Voice can be taught by having students read and practice writing. I don't know. How do you teach someone voice? You teach them to write, you show them examples of voice.
Voice is...a billion different things. It can be used philosophically, or talking about feminism, or...talking about any number of things. It can be used to mean emotion or opinion, but that's not what voice means to me.
If someone tells me they like my voice in a piece, I assume they mean my style of writing. That's the 1950-60's considerations of voice (pre hippie 60's, that is). Then we get into all this individualism/expressionist bullshit in the late 60s and seventies, where you're supposed to write as you speak. Then in the eighties it gets a new tint with feminism, and the idea that women have a "Seperate voice" (thank you Carol GIlligan) .
So be specific when you use the term voice. In fact, it might be better not to use the term at all. Just spell out what you mean, if there's another term to use.
Teach your students to develop an individual style of writing, not a "voice." Everyone has a voice. Unless they're mute.
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The History and Theory of College Composition. Commentary by Kim Cannon.
2 comments:
I smiled, laughed and raised my eyebrows reading this post! Kim, you swear so effectively for emphasis :)
I too would pull Voice as a label from the discussion, and throw it on the scrap heap in Peter Elbow's backyard on the carcas of standard-based assessment.
From the day I worked with my first writer, when I edited, I ALWAYS used the term style, because I want the Voice out of it and the style to remain because there is such a miscommunication with that term. Voice could be definited as the pacing and flow, the poetry, if you will, of structure well done, a tone of the language, the inflection by effectively using meter in prose or multi-syllable words to set a pace or cadence. But that is also style, and the fact that voice as a term always connotes opinion (or does for me) I wonder if it, as a term, has seens its literary shelf life expire...
Good post, as usual, and a very good presentation the other way -- thanks for that exercise (and Lauri!).
I partly agree with what is being said here. Mainly the fact that we forget that in this day an age, every term that we use requires a definition. All this debate on voice has more to do with my definition, Bob's definition, Kim's definition or whomever's definition of the term. The notion of voice is not a concrete entity that stands on its own.
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