The Dichotomous Dynamic Mix of Academic and Personal Voice—Let’s Rock. TSIS 115-22

In their template-filled instructional book They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing authors Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein maintain that much of academic writing today consists of a careful combination of both academic and personal voice. Though they hold to the importance of Standard English they also reveal, “relaxed, colloquial language can often enliven academic writing and even enhance its rigor and precision […] help[ing] you to connect with readers in a personal as well as an intellectual way” (116). In other words, the grip of Standard English on academic writing is loosed and the more relaxed lingo of a writer’s own voice is mixed in, meshing to create a new kind of hybrid voice in writing. But Graff and Birkenstein signify that this combination of voice must be done in a careful and deliberate manner. They offer, “a simple recipe for blending the specialized and the everyday: first make your point in the language of a professional field, and then make it again in everyday language” (119). So it helps to write academically and then follow it with a less-standard translation of what you tried to say with big words. Overall, the key to mixing styles is to have a strong awareness of audience and purpose when writing. Taking into consideration who will be reading and for what reason it is being written, a writer should take discretion in deciding how much (if any at all) of their own voice will be interwoven throughout the text. When done appropriately, writing can be as scholarly as past and even more far-reaching to present and future readers.

What this means for me is a big, “Whew!” (my apologies for use of exclamation). Right when I’m thinking my lack of “scholarly vocabulary” is going to be the downfall of my academic career, Graff and Birkenstein tell me that everything is going to be a-okay. In fact, if I can manage to find a decent compromise between my personal voice and the short list of “big” words I do know, my writing can actually become more effective. Still, as much as I want to jump for joy, there is a bitter reality that comes with the innovations of voice meshing: That Standard English is still the “standard” and everything else is categorized into the sub-realms of “personal voice.” To be honest, the combination of academic and personal voice does not come as smooth in all situations. For instance, how appropriate is it for a first-year resident student to mix the broken English spoken on a regular basis with the academic voice of writing? I’d assume it to be unacceptable. Even after 36 years in the US, my mom still answers the door and phone with an unassuming, “What’s a matter you?”—which somewhere along the way came to mean, “Hello, what can I do for you?” Imagine if she started mixing her personal voice in with the standard of academia. However, with a glimmer of hope, Graff and Birkenstein do mention that the current changes in writing to include more personal voice is a positive aspect of the evolution of writing into a discipline ranging farther across previously drawn lines—both cultural and social.