Martin, Eric V. “Reconceiving the Voice-to-Style Relationship in Academic Discourse: A Study of Students’ Initial Perceptions and Emerging Writing Practicies.“ Diss. Illinois State U, 1995.
Aronowitz and Giroux define voice as “the ways in which students produce meaning through the various subject positions that are available to them in the wider society” (quoted p. 7) Students have voices, arising from their “experiences, langauges, histories, and stories.” students become subjects, not objects, and so gain authority.
Presence: Gordon Harvey says when reader “feel[s] life in writing, when we feel an individual invested in a subject and freely directing the essay…” (650, quoted p. 7)
P 12: after referring to various writers who have struggled to meet academic discourse (e.g., bell hooks): “The conventions of traditional academic discourse and the argumentative essay represent on way of establishing authority in writing but certainly not the only way. At the same time, the scope of such criticism can be expanded. Traditional academic discourse discriminates, but it does so, in my estimation, as ‘a system’ v. ‘all students,’ as well as ‘a system’ v. ‘a gender,’ ‘a race,’ and so on. As it is currenly presented to most students, traditional academic discourse requres them to check their identities at the door of the classroom and learn an accceptable style and voice for writing. Such discourse discriminates against all students by prizing dispassionate, source-driven authority over that rooted in the students’ own lives. In turn, it leads many students to believe that there is only one way to assimilate when many suspect otherwise and we ourselves know better.”
HELL YEAH!
*Read Harvey, Gordon. “Presence in the Essay.” College English 56 (1994): 642-54.
*Read hooks, bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist / Thinking Black. Boston: South End, 1989.
I’ll read more of this later. Off to go get some sleep (and see if I have some bell hooks at home).
