English 495: Tuesday, February 8

In his article "Reflections and Refractions [...] on Voice," Atkinson calls voice a "complex concept" (87). I truly had not given that concept much thought until I read the articles for today. I thought that voice was some universal entity that translated equally across cultures. But I now see that that is absolutely not the case:  "In order to write good English, I knew that I had to be myself, which actually meant not be my Chinese self," a student says of trying to write academic papers in the United States (Ramanathan 55). I see that, for many years, I have bought into this culturally -defined model of good writing, although, as I reflect back on my past experiences, I see just how imposed a structure voice can really be.

The three case studies in Ramanathan and Atkinson's article were the catalysts for the said reflecting back on my own struggles with voice. Each of the three people were good writers in their first langauge, yet were having a hard time having that voice translate in English. Carmen especially intrigued me. She was a former journalist who realized that there was little room to "catch the attenction of the reader" when writing English scientific papers.

Although I was writing in the same language in both types of writing, I struggled with the same thing, making me question just how cookie-cutter the concept of voice really is. My undergraduate major was broadcast journalism, and I took a job as a news producer after college. This job entailed writing a lot of news stories... in the broadcast format in which one writes to the pictures that the viewers will be seeing, uses natural sound (sounds effects so to speak) to convey a concept even more fully, creative yet concise sentences that could sound like one was simply having a conversation with the viewer. When writing this way, my voice shown through. I could write swiftly, easily, creatively.

Then, I left the business and decided to go back to school to become a teacher. I had basically been a "professional writer" for a year, but I now found myself truly struggling with writing. I had not done academic writing in such a long time that the concept was truly foreign to me. Every paper seemed to far to long to write. When asked to write my first journal-type research articles on literature, I had no idea how to do so, so I mimiced the form that was prevalent in the papers of published writers. As I did this, I remember thinking that what I wrote did not sound like me, that I was essentially placing a boxed form over my writing and making it fit. As time went on and I practiced more, I think that I got better and have since found some voice again; when I read academic assignments that I wrote, I can hear myself in them. Still, the articles on voice have made me very interested in learning more about the topic and about my own writing.