DOCUMENT RESUME ED 375 404 CS 214 544 AUTHOR Yancey, Kathleen Blake, Ed. TITLE Voices on Voice: Perspectives, Definitions, Inquiry. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, Ill. REPORT NO ISBN-0-8141-5634-7 PUB DATE 94 NOTE 387p. AVAILABLE FROMNational Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W. Kenyon Rd., Urbana, IL 61801-1096 (Stock No. 56347-3050: $22.95 members, $29.95 nonmembers). PUB TYPE Collected Works General (020) Guides Non- Classroom Use (055) Reference Materials Bibliographies (131) EDRS PRICE MFO1 /PC16 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Annotated Bibliographies; Cultural Context; Deafness; Higher Education; Literary Devices; Oral Tradition; Personal Narratives; *Rhetoric; *Self Expression; Undergraduate Students; *Writing (Composition) IDENTIFIERS *Author Text Relationship; Personal Writing; Rhetorical Stance; *Voice (Rhetoric) ABSTRACT This collection of essays approaches "voice" as a means of expression that lives in the interactions of writers, readers, and language, and examines the conceptualizations of voice within the oral rhetorical and expressionist traditions, and the notion of voice as both a singular and plural phenomenon. An explanatory introduction by the editor is followed by 19 essays:(1) "What Do We Mean When We Talk about Voice in Texts?" (Peter Elbow); (2) "Claiming My Voice" (Toby Fulwiler); (3) "Coming to Voice" (Gail Summerskill Cummins); (4) "Affect and Effect in Voice" (Doug Minnerly);.(5) "Technical Texts/Personal Voice: Intersections and Crossed Purposes" (Nancy Allen and Deborah S. Bosley);(6) "Voices in the News" (Meg Morgan);(7) The Chameleon 'I': On Voice and Personality in the Personal Essay" (Carl H. Klaus);(8) "The Difference It Makes to Speak: The Voice of Authority in Joan Didion" (Laura Julier);(9) "Teaching Voice" (Margaret K. Woodworth); (10) "Classroom Voices" (Paula Gillespie); (11) "Voice as Muse, Message, and Medium: The Views of Deaf College Students" (John A. Albertini and others);(12) "Varieties of the 'Other': Voice and Native American Culture" (Tom Carr); (13) "East Asian Voices and the Expression of Cultural Ethos" (John H. Powers and Gwendolyn Gong); (14) "Voice and the Naming of Woman" (Susan Brown Carlton); (15) "Voicing the Self: Toward a Pedagogy of Resistance in a Postmodern Age" (Randall R. Freisinger); (16) "The Virtual Voice of Network Culture" (Mark Zamierowski); (17) "Concluding the Text: Notes toward a Theory and the Practice of Voice" (Kathleen Blake Yancey and Michael Spooner); and (18) "An Annotated and Collective Bibliography of Voice: Soundings from th,J Voices Within" (Peter Elbow and Kathleen Blake Yancey). (NKA) AUL ' PERMISSION TO REPRODUCETHIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTEDBY x. TO THE EDUCATIONALRESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Olhco of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality Points of view or opinions Mated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy BEST COPY AVAILABLE NCTE Editorial Board: Rafael Castillo, Gail Hawisher, Joyce Kinkead, Charles Moran, Louise Phelps, Charles Suhor, Chair, ex officio NCTE College Section Committee: Cynthia Selfe, Chair, Michigan Techno- logical University; Pat Belanoff, SUNY at Stony Brook; Lil Brannon, SUNY at Albany; Doris 0. Ginn, CCCC Representative, Jackson State University; Jeanette Harris, University of Southern Mississippi; James Hill, Albany State College; Dawn Rodrigues, Colorado State University; Tom Waldrep, Univer- sity of South Carolina; H. Thomas McCracken, CEE Representative, Youngs- town State University; Louise Smith, ex officio, Editor,College English, University of Massachusetts at Boston; James E. Davis, Executive Committee Liaison, Ohio University; Miles Myers, NCTE Staff Liaison Voices on Voice Perspectives, Definitions, Inquiry Edited by Kathleen Blake Yancey University of North Carolina at Charlotte National Council of Teachers of English 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096 Manuscript Editors: Robert A. Heister, Mimi L. Mukerjee Humanities & Sciences Associates Production Editor: Michael G. Ryan Interior Design: Tom Kovacs for TGK Design Cover Design: Barbara Yale-Read NCTE Stock Number: 56347-3050 © 1994 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. It is the policy of NCTE in its journals and other publications to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teach- ing of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders and to obtain all permissions. In the case of those copyright holders who could not be located or those, if any, who did not respond, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements upon receiving notice. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Voices on voice : perspectives, definitions, inquiry / edited by Kathleen Blake Yancey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN 0-8141-5634-7 1. English languageRhetoricStudy and teaching.I. Yancey, Kathleen Blake, 1950- PE1404.V64 1994 808'.042'07dc20 94-21168 CIP Contents Introduction: Definition, Intersection, and Difference Mapping the Landscape of Voice vii Kathleen Blake Yancey 1. What Do We Mean When We Talk about Voice in Texts? 1 Peter Elbow 2. Claiming My Voice 36 Toby Fulwiler 3. Coming to Voice 48 Gail Summerskill Cummins 4. Affect and Effect in Voice 61 Doug Minnerly 5. Technical Texts/Personal Voice: Intersections and Crossed Purposes 80 Nancy Allen and Deborah S. Bosley 6. Voices in the News 97 Meg Morgan 7. The Chameleon "I": On Voice and Personality in the Personal Essay 111 Carl H. Klaus 8. The Difference It Makes to Speak: The Voice of Authority in Joan Didion 130 Laura Julier 9. Teaching Voice 145 Margaret K. Woodworth 10. Classroom Voices 159 Paula Gillespie li vi Contents 11. Voice as Muse, Message, and Medium: The Views of Deaf College Students 172 John A. Albertini, Bonnie Meath-Lang, and David P. Harris 12. Varieties of the "Other": Voice and Native American Culture 191 Tom Carr 13. East Asian Voice and the Expression of Cultural Ethos 202 John H. Powers and Gwendolyn Gong 14. Voice and the Naming of Woman 226 Susan Brown Carlton 15. Voicing the Self: Toward a Pedagogy of Resistance in a Postmodern Age 242 Randall R. Freisinger 16. The Virtual Voice of Network Culture 275 Mark Zamierowski 17. Concluding the Text: Notes toward a Theory and the Practice of Voice 298 Kathleen Blake Yancey and Michael Spooner 18. An Annotated and Collective Bibliography of Voice: Soundings from the Voices Within 315 Peter Elbow and Kathleen Blake Yancey Index 345 Editor 357 Contributors 359 7 Introduction: Definition, Intersection, and Difference Mapping the Landscape of Voice Kathleen Blake Yancey University of North Carolina at Charlotte One of the more frequent metaphors employed in rhetoric and compo- sition is voice. Working from an analogy to the spoken context, we use the metaphor of voice to talk generally around issues in writing: about both the act of writing and its agent, the writer, and even about the reader, and occasionally about the presence in the text of the writer. Sometimes we use voice quite specifically: to talk about the writer composing text, in the process addressing both a fictionalized audi- ence constructed by the text and a human audience that is itself re- creating text and writer. Sometimes we use voice to talk specifically about what and how a writer knows, about the capacity of a writer through "voice" to reveal (and yet be dictated by) the epistemology of a specific culture. Sometimes we use voice to talk in neo-Romantic terms about the writer discovering an authentic self and then deploy- ing it in text. These three specific conceptions of voice seem at odds with each other, and they are at odds too with still other interpreta- tions of voice. Voice, then, can and does have several competing refer- ences, not all of them necessarily compatible with each other, nor with these three. When I first began exploring the topic of voiceand as I sought to identify what voice is, or to determine what voice seemed to mean to various writers, or to outline what the metaphor of voice could meanI encountered the first of several paradoxes: the more I seemed to know about it, the less certain I became, and the less I actually knew. In some cases, my confusion arose because of the absence of a simple definition. "Voice"sometimes singular in the reference, sometimes plural, and often bothcould on the one hand refer to an unstated This work was supported in part by funds from the Foundation of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and from the State of North Carolina, to whom the author expresses her thanks. Vii viii Kathleen Blake Yancey commonplace hovering somewhere outside the text, or could on the other hand draw tentative definition from assumptions and references ithin the surrounding text, if the reader were sensitive enough to construct them properly. In other cases, my confusion arose because of the definitions themselves, which argue rather than explain. The fea- tures such definitions