1. Elbow, Peter. Voice in writing again: Embracing contraries, November 2007. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=eng_faculty_pubs.
“Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries” is an academic essay by Peter Elbow. For a majority of the essay, Elbow is speaking on how to teach students to critically read without getting distracted by voice. He gives reasons for when to pay attention to voice in text and how it can make pieces easier to understand. Elbow mentions that voice is mainly a metaphor to help students improve their writing. He then shifts gears and discusses why students should pay too much attention to voice in a text. Elbow argues that if students wish to read critically, then they need to understand that voice will mislead them. If a reader is paying too close of attention to the voice, they can miss the overall message. As an example, he mentions how throughout history women have published their writings anonymously to prevent readers from realizing the voice is female. Elbow closes out his essay by asking that readers adapt with the way they read scholarly texts and that logic and ‘either/or’ thinking methods are our biggest tools when reading these texts.
2. Moxley, Joseph M. “Voice.” Writing Commons, August 26, 2023. https://writingcommons.org/section/rhetoric/rhetorical-stance/voice/.
The article “Writing Commons: Voice” by Joseph M. Moxley provides a deep dive into everything that influences voice and why it is important to every piece of writing. He begins by defining voice as a metaphorical term that has to do with the unique ways an author presents their thoughts and feelings. Moxley lists and elaborates on the different rhetorical and stylistic elements that include voice in their writing. He starts with stance, which is the position a writer takes on a subject and persona, which reflects the role a writer steps into for their audience. He focuses on idiosyncratic expression and explains how authors that have unique voices tend to be more memorable due to their unusual word choice or perspective. These terms tie back to strategic crafting and how authors carefully choose the ways that they speak in order to properly achieve their rhetorical goals. Moxley ties his article to a close by listing the different linguistic choices that help to define a writer’s voice and he touches again on tone and persona, so the readers understand how these differ from voice.
3. Dinsdale, Millie. “What Is Voice in Writing? [Examples Included].” The Book Designer, April 13, 2022. https://www.thebookdesigner.com/voice-in-writing/.
“What Is Voice in Writing” is an advice article by recent English Literature graduate Millie Dinsdale. The main focus of this article is to effectively explain the difference between the three types of voice found in writing. Dinsdale first defines voice as a “mixture of tone, word choice, point of view, syntax, punctuation, and rhythm that make up sentences and paragraphs.” She goes into detail elaborating on the differences between the authors voice, characters voice, and the narrator’s voice. The author’s voice is reflected through word selection, punctuation, and the style choices that the author makes. A character’s voice is conveyed through thoughts and personality and Dinsdale points out that even minor characters have their own voice. The narrators voice can sometimes be the authors or characters voice, but it is mainly the voice from which a story is told. Dinsdale also provides textual examples of the different voices found to help readers gain a better understanding on how to identify the different voices. The article is concluded by the author stating that creating a distinguished voice is just as important as the story when writing.
4. Lanser, Susan Sniader. Fictions of authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice, January 1, 1992.
“Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice” was written in 1992 by Susan Sniader Lanser. Chapter 1 of the essay is titled “Toward a Feminist Poetics of Narrative Voice” and it delves into how voice can have an effect on the societal impact of a piece of literature. It specifically puts focus onto the feminist movement and how the female voice has changed throughout history. Lanser states that “the authority of a given voice or text is produced from a conjunction of social and rhetorical properties.” This relates back to how women throughout history have used their voice in an attempt to speak up and gain power regarding feminist topics. This quote also refers to a women’s voice gaining power overtime as movements progress and evolve. The author puts heavy emphasis on exploring texts that showcase women who claim authority in historical times where they suppressed or hidden from history. At the end of the chapter Lanser points out that she does not mention the writings of women of every race and unintentionally places the texts she mentions in a Eurocentric framework. She concludes her thoughts by stating that feminist criticism needs more studies in order to properly research the feminist voice throughout history.
5. Skov Nielsen, Henrik. “The Impersonal Voice in First-Person Narrative Fiction.” Narrative 12, no. 2 (2004): 133–50. https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2004.0002.
In the journal article “The Impersonal Voice in First-Person Narrative Fiction” Henrik Skov Nielsen is solving the question of who the true voice in a first-person narrative piece of fiction is. He begins the article by looking deeper into the relationship between voice and the narrator by referencing articles by Monika Fludernik and Kate Hamburger. They touch on how the metaphorical significance relates back to voice and also how enunciation has a direct effect on voice within a piece of literature. Nielson looks through different academic essays that showcase a strong sense of voice to try to make sense of the impersonal voice within the narrative. While the narrator is the one speaking in first person, the author is using their own style and tone choices that make their writing unique. In Nielson’s section, “The Creation of the Fictional World” he starts to look deeper into how the narrative communicates on its own. Nielson wraps up his article by concluding that the first person found in literature is the impersonal voice of the narrative working to confront the reader.
6. Kesler, Ted. “Writing with Voice.” The Reading Teacher 66, no. 1 (2012): 25–29. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.01088.
“Writing With Voice” by Ted Kesler is an instructional journal article on how to write while properly utilizing your voice. This article is meant for teachers to give them tips on how to get their students to feel confident using their voice when they write. He establishes his credibility by telling a story of how he taught his daughter to successfully use voice when she was writing in an advice column. Kesler outlines the steps on how to emphasize voice in dialogue and how to achieve them. His main argument is that voice is determined by how you want the audience to perceive you. If you want to connect with the audience, you can switch to first perspective or simply align yourself with ideas that the audience would support. Kesler touches on the implications behind teaching students how to write with voice and how it works to create a better classroom environment. He ends his article by stating that it is his job as a teacher to help students realize the power they hold by using their voices.
7. English, VOA Learning. “Study: Evolutionary Changes in Voice Box May Have Led to Human Speech.” VOA, August 14, 2022. https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/study-evolutionary-changes-in-voice-box-may-have-led-to-human-speech/6698580.html.
This study dives into why humans have the ability of tangible speech and how it differs from non-human primates. Lynn begins by explaining the anatomy of a non-human primates’ vocal system and how it compares to the modern humans. For example, humans are lacking the vocal membrane, which is a small muscular attachment to the vocal cords that allows for louder and higher calls. Humans also lack air sacs; these help primates avoid hyperventilating and can also help them produce a deeper and louder sound. By lacking these tissues, humans possess the ability to create clearer, complex sounds. The vocal structure of a non-human primate makes it much more difficult to control vibrations in the voice box. It is unclear when exactly these changes in vocal structures occurred due to only living species being included in the studies. The soft tissues found in the throat don’t appear in fossils, but it is estimated that the change occurred about 6 to 7 million years ago when the homo sapiens split from chimpanzees. In this case evolutionary simplification helped to create the complex abilities that humans possess with their voices today.
8. Jacquemont, Guillaume. “A Change to the Sound of the Voice Can Change Your Very Self-Identity.” Scientific American, November 1, 2021. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-change-to-the-sound-of-the-voice-can-change-your-very-self-identity/.
In this article, Guillaume Jacquemont shares the relationships that some of his patients share with their voices and what he did to help them. I found this article interesting because of Jacquemont’s take on how a person’s voice affects their identity and how they’re seen by others. He tells the story of his patient who was previously a smoker and has since had a deep, raspy voice. She worked with criminals and had a very authoritative personally but found all of her confidence depleted after having an operation to give her voice a higher pitch. Another patient suffered a vocal cord injury that caused her voice to be weak and timid. After her surgery she was left a more mature voice that her husband and kids found shocking and unsettling. Jacquemont included these examples to showcase how important voice is in relation to identity. He also touches briefly on how having an issue with one’s voice can be caused by an underlying psychological problem that needs to be addressed by a professional in that field.
9. Clark, Melanie. “From Monotone to Moving: The Power of Voice Inflection.” Abstrakt Marketing Group, May 6, 2022. https://www.abstraktmg.com/from-monotone-to-moving-the-power-of-voice-inflection/.
This article by the Abstrakt Marketing Group teaches the power of voice inflection. While the article is centered in business strategies on how to improve your sales pitches, it includes valuable information on how different inflections can affect the way your audience interprets your words. By using upward inflection, you are turning your statements into questions and coming off as uncertain. Downwards inflection is one of the toughest to master and tells the audience that you are confident and can make your voice seem more powerful. When using level inflection there is a lack of pitch within the vowels that can indicate boredom or disinterest. Included in the article is a clip from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” featuring Ben Stein using level inflection. The author also highlights how speed can affect your message by either creating a disinterest in your audience when speeding up or causing the audience to pay closer attention when slowing down. The article concludes with a few tips on how to improve your inflection in order to improve confidence and sale abilities.
10. Taylor Swift Vocal Analysis - Voice Lessons Online Ep. 15. YouTube. YouTube, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNceEWUvLvQ.
This YouTube video by New York Vocal Coaching deep dives into Taylor Swift and all the ways she uses her voice. Taylor gained a following by writing complex songs that set apart her storytelling from other musical artists. She has stayed true to herself while adapting her music to reflect what was happening at specific points in her life. This helps to give Taylor a longevity that other artists lack. The article uses all three of the different phonation types, breathy, pressed, and flow, to show the impressiveness of Swift’s range. She is in control of the types and uses it to enhance her story telling. Swift is also a big user of prosody, which is when everything in a song comes together. One of the vocal coaches provides an example of how Swift’s song “Tolerate It” uses the 5/4-time signature, unusual chord progression, melody, and staccato in order to tie the song together. The video concludes by highlighting that Swift possesses the ability to reinvent herself through new each album with the help of voice.
11. Spring, Melanie, and Deborah Appleman. Voice in the Context of Literacy Studies, March 2011. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41038746.
This article goes into detail on all of the ways that voice can be rhetorical, linguistic, ideological, social, and cultural. I was particularly interested in the social and cultural segment due to it not being highlighted as much in other academic articles. The authors state that voice is a result of the social and cultural mediation of an individual. They give the example of how children reproduce the voice that they are exposed to at home and in school. There are two sources that make up spoken and written words. The first source consists of texts, institutions, and utterances that have given those words meaning in relation to history and culture. The second source is individual writing or speaking where the author adds their own personal style to it, further adding to cultural and historical possibilities. For example, many authors in the 20th century reflected their social viewpoints into their work. The authors end the segment by stating that social mediation raises a critical issue by insisting that voice needs to be ideological and reflect cultural beliefs and values.
12. Gorbman, Claudia. “The Master’s Voice.” Film Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2014): 8–21. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2014.68.2.8.
“The Master’s Voice” is an article by Claudia Gorbman that goes into detail on how voice is the true center of cinema. In film, voice is not just words or text, but are also screams, cries, laughs, or anything else that can be made using the human voice. In cinema, voice is constantly being interacted with other sounds and voices in order to make the film more multidimensional. Some actors have very recognizable voices that allow them to get more roles. For example, the classical period featured many actors with stable and recognizable voices. This continued into the post classical era but actors like De Niro and Brando extended their vocal ranges. Gorbman describes actress Meryl Streep as a vocal chameleon in relation to how well she has managed to change her voice and accents in different roles. This is similar to how many actors build a voice specifically for their character. The article then shifts to actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and how his vocal choices go hand in hand with the style of film he acts in. Towards the end, Gorbman highlights how voice shapes the movie experience and how the digital age is only increasing the different variations of voice we will find in film.
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