So, after reading Elbow’s essay, this is where I’m at.
Freshmen in college often have the problem of not using their real, authentic voice because they are attempting to use a stilted, academic voice that isn’t natural. The question for a teacher of freshmen composition is this: How do we teach students to use an authentic voice that is also readying them for an academic career? Elbow describes the commonalities of academic discourse: the paradoxical combination of explicitness and inexplicitness (“Academic discourse tries to be direct about the ‘position’ – the argument and reasons and claim. Yet it tends to be shy, indirect, or even evasive about the texture of feelings or attitude that lie behind that position”), an avoidance of popular language (145), and an attempt at creating authority (148). However, teachers cannot simply teach the “right answers” and tell students what the genre of academic writing encompasses because then, once again, all authority lies with the teacher (151). Elbow posits that in addition to teaching academic discourse, freshmen writing instructors should focus on “discourse that renders rather than explains” (153) and a study of various voices and styles, including the voice of academic discourse.
Elbow suggests “an exploration centered not on forms but on relationships with various live audiences,” which I think is a rad idea.
Texts Elbow cites that I want to look up:
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Discoure and the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Slavic Series 1. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981. 259-422.
Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways With Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. New York: Cambridge UP, 1983.
