Voice by Skylar
My Journey With Voice
At the beginning of my What is Text? class I was told that my primary focus of the class would be to study one key term. I was given two weeks to look through terms such as Intersectionality, Style, Assemblage, and many more, before picking a term that I wished to study. Pretty early on, I chose the term Voice and was very confident in my decision doing so. Come with me on my personal journey with the term voice, as I learn more about the term and most importantly, more about myself.
Why Did I Choose Voice?
From a very young age, I was an avid reader. In elementary school, I would stay up late in my childhood bed reading by nightlight. By the time I entered middle school I was reading at a high school level and probably reading about topics that no middle school student in 2013 should. I felt such a strong pull to the magic that could be found in a book and I would spend every spare moment getting lost in a story. By the time I was 13, I began writing my own stories (nothing extraordinary but I loved creating my own worlds to escape to.) In high school, I could be found reading upwards of thirty books a year and I came to a realization that I didn't know who I'd be without these stories. From that moment on, it's been my goal to work in an environment where I can help people tell their stories in order to inspire or comfort others.
I always felt a pull towards the characters in the books I was reading. Authors made their characters relatable and I felt connected to them even if we were living completely different lives. I attribute this to the voice that an author can give a character and what they can do with it.
For the past few semesters, I have been lucky enough to take three separate workshop classes, Fiction, Poetry, and Non-fiction. At first, I took these classes to learn how to write in these separate formats, but then I found it really fascinating to be able to read my peers work. In each workshop, I had to provide compliments and critiques on each of their pieces. By doing so, I paid even more attention to a persons voice and a strong voice was my favorite thing to compliment.
Now I hope you can see why I was so drawn to voice at the beginning of this term. I thought I knew all of the rhetorical in's and out's of voice going into this class. I had figured that based on my previous knowledge, that this project would be easy. This has proven not to be true as I continued to learn more about voice every day. There is so much more to the term than I had previously thought and I look forward to walking you through all that I have learned.
The Beginning
After choosing the term voice I began doing general research. This coincided with the Annotated Bibliography project we were assigned, which can be found above, and I looked for articles defining voice and showcasing the many different ways it can be used.
My research started out pretty rhetorically as I was only using sources describing the ways that voice is used in a rhetorical context. This was the type of voice that I was most comfortable researching as I had learned about it in other classes during my time at Florida State University.
I also looked into the ways that a human can use their voice and how our voices have evolved throughout history. This began with research about women's voices throughout history and how it is linked back to the women's suffrage movement and types of feminist rhetoric.
This then inspired me to look into a persons speaking voice, and what choices one can make to ensure their voice is heard. I looked at articles describing how the human voice box has changed over time, then I shifted gears and looked at how people are changing their voice to achieve different goals.
Even though a majority of my research stemmed from this project, I continued to learn more about the term as I began to narrow down my findings.
Challenging My Findings
I took about a week long break before diving headfirst into my next project, The Term Based Visual. The parameters for the project were pretty broad but I knew right away that my visual should be a mind map of all of the aspects that one might consider when they think of voice. This is where I was given the opportunity to play around with my term and pick out what I wanted to focus on.
This project is where I started to feel a strong pull towards the physical voice. I would describe the physical voice as the voice that we use to communicate with people face to face. With the help of tone, inflection, and volume, people can use their voices to push their different agendas.
This is also when I started looking into activism and famous speeches. I realized that the main purpose of voice is to share a message and this can be commonly found in different social movements. A persons voice reflects their opinions and stances, whether it be in politics or every day debates. As long as they are actively choosing to say something, those words become a reflection of what they believe.
Voice isn't only reflected in what a person says once, it is a compilation of everything that they say or write. This is how voice can help a person build their character or identity. It is important to watch what you say or write as you don't want to accidentally associate your voice with something that you don't believe in.
Another major aspect of voice is audience and how they can manipulate a voice. This ties into the term circulation, which refers to how a text can change as it moves through time and space. Once an author writes a piece and sends it out into the world, it belongs to the audience just as much as it belongs to the author. As time moves on, the audience holds the power to change the original meaning of a text, and apply it to different causes or movements. This can dictate how an author writes as they are trying to appeal to certain audiences.
A recognizable voice is also important as audiences are more likely to read or listen to a voice that they are already familiar with. This is often showcased in a writers word choice and a good example of this would be Stephen King. He wrote a few books under a pseudonym but since his voice was so recognizable, people quickly figured out that the books were his.
Practice Makes Perfect
As you can see so far, there is a lot that goes into voice, and it was not an easy term to conquer. Each time I sat down to do one of my projects, I would learn something new that I thought was essential to understanding voice. For the Text In Action Webtext project, I struggled finding a thread that could tie all of the different parts of voice together. I ended up forming my project before figuring out that the past semester each of my pieces have tied back to intent. Above, I already talked about how important intent is when it comes to finding and using your voice. It reflects how others see you and most importantly how you view yourself.
Intent was reflected in my Text In Action Webtext as I provided different examples of the different modalities that you can find voice in. I wanted to showcase the different ways that people use their voices in oder to encourage others to understand the full extent of their voices.
I began by including a few textual examples. I compared two different poems by Shakespeare to show how his voice remained recognizable as he wrote new plays. Next, I wanted to show how a more modern poet may use their voice so I included an excerpt of prose from Edgar Gomez titled, "I Love Being Gay." This piece is a strong example of voice even if it's not being used in the academic tone that students are typically used to viewing.
I then moved onto different speech examples to show how different vocal techniques can help a person emphasize what they want to say. My first example was Obama's 2008 presidency acceptance speech. This is a great example of how a person can use voice in a professional and formal setting. My next example was of a comedy standup routine where the speaker usual casual tones and jokes to build trust and comfortability with his audience.
One thing that I overlooked for most of this project was how similar voice was to other terms such as style. Many overlook a voice that isn't physical and I wanted to highlight how voice can be shown without the use of words. For my last example, I included two different art pieces by Salvador Dali that clearly reflected his voice. Even though his pieces were different, the stylistic choices he made accurately reflected his feelings as he used his voice to make a statement.
This project was by far the most fun to work on as I got to dive into the different modalities that use voice. No matter what type of modality you use, voice is still important and deserves to be heard.
An Honest Conclusion
By the time I had finished all of my major projects, I realized that it's okay to not perfectly understand this term. Voice ended up being extremely complex but I have no regrets with the ways I tackled these projects. I was learning something new every day and ended up being glad that this project wasn't as easy as I originally thought. It really challenged my original views on voice and I know that with this newfound knowledge I will grow as an editor and writer. I have already started implementing my new knowledge in assignments for other classes and I've started to become aware of my voice as a writer. Most importantly I am taking away the importance of my voice. I never really realized the full importance of my voice and this project has helped me gain so much confidence. I now know that my voice holds potential and I can't wait to use it to speak out for things I believe in.