Now I'm taking a risk in an experiment: the risk that I've never imagined myself in. Actually, it's not a big deal like peace talk over the deactivation of the nuclear weapon or espionage sneaking into the hospital that the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jung Il, had his brain surgery. I'm just writing my blog prompt without any outline, which I've never done in my life except for cases like emailing to friends and writing the journal. The reason why I am doing this is to see if this works better in expressing my own voice or not.
I just read my blog prompts that I've been writing, and some of those surprised me because I couldn't recognize my voice; I couldn't remember what I was planning to tell or what I wanted to express. Recalling the situation that I was about to write in, I came up with this idea that I might raise my own voice better if I put myself at the moment "shaping at the point of utterance" like Britton said.
Anyway, back to the point, let's talk about "voice." Basically, I don't think I have my own voice yet, but if I could define the voice as something that I believe in or am rooted in, I believe that individual "voice" could either enhance or decrease "academic voice." Your sincere and genuin belief permeated through your voice could help you to improve and develop your academic research or specialization. If you want to express what you believe in and raise your voice, you would be more likely to find the way to prove its validality and veracity. Playing the most effective weapon in claiming your opinion, "voice" seems essential virtuosity when it comes to writing. This finding leads me to another question. As a teacher or a grader, how can we approach to this concept for students? There could be a lot of answers, but I think this question is hard to find an answer because having my own voice is a matter of establishing identity, which is not a quick process. Acknowledging your own identity takes lots of time, and it is different from people to people. Some students already mapped out their next five years, but others might even know what they want to do tomorrow. As a teacher, I think, one way we can help them is to provide great amount of different reading. Experiencing various reading, they would find themselves in idosyncratic situations, having their own ideas. This might help them to lay the very foundation of their identity.
Meanwhile, individual voice could worsen your "academic voice" when you are too engrossed in certain belief and stop doubting about it, which is very dangerous therefore should never happen in the academic world. We've been admonished and urged to stick to our own position but in moderation. If the writing is too subjective, it is not valued any more because of the surpassing the normal extent of restraints of academic writing.
Then how should we balance out having authentic voice to the extent that add more power in your own logos in the academic world? Well, I think it is important to try to have both sounds; showing what you trust, but at the same time being a devils' advocate. This way, we can prevent ourselves from being too prejudiced or biased. Maybe we could stop being too dependent on the facts that I believe by, or we might be able to cut out ourselves being overly emotional.
So far, I've been trying to speak out with my own voice, but I don't know how much loud it was.
To me, the answer sounds more like for typical doesen't-have-any-anwer-right-now question.
It just takes time to reach there.
4 comments:
Wow! I have to say... I'm very impressed that you have never written a blog without an outline! I'm pretty sure I never write anything WITH an outline... but I would also say this tends to be problematic at times.. How did you like it? I found your blog really interesting. I was wondering, do you think your academic voice is personalized/individual? Or shaped and formulated? I definitely have an academic voice, yet it still is pretty much mine. It's way too messy to be anyone else's! I do agree with you that voice is an important thing to try to grasp because it helps make your entire writing more personal- it can be laden with idiosyncratic tendencies and somehow get shaped with your flow of thought. I think that is why voice is important- it relays a lot about HOW you think about things. Yet at the same time, I wonder,if a writing 'voice' could be seen as a source of finding a better grasp of your own essence? or is it just more constructing it?
Yes, I must agree with Stephanie. You have never written without an outline? WOW! That is truly remarkable. So many times I write without oulines, and the times I have an outline they are only in my head, not on paper. Finding a voice has been a fun process for me. I think coming up with different voices will be the tricky part. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Anyong Haseyo! When I was reading your post I thought that you DO have your own voice, even while doubting that you do. Maybe it's hard to hear it when it's coming from yourself. I know that it's that way for me, because I'll sometimes write something, thinking it stinks, then go back to it later and think it's brilliant, and with "voice." A lot of our colleagues on here seem to have doubts about their voices, but if you took all these blogs and deleted the names of their writers, I think I could still tell who wrote what, because I see so many original voices on here. And I think your voice is original too.
Jeong's experiment here in writing more or less free form reveals that planning often equates to determining content and arrangement of an essay. Recall that the stages of rhetoric are invention, arrangment, style, memory, and delivery--with the latter two of lesser importance in writing than in speech. It appears as if Jeong's style in this unplanned essay is similar to what it would be in one that was planned. Her word choices, sentence styles are varied and rhythmically pleasing. Her word choices are expressive. I haven't compared this blog to her earlier, planned posts, but my hunch is that it sounds similar. Style is less likely to be planned in advance.
What differs may be content and arrangment. I suspect if Jeong had outlined this she might have a few more details, maybe a citation or two from the readings. And the arrangement might have been tighter. For example, she might have divided the long third paragraph into two.
When you outline you list content almost as if writing a list before packing a suitcase. Without that list, you will still pack in the same style. Your clothes will be of the style you normally wear even without planning because those choices of fashion have become instinctual. But without the plan it is easier to forget one of the essentials, perhaps a belts. Similarly in writing, the planning allows you to make sure you "take" everything you need on your expository journey.
Planning also aids in arrangement. Yes, you will still bring many of the things you need without planning, but they may not be organized in the best way to allow everything to fit well.
The goal in planning, it seems, is to control in advance content and arrangement (although of course some of this will evolve with writing), while allowing style to unfold naturally. If you can mix planning with free writing for style it seems you will have the best of both worlds--detailed content and organization, but with a natural style.
Thanks for sharing this experiment with us, Jeong. It spawned some good reflection for all of us who read it.
I might add that I did not plan this response, but I did do some rearranging of sentences as I went along. Still, it is not nearly as tightly focused as it could be; it has repetitious points. And I have nothing to support my assertions because my content is that which was immediately available in my memory.
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