Kate87

Voice (paper2- final draft)

Voice and Discourse REVISE
When I was asked to define voice, I thought it was a really stupid question. To me, the concept voice has always been so obvious; voice is the way I write, the way I express myself through word choice and sentence structure. I could not even wrap my head around the idea that voice would be a matter of content or opinion, because through out my entire academic career, I have written papers and assignments that have required me to go against all of my personal opinions, and still impose my own voice.
My voice can be formatted to fit different discourses, however in the end it is still unique to me.  When writing a paper on mass genocide, I would express my voice in a somber compassionate way, not one that includes fowl humor and sarcasm. Just the same, when I write responses on political campaigns I know that I can inflict as much sarcasm and criticisms as I feel necessary, because, let’s be honest, most politicians are just looking to be made fun of.
The context of which your writing appears is equally as important as to which aspects of your voice you inflict into your writing, based on the discourse community. For example, if a person wishes to reach a wide audience they should not only use a voice that is easily understood by the masses but also make their text easily obtained. Frankfurt attempts, somewhat unsuccessfully, to do exactly this in his text On Truth. Frankfurt created a text that was small, which would make the average reader believe it is an easy read; and had it distributed in bookstores across the nation, making it easily obtained. However, as stated before Frankfurt was not entirely successful because his book was placed in the Philosophy section of book stores, not a place where the average reader wanders into; and it is not an easy a read as its size would convey it to be, mainly because it would require the reader to have extreme background information on the subject matter.
With this being said, your voice is always your own and it is impossible to get rid of it. For a person to use voice effectively they must pay great attention to the discourse communities for which they are trying to reach, as well as appeal to their audience through accessibility of their work. To show how voice can affect the reader, I will do an imitation of Frankfurt, where I will use his ideas on global communications of truth and inflict my own voice, making the text easier to understand, and more accessible to everyday readers.
No society can allow itself to ignore the truth.  A society must do more that just recognize that truth and lies exist, which is important but not the only step.  This society must also encourage leaders to explore greater truths. It must encourage all those capable of finding truth to spread it, and to put a stop to the acceptance of bullshit. The only way for society to become civil is for people to acknowledge that facts are facts for a reason and that by ignoring them for personal reasons is just selfish and holds back the entire society.  If we have every civilization believing only their societies truths there is no way that every society will be able to get along. The only way for this unification will for each civilization to acknowledge a universal set of facts and truths. A set of truths that is widespread and vast.
After completing this exercise, I found it was harder than I expected to use only my voice, and not include Frankfurt’s voice. I believe this is because I didn’t feel strongly enough about the topic to place my voice inside of Frankfurt’s message. It was also hard because I know that Frankfurt used his voice in a very specific way to convey a very specific message, and I fear that I may have completely mangled said message. I chose to use smaller and often more comprehensible words where Frankfurt specifically used phrases uncommon to most like “attitude that is inherently antithetical to a decent and orderly social life” (33.)
Frankfurt’s word choice, or voice, allowed him to reach an academic audience that already has a knowledge base that informs them that, a society based on opposing viewpoints will only lead to the diminishing of social order.  This particular voice works against Frankfurt’s plan to reach wider audiences, had he really wanted to reach the “average Joe” he would have said something more like “disagreeing ideals based off false truths leads to the end of social order.”  By not using an “average Joe” voice, Frankfurt does gain credibility within his academic community, risking the chance of losing potential readers.
I felt like I did not do justice to Frankfurt in my imitation because I found my self leaving out ideas or shifting them even slightly to make the piece my own. Frankfurt says, “ A society that is recklessly and persistently remiss in any of these ways is bound to decline or at least to render itself culturally inert;” which I ignored because I was not sure how to write in any better way than what Frankfurt already had.
Another struggle I encountered with this exercise has made me believe that voice cannot be simply style. My style is not as vividly expressed when I am discussing something I do not have strong feelings for. Considering this, if you start me on a topic that sparks an interest in me, my writing will become extremely passionate and I tend to ramble and use run on sentences with commas all over the place (much like this.)  Still I cannot believe that style is not a part of voice. There has to be some importance on the way a person uses syntax and sentence structure, and the way a person puts words to use in a sentence.
When considering voice in writing there is more to look at than simply what I am saying and how I am saying it. If I cannot find an audience that my text applies to it does not even matter how I say whatever I am trying to say. This is why I think that if Frankfurt were to really want to reach a broad audience he should have written his work in a newspaper column, say in the New York Times, in plain English telling people exactly what he thinks they should be doing.  It is unreasonable to assume that a writer will always be able to reach every reader they intend to, however if they use their voice responsibly they will be able to create a clear message that is obtainable.