Contemplations, Creations and…well it’s a blog.

Paper Two- Voice Final

"Speak up, use your voice. We cannot hear you on this side of the room. How many times must I remind you that you must say things louder if you wish for the rest of us to understand you? Unless you don't care if people hear what you have to say. If that is indeed the case then please just don't say anything at all and save it for your writing."

Okay, now this is not the type of voice that we are used to hearing when discussing voice in academic terms. This was merely what I heard my younger sister's teacher saying to her on the day I happened to show up to bring her some lunch. I think that she wanted Amanda to give her an example of voice on the paper and how to use it in class (but honestly I wasn't sure). Like me, my sister had a hard time understanding the difference between verbal voice and written voice in a paper.

Her teacher was being hardly helpful, and after giving the teacher a scathing glare, I promised my sister that I would help her to understand what "voice" the teacher was referring to, besides the one she got scolded for not amplifying. I needed to explain to her what the difference was, and how it was applied to writing. But then there was the fun task of thinking: Huh, what exactly is voice? How do I explain this to an eleven-year-old confused ADD child? How do I explain this to myself? This lead me to thinking back to when I first struggled with applying it to my writing; I thought that "good" writing was purely based on content with voice merely being in the way. But as I progressed through class after class, and annoying teachers trying to brand me with their perceptions and structures on voice, I managed to fuse together my own version of what voice is. I find voice to be the foundation to a paper and to coincide with style.

Personally, I find voice to be a very important factor to good writing. However, this is not always the case, many "good" things that I have read, I find to be lacking in distinguishable characteristics of voice. So then I find myself staring at a paper, squishing my head irritably, wondering: Well then, Jamie, what the heck are you babbling on about? If voice is found in style, then what role does the content play? Do you know what you are talking about? I come to the conclusion: I'm confused. However, I am confident in knowing that style is important and can shine through no matter what is being read or written, that is, if it is applied properly. To test this thought out, I imitated a passage from Frankfurt's On Truth that spans from page 32-34. I will try to keep some of my voice in the writing while still keeping a good grip on what the point of the passage is.

Because of these reasons, no civilizations can afford to hate or neglect the truth. However, for a society to only acknowledge that truth and inaccuracies are legitimate and important concepts, proves to be detrimental and not nearly enough. Plus, these civilizations must not fail to provide strong foundations for applicable individual people that apply themselves to obtaining and exploiting valid truths. Even more importantly, whatever added bonuses that might be looming in the attainable future by means of b.s-ing, by dismembering, or by complete deception, societies cannot afford to put up with anyone or anything that holds a sloppy indifference to the distinction between true and false. Less than that, can they divulge the shoddy, selfish pretense that being true to the facts is hardly more important than one being true to themselves. If there is any attitude that is essentially antithetical to a tolerable and normal social life, that is it.

A general public that is rashly and insistently remiss in any of these ways is likely to decline, or at least, to present itself as being culturally apathetic in nature. Certainly, it shall be unable to produce any type of substantial achievement, and probably of any understandable and wise ambition. Civilizations have, at no time, ever gotten along in a healthy manner, and cannot get along in this manner, without a ton of misunderstood beliefs. To create and support an advanced culture, we need to avert from being incapacitated either by mistakes or by ignorance. We need to be aware of--and naturally, we must also remember to comprehend how to make productive use of--- an abundance of truths.

Upon completion of this exercise, not only was I surprised at the almost complete non-existence of my voice, but also by how difficult it was to regurgitate the author's ideas into my own words. It was frustrating for many reasons, one of them being that the vocabulary he chose to use was similar to what I normally use and made much more coherent sense than my attempt. I found myself using my trusty thesaurus often like I do when I normally write. It was nice yet irritating, because I liked many of the original words, such as "capable" which I replaced with "applicable." These are similar words, but depending on their placement in the context they can have completely different meanings, or meanings that just barely miss the point that the author had intended. At times, I felt like I was nearly butchering them when trying to convey the point in a lucid, understandable way that could still be comprehensive. I felt that, while trying to add my voice I was taking away what made the passage distinctive and important such as the purposeful word placement. While I was writing my version, I wasn't focusing so much on why I was placing a word there, I was merely trying to put some other word that in my normal writing I might use. My voice was choked back due to the content though, and I found it very difficult to try and insert it. Plus, when I finally finished and looked back I only saw snippets of my voice in the second paragraph and in word usages in the first and even there, it was very scarce. For example a small part of my writing style that is visible was my usage of the words "b.s-ing" (in replacement of bullshitting). This word is not much of a change, but as subtle as it is, it can still be seen that that is a word I would use in writing instead of "bullshitting." Another instance, was my usage of the word "looming" when the author used the phrase "may be possible to attain." In the second paragraph, in sentences such as "We need to be aware of--and naturally, we must also remember to comprehend how to make--" There is a difference in all of these sentences meaning, but for my sake of my rendition, it worked best for how I was attempting to understand the authors main point and translate it into something comprehensible by myself and others.

I don't believe that voice is purely style or purely content. Instead, I find it to be more of a blend. The hardest part (for me anyways) is trying to find that happy medium. I wanted to find a way I can convey my point academically without overusing voice and doing a sort of "style overload." However I faced the issue of myself focusing so much on making sure that I don't ruin the original content, that my style is virtually non-existent. If this happy medium is reached successfully, then a powerful piece can be born and along with it, a satisfied academic life, and a clear understanding that can be used to explain successfully to anyone and applied to anything.