits the notion of individuals interacting with (negotiating,
reinventing, putting their own spin on) a society's existing genres. Here
the individual does appear to retain a certain autonomy: there's a
reciprocity between individual intention and expression, on the one hand,
and conventionalized social uses of language, on the other. Graham Smart
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 . . . 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."
. . . 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. . . . 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. . . .
Robert Irish, Director Language Across the Curriculum Applied Science and
Engineering, U of Toronto
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 09:50:28 -0400
From: Theresa Hyland <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: query re: voice
Hi Rick! There is a nice exploration of voice and identity in moving from
one language to another in the whole section of Eva Karpinski's book "Pens
of Many Colours" entitled "Self and Other: Language" I particularly like
Eva Hoffman's piece entitled "Lost in Translation" where she talks about
the voice that she adopts in writing in English (including the topics she
chooses to write about) as an immigrant learning English and abandoning her
native language, Polish. In "Background Readings for the Bedford
Handbook"Gloria Anzaldua's "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" also explores voice
in another language. Hope this helps, and I look forward to your talk,
Rick! Theresa Hyland
Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 07:50:57 -0700
From: wendy strachan <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: query re: voice
On voice - I found Darsie Bowden's challenge of the concept very useful and
for me persuasive since I resist the notion when it implies the discovery
of something essential in the self. Mythology of Voice. Wendy
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