eng 319

Paper 2: Imitations

Does the Reader Know Kayla Wrote This?

There are two choices of what we can say in this paper: either personal voice is developed by the content/substance the author decides to put in the paper, or it is developed by the way the author says it. If voice is the content, and we only have two choices of what to say, then obviously the class will be comprised of two voices: 50% of the class will sound alike and likewise for the other 50%. On a grander scale, Aristotle asserts that opinions are owned by the community, they do not belong to one person. Bartholomea furthers that claim with the argument that nothing anyone can think to write is original but only a concoction of what has already been said. If this is true: if my voice will sound like 49% of the rest of my class, and nothing I can say will be original, then how do I express my individuality? Must I forever include an everything bagel into the content of my paper in order for it to be recognized as my work? I don’t think so. Although, it does reveal a certain amusement in my style of writing. In fact, it is my style that reveals my voice; that allows the reader to see a small part of my personality. Surely, certain aspects of my style will change depending on the topic or the audience I write to, but it will always be glittered with the word choices and sentence structures that point to my personality.

Before I can begin my imitation and analysis, I feel it necessary to address a crucial, and possibly obvious, question in order to further the study of whether voice is shown through content or style: what is the definition of voice? Is it a portrayal of who the author is as a person? Is it her personality on the page? I think for the sake of further exploration, I am going to say yes, and yes. Voice is the articulation of the individual living inside of the author who has been grown and influenced by her genetic temperaments and the experiences and interactions throughout a lifetime. Therefore it is solely the author—no two people could possibly have the same exact voice.

In imitating a passage from Harry G. Frankfurt’s “On Truth,” I will be rewording and re-organizing the content of his beliefs about the relationship between truth and love into my own style, and consequently my own voice.

As Spinoza asserts, if I believe that my joy comes from outside of me, from the material things I own or that which I associate with, then I love them. I naturally love what makes me happy: happiness=love. I am happy when I ride my motorcycle, and I LOVE my motorcycle. I love that I can get on it and be free to go wherever the winding road takes me or the wind pushes, that while on it I am no longer the dolled-up girl, or the servant waitress, but a free motorcycle chick. Using my motorcycle reminds me that I do not belong to the restaurant or the judgmental looks from guys and girls (not all bad), but that I have the freedom to look like a badass and go where I please...my motorcycle allows me to see another side of who I am, and I love it for that reason.

I try to ride it every time I can and I take good care of it to make sure I don’t lose that freedom, lose that side of myself, because if I forget who I am on that bike, then I can forget that I am an individual. I will become no more than a puppet going through the motions of what society expects of me, and I will have no real reason to live. If I allow myself to forget the truth of who I am, then I allow myself to hate my life, and hating my life would make it difficult for me to keep living. Therefore, if I love my life, then I must love the truth that I am an individual.

Imitating this piece presented a handful of problems that I didn’t expect, none of which I can adequately answer or solve—I can only explore them. The first is actually shown just before I engage in the imitation: I simply state (as if it were an obvious truth) that style changes depending on the type of writing and audience I write to/for. This struck me as odd because, since I believed that voice (my personality/my self) is found in style, I don’t like the idea that I would essentially change who I am or the way I present myself solely on my audience. I would like to think that I am a consistent person who is the same no matter where I am. And yet, I find it to be true that I do present myself differently with my friends opposed to my professors, on my bike opposed to serving food—and I suppose it should be so. I suppose that since there are multitude of different discourse communities in which to be a part of, there will obviously be different ways to speak, different rules to follow, and different ways to present oneself. I guess this also means that one does not necessarily need to change who they are to be a part of these communities, but rather are reaching into the depths of their being and allowing different aspects of themselves show in different situations. Looking at my imitation, I even displayed that without really thinking about it. I state that riding my motorcycle allows me to “be” different than I would be apart from it. Not a new person, but a different part of the same person, and therefore more fully conscious of the whole person.

However, surely an author will not connect with every text she writes on a personal level. Surely not all texts she writes will reflect a part of who she is. A human depth can only go so far; a person can only truly be a part of so many discourse communities. Therefore there must be varying levels of voice depending on who the author writes to and in which community. For example, I can only speak of the freedom I feel when riding my motorcycle. I am unable to write truthfully, in my voice, about hanging out at biker bars or getting into fights with rough men and women decked out in leather, because I am only a limited part of that community. My words do not reflect those you might hear in such a bar because I have not experienced them, have not been initiated into that group of people, and therefore that language does not reflect who I am. A piece including such descriptions or language might be somewhat entertaining, but it would not contain my voice. Basically, an author may write a fully developed, well thought out and supported text that contains none of her voice or her personality because she does not connect with the audience she writes to; she is not a part of that specific community.

Now that I have qualified what my voice is, and how it changes depending on the audience I write for and the depth of my connection to that discourse community, I can finally engage in the question of how this voice is shown. Is it through content or style? Well, what is style? I believed that it is simply the way you say something. This sounds right. Since everyone has different backgrounds and are in different discourse communities then they must all have their own way of saying something. But how does this “saying something” happen? The two examples I used in the beginning of the paper were word choice and sentence structure. That sounds smart and great for the paper, but to be honest, I really would have no idea where to even begin if I was to try to analyze the individuality of my sentences (aside from my favorite use of parenthesis), and I don’t believe I generally use words that can be thought of as creative or solely mine. So how can my self, my personality, be shown through something as vague and boring and un-definable as style?

On the other hand, what is content? Is it just the bulk, the “stuff” of the paper, what the paper says, and the point/argument it makes? Again, depending on the situation or assignment, you may have to write a paper with content that you do not connect with on a personal level. However, there must be some situations in which it peaks your interest and plays with your passion and therefore it is possible, probable even, that it would contain your voice. If it is something you truly care about and believe in, then the content is a part of yourself on the paper. For example, when I refer to my motorcycle I am revealing much of what is important to me like freedom and individuality. The passage is no longer something that is somewhat hard to picture because of Frankfurt’s choice of the word “object,” and rather carries a sign that people can relate to (or at least create an image of). Interesting...by changing a single word, the content of the imitation is slightly changed into something much more personal and tangible—so does/can style change content, or does word choice play a role separate of style?

So the next question: in imitating Frankfurt, have I succeeded in restating his content with my own style? Obviously this will be very difficult to answer since I never decided what either of those two things mean, but I will try to make do. In changing the word “object” to “motorcycle,” I changed the content to be about a single thing that I love. I used the example where there was not previously one in order to create better understanding and to relate it in the way I understood it to mean, Since my tentative definition of style is to state something in the way I understand it, then placing the example to further reader comprehension could be a reflection of my style of writing. This is furthered by the fact that the basis, the foundation, and the essential argument (the content) I made was the same as Frankfurt’s, and since they were obviously different, then my voice must have been influenced by my style.

I think I have decided that my voice, in its rawest and purest sense, is writing about what I care about in the way that makes sense to me, within a community that I confidently belong to. And therefore, when writing in different styles and different situations about different topics, my work may or may not contain my voice. Is my voice presented in style or content? I would say both, and neither at the same time.