“Voice in writing,” is not the substance but the style. Voice is individualistic, and writers have individualistic ways in presenting ideas. In academic writing especially, the content of students’ paper may not be what he or she wants to discuss and address. The students are forced to choose content within the allotted topics. More specifically, academic research writing has even more restrictive standards on the students thus narrowing the options for content. When the goal of the paper is to present research findings (i.e. historical or scientific), the students must present factual information untainted from their convictions; and the students will be unable to assert his or her belief system in correlation to content of the paper.
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The paper’s content is what teachers’ grade. The content will need to tackle the topic and maintain focus of the subject matter, which will help avoid the promotion of the student’s inner voice overflowing in beliefs. Unfortunately, there have been reoccurring situations in which the authoritative teachers award lowly, reduced grades for content that disagree with the teachers’ ideologies. In repercussion, the students are not permitted the freedom to explore content in terms true to their conviction.
So what scraps of creative fabric are students rationed in respect to voice…students got last night’s dinner leftovers taste of style. Style permits humor, playfulness, genuineness, seriousness, and many other nouns that contribute to its uniqueness; it varies in sentence structure and punctuation in the flow of writing. It does not matter what I write as long as am able to express my personality. I wrote a research paper in eleventh grade about euthanasia, assisted suicide. I particularly do not agree with euthanasia, but in my essay I argued for it. It was much easier to write about the benefits of euthanasia than to rebuttal. I found more reasons and research to promote the controversy and had difficulty supporting my morality. In the end, I got an “A” grade for essay even though it did not match my moral code, but hey, I got the grade I wanted. (I worked the system, and this society is about success and making the grade anyway.)
Individualistic points of view are not the essential deciding factors. Society’s influence control the decisions people make similar to those insane religious cults. Political and economical standards are motivating factors as well. The Post modernists thrive on the question of whether a person solely relies on individualistic beliefs or does he or she refer to the whirlwind of conflicting and demanding society.
Could the post modernists have asked a question with a more obvious answer? No matter who does the questioning, the main point is to reach an objective perspective. For example, an architect and an engineer must achieve objectivity accurately. Their skills and available resources are used to overcome the difficulties to achieve their plans, which are meticulous measured and constructed. These carefully designed plans are executed and cannot be dependent on an individual outlook, and these particular plans are not subject to change because of demanding societal law or taboo. However, a plan’s precision is not enough. The measurement must be correct under any social condition and from any perspective.
After I participated in this imitation exercise, I have realized some new revelations. Voice cannot merely be defined as style. Although style allows the writer the playfulness of different grammatical usage, this grammatical usage is not enough to establish the writer’s authentic voice because the style is in close correlation to subject matter. It was difficult to play with grammar with the sentences because the sentences’ ideas were not my own. I did not create the ideas, and I find it much easier to have style in my writing when the content came from my intellect to paper; these foreign ideas are difficult to implement as my own.
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Somewhat like a hospital patient that recently underwent a kidney transplant surgery. The patient’s body is heavily medicated in order for it to accept the unfamiliar organ as its own, and over time the body will hopefully accept the transplant. Time has an obligation to let the new ideas or someone else’s ideas serenade. I must allow time for innovative ideas and content to become apart of my arsenal before I can recycle them out of my mouth to the pen on paper. Given time to understand new influences definitely helps me write with my own voice.
The subject matter sometimes makes it very difficult to use my voice in terms of style. I honestly feel like that imitating a section of Frankfurt’s writing by maintaining the same content, but putting the writing into my own style that particularly fits my personality did not feel like I showed my own voice. It was still Frankfurt’s writing voice, even though the syntax was changed, because I maintained his ideas. That imitation exercise did not allow much opportunity for my voice to change; it felt like this was an exercise of limitation. My voice was stifled. If I would have done the imitation exercise by changing the content to fit my own beliefs and feelings on the issue, then I would have felt that my voice would come through more vibrantly because the ideas would have been my own despite society’s influences.
I originally stated that voice is simply style. Well, it is much more complex then style. My own voice’s style did not shine in the imitation exercise of putting Frankfurt’s writing in words. I felt that the words did not completely broadcast my voice because the ideas were Frankfurt’s. My voice was fenced in the restrictions of grammar. The voice is not only style but ideas and content. Content that belongs to the writer is a form of his or her voice in combination to the style.
Posted by nono8 on October 14, 2008
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Also, great use of metaphors, they actually fit and enhanced what you were saying, so great job!
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