The way I would define voice can be summed up in this quote by Peter Elbow, "Writing with voice is writing into which someone has breathed. It has that fluency, rhythm, and liveliness that exist naturally in the speech of most people when they are enjoying a conversation...Writing with real voice has the power to make you pay attention and understand --the words go deep."
In reading this quote, my definition of voice is that it is determined through style of a person’s writing. The reason that I see voice as style of writing is because a writer tends to (or should write) write like he or she speaks or as Elbow puts it, voice should come through like a person’s personality comes through in a conversation. However, while writing does not always come as easily as conversation because it is a one ended conversation, the vocabulary and the expressions in which the writer speaks during conversation should not vary much from his or her writing. Writing like a person speaks is seen in a variety of ways such as vocabulary, expressions, and the varying stages of education. Voice as style is never-ending growing process.
Over the years I have sat through many English classes where there was a great deal of emphasize on lists of vocabulary words and definitions. Usually, I was encouraged to use these words in my writing and projects for class. Some of the words I have picked up over the years and they are now part of my everyday speaking, writing and conversation but then, if I added the words on the lists into my writing and projects, it usually sounded awkward and forced. I have also spent some time in English classes talking about sentence structure. Again, I was encouraged to use these various structures in my writing for class and it usually came off as awkward and force.
Elbow’s quote seems to say that voice is found in writing is just as natural as participating in a conversation. The style in which a person speaks is the way their writing should sound. The vocabulary and various sentence structures I learned in my previous English classes were forced and awkward but eventually some of them became part of my regular everyday conversation and then my writing. In my experience, this shows that voice in writing varies through the different stages of my education.
My 12-year-old brother is going to have a different voice in his writing for his sixth grade English class than I do in my English classes as a sophomore in college. And a graduate student will have different more advanced voice in their writing than I do. This is not to say that all graduate students write in the same voice nor do the hand full of English education majors in this class writes with the same voice. But it can be said that the various styles of writing in this class are more advanced than the various styles in my brother’s sixth grade class. The differences in voice come through the way we like to write, and what comes natural to each individual.
There are certain words that people like to use in writing. There are certain phrases and sentence structures that become second nature to writers. These words and phrases are what make the writing fluid and natural. And no matter what the words and phrases are, they will come through in any type of writing whether it be academic writing or informal.
Spinoza believes that because a person recognizes that they have joy from someone or something on the outside, they love that someone or something. He sees love as the way we respond to what is giving us joy. So according to him, the things that cause people happiness or joy are the things that we love. No matter what, they love the things that seem to help them in life and further enhance who they are. I think Spinoza is in the right direction. Many example models of love show that people tend to love what helps them become more of who they are without changing themselves.
Spinoza adds another factor to his definition, “One who loves necessarily strives to have present and preserve things he loves” (Ethics, part III, proposition I I, scholium). The things that a person loves mean a lot to him or her. His life and his well being depends on the things he loves. So, he keeps track of the things and makes sure he can get to them easily.
As I was doing the Frankfurt imitation I was not really looking at the content of the passage. I was not looking at the argument. Instead, I was taking what he was saying and putting it into my own words. I was using the words, phrases and sentence structures that come easy to me in my writing. And in doing this exercise, it has helped further emphasize and go along my points on the definition of voice.
One thing I thought about was that I do not necessarily write in the same voice as Frankfurt. He has a PhD and I do not even have a bachelor’s degree. He better understands the subject than I do so his style seems to come off as more wordy and thorough than mine would. While imitating, I had to take his sentence and imitate it in my style so that I could understand better. His voice is much more complicated than mine. For example, his first sentence says, “Now, if a person who experiences joy recognizes has a certain external cause—that is, if the person identifies someone or something as the object to which he owes his joy and on which his joy depends—Spinoza believes that the person inevitably loves that object” Frankfurt 44). Whereas, I wrote, “Spinoza believes that because a person recognizes that they have joy from someone or something on the outside, they love that someone or something.” I had to take his sentence and simplify it so that I could understand it and so that it sounded more like me speaking otherwise it would sound awkward and it would not sound like myself.
Another thing I realized was that Frankfurt used some vocabulary, which I had heard and learned before but I do not usually use it in my own everyday language and writing. One example that stuck out to me was when he began one of his sentences with, “Many paradigmatic instances of love...” (Frankfurt 45). I learned the word paradigm on a vocabulary list in high school. I know what it means and I have seen it in writing before but I had a difficult time getting past it in my imitation because this word in particular is not part of my everyday speech and vocabulary and therefore it is not part of my personal voice in writing. Instead I simplified its definition and used it in my imitation.
Based on these to examples of trying to imitate from a PhD’s perspective to my own undergrad perspective and using the words that are more natural in my vocabulary, I still see voice in the same way as I did before I did the imitation exercise. Voice in writing is seen through the way the writer speaks. The voice of a writer comes out when it is as natural as speaking or engaging in a conversation. There style of writing is similar to the style that they speak in.
Posted by illaria on October 20, 2008
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