My space

Paper 1

Chelsea Stuvel

 Sarah Allen

 English 319

September 21, 2008

Happy Medium

I have had many English classes in my life but not one of them went over the art of writing.  Most of my teachers would give me a book and tell me to write a paper on one of the main topics.  It was already known how they would want the paper; MLA format, no “you” or “I”, quotes to support, and so on.  When coming into this class I never expected the rules to be much different from my previous classes, but I have come to find that this class has really made me think about how I was taught versus how I would like to write.

When I think about writing I think of it as free expression with pen and paper (or keys to key board, etc.).  Everyone should be able to write and have it be accepted.  I have found that the main difference between being a writer and being an academic is the intended audience.  It doesn’t always matter if everyone understands it, as long as the audience that the writing was meant for understands it.  My reasoning for this is because everyone has different styles of writing.  For example, my diary is meant for me therefore I don’t care if the mechanics are correct or that I have paragraphs, as long as I know what I am saying.  The audience of a piece of writing is what makes the writing formal or personal, which makes audience a very powerful element in writing. 

Both Elbow and Bartholomae repeatedly talk about the audiences of writing.  Bartholomae believes that the main audience of writing is a teacher and the academy, while Elbow believes the audience should be anyone, while the writing should be for yourself.   Elbow wants his students “to have readers actually interested in what was on their mind, what they intended to say, reading for intention.” (p. 75 Being a writer vs. Being an academic).  At the same time he wants his students to be able to say, “I’m not just writing for teachers or readers, I’m writing as much for me.  Sometimes even more for me” (p. 77 Being a writer vs. Being an academic).  Although, I believe it is important to be able to put your voice on a paper, I still believe in structure.  Without structure a piece of writing is just a bunch of words on paper.  If audience is who you are cooking cookies for, then structure is how the cookies turn out, with out good cookies your

audience wont want to eat.

Introducing structure into a paper contradicts Elbow and brings Bartholomae into the picture. Bartholomae talks about teachers and how crucial they are to academic writing.  He states “there is no writing done in the academy that is not academic writing.  To hide the teacher is to hide the traces of power, tradition and authority present at the scene of writing.” (p.63 Writing With Teachers: A Conversation with Peter Elbow).  The teacher represents structure and helps students to write in a manner where the audience is the academy.  I think it is crucial for a teacher to be in a classroom not to assert power, but to manage the classroom, offer guidance, and provide different ways of writing.  Through this, students are introduced to a type of writing that would make things smooth and flow easier.  My only problem with the academic discourse is there is no definite voice.  When I write I try to put “me” all over the paper, but I sometimes find it difficult with the standards that the academy has set.  I don’t like that they expect to “hear” your voice in the paper when you cannot even refer to yourself, because is that not where your voice comes from? 

This is the point where I believe the academic and the writer should come together.  If a writer is only taught how to be a writer and never introduced to academic discourse then that person will never have the opportunity to reach audiences of higher thought.  The reason for this is because the writer will not be able to add structure to his/her writing, and the writing would be a hundred percent personally based.  The problem with a paper being completely personal is that we live in a society that likes to hear the facts.  So, by adding the structure, a few techniques from the academy, and bringing voice into a piece of writing, I believe that a person can create the great piece of writing that can be varied to fit any audience.  As a result of bringing in the voice, the audience can help to establish that the writer is more human and easier to relate to.  If a student strictly uses academic discourse in a paper, it makes the writing hard to “want” to read.  As a result fewer people will read a persons writing if it is found to be “too much”.  What I mean by this is that no one likes to feel dumb, consequently if someone writes in the academic discourse “too much” then only a few will continue reading because it would be too dense for the majority.

 I have always been taught academic discourse and told never to stray from it, but I don’t like the idea of conforming my writing to a form that will inevitability become something so dense that you cannot even sense a voice.  Bartholomae feels that we are keeping tradition alive by teaching academic discourse.  But at what cost?  I feel as if we are losing ourselves to Bartholomae’s so called tradition when we should be looking for other ways of writing.  That doesn’t mean that we have to forget about academic writing, on the contrary I think we should help mold academic writing to make it suite the writer and the audience.  Bartholomae states, “You cannot write or teach or think or even read without imitation, and what you imitate is what another person has done” (p.25 Against the Grain).  Through this statement Bartholomae makes it seem that no matter what, you cannot create anything that is of the individual.  I disagree, I believe that a voice in a paper is what makes it more individual and no one can copy that unless plagiarized.  As writers we can take ideas from others but our opinions are our own.  Through a mixture of academic discourse and being a writer we can achieve individualism in academic papers if given the chance to.