ee0234from voice to text

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From Voice to Text:ReconsideringWriting and Readingin the English Classroom

Pam Gilbert

The metaphor that dominates much of the current talk about classroomwriting and reading particularly the discourses that advise us ofacceptable ways to learn to write is the metaphor that links "writing"with "voice." So apparently natural is the use of this metaphor that ithas now come to control the way we frame our understanding of thenature of school writing and reading (i.e. Moffett, 1981).Both in textbooks written for students, and in coursebooks writtenfor teachers, the metaphor of voice, and the concepts that support it,have become our means of "knowing" about classroom writing prac-tices. Elbow, for instance, in Writing Without Teachers,advises students:

Inyournaturalwayof producingwordsthere s a sound,a texture,a rhythm a voice which is the main source of power in yourwriting. I don't know how it works, but this voice is the forcethat will make a reader isten to you, the energythat derives themeaning through his [sic] thick skull. (Elbow, 1973, p. 6; myemphasis)In a similar vein, Graves argues that "readers can't read voicelesswriting when no one is there any more than they can have dialoguewith a mannequin" (1983, p. 228). Graves suggests that voice is the"driving force" of the writing process, "the imprint of ourselves onour writing," "the person in the piece."

Voice... is that part of the self that pushes the writingahead,the dynamo in the process.Take the voice away and the writingcollapses of its own weight. There is no writing, just wordsfollowingwords The voice shows how I choose information,organizeit, select the words,all in relation to what I want to sayand how I want to say it. The readersays, "someone is here. Iknow that person. I've been there,too." (p. 227)This insistence upon the metaphor of voice raises a number of

important questions. Why has it come to be so natural to link the195

Copyright 1991 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.


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Gilbert From Voice to Text 197writing and reading becomes both intelligible and plausible. Becausespeaker and listener are both present when language is spoken, speechbecomes privileged as the form of language closest to human presence,closest to the meaning a human presence intended, closest to humantruth. Writing, on the other hand, separated from its human subject,can but imitate and compensate for the missing qualities of the humanvoice/speaker/subject, and remain as a lifeless, alienated form ofexpression. Consequently it draws its status from what it is not, ratherthan from what it is, and not surprisingly,this has resulted in metaphorsfor writing that are drawn from speech and speaking. Discourses aboutwriting have thus become pro-speech discourses (and therefore pro-person, pro-presence, pro-life), rather than pro-writingdiscourses, whichseem, by comparison, to be anti-person, anti-presence, anti-life.This speech/writing opposition, however, is both misleading andillusory. Privileging spoken discourse as being more honest, truthful,real, sincere, and personal cannot be upheld in terms of the structureof language, for both speech and writing work from the same systemof differentiation and deferment (see Derrida, 1978). While the con-ventional features of spoken and written genres vary, drawing as theydo upon different sets of paralinguistic features required to "read"them, in fact speech and writing are but different modes or channelsof the same system and so both could be included with the generalrubric of language. Spoken discourse carries within it the same tracesof absence and deferral of meaning as does written discourse. They arepart of the same language system.Texts do not have greater purchase on concepts of reality, truth,immediacy, spontaneity, or human identity merely because they arespoken, or because they sound as if they could be spoken. They havegreater purchase on such qualities because readers have come toassociate certain textual conventions with authenticity and personalism.In other words, the illusion of reality, truth, immediacy, spontaneity,or human identity can be textually produced. And they can be textuallyproduced in any channel of discourse- ionic, kinetic, oral, or printed.Not surprisingly, texts that are produced according to these conven-tions- texts that seem to have a writer (a human voice or presence)behind them- are more valued in contemporary Western culture thanare texts that seem dis-embodied and detached. A "voice" seems toact as a guarantee of commitment, authenticity, truthfulness; "voiceless"texts are, therefore, regarded as lacking commitment, authenticity,truthfulness.


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198 EnglishEducation December1991Classroom Practice: Reading and Writing "Voice"

In popularwritingpedagogy, he preferred orm of writingis clearlycommitted, authentic and truthful,presumablybecause it is seen toprovideconfirmationof a writer'sgenuine emotional and intellectualrelationshipto an experience,a text, or a school task. For instance,considerthese teacherstatementsabout studentresponses o literature:Wefindit impossibleo believe that Michellewas not deeplymovedby Heaney's oem: hewayshe construes erexperienceandtheformshechoosesareeloquentestimony. .The writer s obviously otally nvolvedhere .. he is genuinelythinkingabout the scene, not merelyechoingsomeoneelse'sopinion, quotedn Gilbert,1987,p. 241)

Notice the slippage rom writer o text in theseexamples.The teacherreads the writingfor indicationsof authenticemotional involvementin an experience; he student texts seem to be a transparentmediumthroughwhich the teacher reader) eaches o ascertain utthe intentionsof the person (the writer)on the other side.While it is easy to understand hat teacherswould like to believethat theirstudentsare"deeplymoved"by poetryand"totally nvolved"in classroomwork, it is perhapsperilous,both for teachers,and forstudents,to assume that readingsof student texts can provide anyonewith that information.Yet it is also relativelyeasy to understandhowteacherscan make suchassumptions romreading.Reading or"voice,"readingfor "the person," s a readingpracticeknown well to mostEnglishteachersbecause it is verylike the readingpracticewe have alllearned as literaturestudents. Discoveringan author's intentions is adominant focus of interest n muchliterary tudyandliterarydiscourseis frequently valuated n terms of the qualityof the author'sperceptionof the human condition (Belsey,1980).Even much of the more recentreader-responseesthetics inds t hard o escape hetyrannyof authorial"voice"(Gilbert, 1987).Much of the personal, maginative,reflective,and responsivewritingin the Englishclassroom sometimes called the literatureof the class-room is easily recognizableto teachers, and easily read by them,because t has manyof the features ypicallyexpectedof literature.Thereadingof literature s a form of reading Englishteachersknow well,and many teachershave, as Culler(1975) would suggest,considerable"literary ompetence."Englishteachershave learnedthat the personalcan be read as "universal,"he concrete detail as "abstract ymbol,"


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Gilbert From Voice to Text 199the particular selection of incident as "significant": in short, they knowthe conventions of literature.

But what is sometimes lost sight of in classrooms is that thesestrategies for constructing and reading texts are in fact conventionsand as such have to be "learned."These particular textual conventionsare culturally and historically quite specific, as studies of basal readingschemes (Luke, 1988; Baker & Freebody, 1989)), textbooks (Gilbert,R., 1984), fairy tales (Zipes, 1983), or feminist aesthetics (Belsey &Moore, 1989) have demonstrated so effectively. Learning culturallypreferred ways of reading and of writing is part of what we havetraditionally emphasized in school, and yet, ironically, the social spec-ificity and potential arbitrariness of such practices are more oftenrecognised by students than by teachers.In interviews I completed with twelfth grade writing students in anAustralian high school (Gilbert, 1989a), several of the students wereable to describe various "reading practices" their teacher seemed toprefer:

I was pleased when she said she enjoyed readingit and that Iunderstoodpersonalvoice, because that was what I was tryingtoachieve. I was tryingto show that I understood it. I was happythat she recognised t. (p. 130)I tried reallyhardto make it more personalizedand I riggedthewhole thingto make it look reallypersonal,whereasall the otherones ... I hadn't and I had been given reallylow marks and shegave me a really good mark for it and a good comment, (p. 134)Before I do an essay for English,not really any other subject,Ithink what the teacherwould like and the way they dress coniesinto it even. The way they'd like to see it written. Then I haveto go and rewritewhat I thoughtbefore into what they'd like tosee. (p. 158)Of course not all students had this cultural knowledge; many werestill operating invisibly within the conventional reading paradigm, as,

frequently, was their teacher. Rather than focussing on the construct-edness of texts and of readings, the teacher, and many of the students,were still trying to locate the person in and behind the text. For instance,"Helen," one of the students in the study referred to above, found itreally difficult to work out what her teacher meant by "personal voice"and how she might write in the way her teacher seemed to want. Herfirst grading for the year had been a "C" (in an A-E spread) for areadingjournal that she had completed, and she was very disappointedwith the result. She had transferred in to this school at the beginning


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200 English Education December 1991of the school year, and had been used to much higher results in herprevious school.The teacher's main criticism of "Helen's" journal was that it didnot quite get the personal voice effect properly:

Your tone (personalvoice) improves in the last section of yourjournal probablybecauseyourreactionsarestrongerand you'remoresympathetic o thecharacters. tilla little too muchemphasison plot but I realizethat this is the strongpointof this particularnovel [sic], (in Gilbert, 1986, p. 341)"Helen's" journal of Alive by Piers Paul Read is five pages long,with each page neatly written and virtually free of mechanical errors.Here is the first page of her journal, which the teacher did not thinkhad sufficient "personal voice":The frontcover of the book pronouncesthe fact that the book isa world best seller. This adds a bit of encouragement. t shows aplane wreckage n amongst some snow-coveredmountains. It isquite an artisticcover, but gives little indication to me of whatthe book is about. The blurb, however,makes me want to readthe book. It tells of how a plane crash occurs and the survivorsare forced to eat the flesh of their friends in order to survive.They have broken the greatest taboo of mankind. I think thebook will tell the story of how they are forced to eat the humanflesh, how desperatethey must have been and the suffering heymust go throughto actuallydo it. There was a quote in the frontof the book which I thoughtwas reallytouching.It read,"Greaterlove hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for hisfriends."John 15:13.

This paragraph can be easily compared with the last section of"Helen's" journal, the part the teacher thought had "improved" tone("personal voice").Finished! What a great book! I really did enjoy it, probablybecause it was a true story. I know that sounds awful to sayconsideringwhat the survivorshad to do but it reallymakesyoustop and think. I don't know whether I would have had thecourage.I'm glad no-one held it againstthem. I know that noneof the men that survivedwould never have a free consciencebutI don't think they should be ashamed of what they did. It wasquitea normalreactionwhen faced withdeathbecause hegreatestgoal of mankind is to survive and that's exactly what they didand they should be proudof their courage.This last paragraph is clearly different in style from "Helen's" firstparagraph. The most obvious differences include the exclamatory


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Gilbert From Voice to Text 201punctuation markers, the variation in sentence mode ("Finished! Whata great book!"), the use of expressive markers ("great," "really" [twice],"awful,""glad,""never") and the excessive use of first person pronouns(seven "I's")predominantly in positions of primacy as sentence subjects.In addition to the first person sentences, this last paragraph also usesverbs that construct the writer as a thinking, perceiving individual("know" is used three times and "think" twice in one short paragraph)who claims emotional and personal empathy with the constructedcharacters in the book. She says she "enjoyed" the book, and that sherelated on a personal, human level to the survivors and their actions-and to her teacher reader ("I know that sounds awful ... it really makesyou stop and think").This common classroom practice of "reading through character" isin itself a clearly constructed and learned reading practice, but onethat has particular prominence and popularity in English pedagogy(Freebody, Luke & Gilbert, in press; Mellor & Patterson, 1991). Butapart from this familiar cultural ("literary") reading practice, it is alsopossible to recognize the linguistic features that can produce a "person"behind the words in "Helen's" concluding paragraph. In other words,it is not difficult to see how "personal voice" can be read from thespecific textual features it contains.

Reading through character is not a reading practice that clashes withreading through voice because both have personalist and humanisticorientations. However, not all reading practices sit so comfortably with"personal voice" or the search for the person behind the text. Thetension that can exist between a learned cultural practice and personalwriting was clearly demonstrated in the same study when student wereset a lyric poetry writing task. The teacher in the study had particulardifficulties with this task, and in many ways the construction of "thepoem" brings together a number of very different and problematicissues associated with "voice" and "text."

Somehowyou feel they are much more personally nvolved withthe poetry they write and your criticism of them is somehowmore personalwhen it's about their poetrythan when it's abouttheir short stories,especiallywhen you feel that they're tryingtoexpressemotions and have failed and thenyou'recriticizing hemfor failingand yet the fact thatthey tried somehow deservesmorecreditthan writinga short story.(Gilbert, 1989a,p. 154-5).Unquestionably, as the teacher recognized, poetry is a form of literarydiscourse that has become closely associated with the human subject.Poetry is potentially a very personalized and emotionally intense generic


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202 English Education December 1991form, yet, at the same time- as the teacher also recognizes- poeticdiscourse usually operates at a complex level of intellectual abstraction,syntactic fracture, and elliptical nuance. Yet in the classroom, howeasy is it for a teacher to read broken syntax and elliptical fragmentsas evidence of complex intellectual abstraction?

. . . with Paul, I made a comment there, have you deliberatelyleft out punctuation?It wasn't clear whether it was a deliberatething in a poem or he hadn'tjust put it in because he neverputsit in... (p. 152)The resurrection of the intentions of the person behind the text is hereseen to be crucial in deciding on the status to be awarded the text:poem or poor prose? In short, readings of the literature of the classroomare not as simple as readings of "public" literature.Fascinatingabout this. It's the way I read it. When I first readit terrible punctuation, spelling etc. I first read it and I wasreally put off. This is hopeless. I don't know why he bothered;he's got the wrong tone Then I was startingto go throughthem again and I said to someone, "Listen to this." And I hadto read it aloud to them. When I read it aloud I suddenly itreallydid have those elementsof humor and surprisebut becauseI was so put off with the lackof punctuationwhen I firststarted,I hadn'tpickedthem up ... (p. 151)

Poetry cannot often be simply and easily written, so why should itbe simply and easily read? Readers need access to reading practiceswhich show how to find coherence and intelligibility in the brokensyntax and elliptical fragments of the poem, and writers need accessto the conventions of poetic syntax and elliptical fragmentation. Becausepoetry reading is not as culturally familiar as is the reading of narrative,the conventions are not as well known. Yet poetry is one of the mostcrafted of generic constructions, and poetry reading one of the mostdifficult practices to teach to undergraduates. It is not surprising thatthe reading and writing of poetry in the school classroom shouldprovide an example of how difficult it is to deal with the constructednature of texts, if the predominant reading and writing frames aredrawn from personalism and "voice," rather than language practicesand "text."

Poetry reading and writing, however, is but one example of thedilemma teachers face if they focus on "voice" rather than "text."Whereas the voice metaphor may well be closely aligned to the literarysearch for authorial presence, and to the privileging of the personalthat results, it has also slipped into general usage within many peda-


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Gilbert From Voice to Text 203gogical discourses as an expectation of what "writing" should containand accomplish. For instance, position papers on writing often drawupon metaphors of human presence as they describe how teachersmight best recognize "authentic writing."

Real authorship,or authenticwriting . . involves the fullest en-gagementof the writer n the productionof meaningful ext underthe pressure of her conscious and unconscious inten-tion. . . . Conceived in this manner, writing involves the mostactive and direct interplay between thought and language, atransactionwhich is highlypersonalizedand specificto the indi-vidual writer. Such writing clearly and firmly announces thepresenceof the writer n the world.It is a significantact of originaland responsible meaning-making,n the best sense. (Cook et al,1980, p. 5)Similarly it is voice metaphors which are often used as the focus ofthe writing experience or as the motivation for writing and revising.

... the force of revision, the energyfor revision, is rooted in thechild's voice, the urge to express. Every teacher has heard thewords,"Do I have it do it over?Whydo I have to write?"Thesechildrenare saying:"I don't have a voice. I don't see the sensein what I am doing."(Graves, 1983, p. 160)Recent work by Freebody (1990) also shows how entrenched suchmetaphors are in the reading of school writing. His analysis of HSC

(Higher School Certificate) Examination Committees in New SouthWales, who were responsible for evaluating the performances of can-didates sitting for the English papers, concludes that:One of the balancingacts for successfulperformance n Englishat the HSC level is the demonstrationof a personally elt,somehowgenuine and authentic response to the set texts or the unseenpieces, without appearing to be idiosyncratic or "subjec-tive" . . . what is sought in the students'scripts is discourse thatis read as evidence of a genuine, authentic, personal re-sponse. . .(pp. 12-13).

Discourse, Genre, Text:Writing and Reading in the English Classroom

Given the predominantdiscourseswhich have traditionally nformedEnglishteaching,it is not surprising hat many teachers(and teacherexaminers) hink it importantto find evidence of a student'spersonalinvolvementin the writingexperience to hear the student'spersonalvoice. At a time when standardized esting and national curriculum


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204 English Education December 1991documents either threaten or prevail, this concern for voice is in manyways reassuring, for it indicates that English teachers are still in theforefront when it comes to locating teaching and learning withinframeworks of egalitarianism and child-centeredness: that English teach-ers care about the person behind the text.But while we currently live with the potential dangers of standardizedtesting and curriculum, we also live with the real dangers of social andcritical illiteracy. These are not times for us to dwell only in the headyglow of personalism and child-centeredness. Today we need sophisti-cated textual understandings and competencies, and the dominantpersonalist and individualistic language pedagogues of the sixties andseventies are beginning to strain credibility. Reconceptualizations ofpsychology (Henriques et al 1984), ofsociolinguistics(Fairclough, 1989),of discourse theory (Kress, 1985) and of literature (Belsey, 1989;Eagleton, 1983), have shifted the focus away from the individual toward"the subject"- toward various theories of textuality and subjectivity(Weedon, 1987). As a result, one clear way forward in the nineties isfor us to frame language events in the classroom according to theoriesrooted in concepts of language as social practice, rather than in conceptsof language as personal expression. A shift of this nature means thatteachers and students can then focus on the way that the productionand reception of texts, which are produced within specific situationalsites such as the classroom, are integrally related to various literacypractices that operate at broader institutional and social levels. In otherwords, texts that are produced within the classroom site need to beread from within the discursive network that such a site represents.And understanding such local discourses will naturally involve consid-ering the various power relationships that are brought into play.

For instance, to return to the example of poetry writing, when astudent constructs a poem in an English classroom, the text that resultswill seldom be read only in terms of the student's understanding ofpoetic discourse (however that has been introduced into the classroomsite). It will also be read in terms of other discourses that are drawninto the school site. The text that a student attempts to construct,within this discursive network, draws obviously from an identifiablegeneric form- say the lyric poem- but the site (the classroom) meansthat the production of that genre will vary in important ways. In theclassroom, the reading of literary genres their recognition, framing,and interpretation- must vary in significant ways from orthodox literarysites, and the teacher's comments quoted earlier indicate some waysin which this happens. Concepts of authorial superiority ("authority")


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Gilbert From Voice o Text 205and of intellectualand emotional insight("poetic vision"),are clearlydifficult o attribute o studenttexts,when the teacher'sreadingpracticeis determinedby the traditionalperspectives rom learning, languagecompetence,adolescentdevelopment,pedagogicalpractice,and assess-ment. Ratherobviously,a studentpoem could be placedin a differentsite(saya recognizedpoetrymagazine),afforded he usualpresentationalfeaturessuch a site guarantees,and then be "read"differently.Whilemost genresrely on particularreadingpracticesfor their production,readingpracticesare, in turn,dependentupon other situational actorsfor their realization.In particular he usual roles and relationships hat are convention-alized within a lyric poem, for instance,become difficultto constructand difficultto interpretat the classroomsite. The lyric poem, as isthe case with all literature,genericallyconstructsa readingpositionwhich defersto the writerand the significanceof the literaryevent. Itis a convention of literarydiscourse to have speaking positions ofauthoritylike this, but such a convention is clearlyat odds with thespeakingpositionsof authority n a classroomsite. The teacheris thevoice of authority n the classroomand, muchas we attemptto changethis, the discursivesite of the school and the classroomcripplesourefforts.At bestwe can reducea teacher'sauthority:we can neverescapeit completely.Indeed,educatorssuch as Elbow haveacknowledgedhisdilemmafor sometimewhentheywriteof thevalue of the"teacherless"writingclassroom(1973).There are few discoursesfrom which studentscan speakauthorita-tively in the classroom, and the discourse of "the person" is noexception. Even if the person/theindividual/theself could be "knownauthoritatively" y the student(Henriqueset al, 1984),waysof writing,talking, or constructingsuch knowing are still limited by availablediscoursesandgenres Gilbert,1989b;Gilbert&Taylor,1991).Personalwritingcan be recognizedwhen a writingposition is taken up fromwithin discourseswhich conventionalizesuch a relationshipbetweenwriterand readerand literarydiscourse s clearlyone of the bestknownof these discourses. As a result, narrative and poetic genres thecommon genres of literarydiscourse have come to be regardedasnatural ormsof self expressionand of personalvoice. The constructednature of both the genres and their discursiveroots, however,oftenremainsunnoticedor it is simply bypassed n the slippagefrom voice,to person,to authenticity.The interactionbetween student-textand teacher-readerhus takesplace within a particular and extremelycomplex but mostly invisi-


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206 EnglishEducation December1991ble discursive network. In the school, student writers attempt toconstruct recognizablesocial language forms such as letters, newsreports,bookreviews, hortstories,advertisements, rguments, rsportscommentaries,but without any of the conventionalsocial conditionswhich make the production(boththe constructionand interpretation)of such texts possible.Few real readersand few real purposesfinallyexist in the high school English classroom. The subtle but crucialnuances of "sites"can only be imaginedor simulated:all is, as Brittoncogentlyput it, a sort of "dummyrun" for the realthing.In partialrecognitionof this potentiallyunproductivesite for lan-guage practice, teachers have often been advised to provide "real"audiencesand "real" asks for students(to specifywhat audienceandwhat purpose the text is to serve), and to aim for writing that ispersonal,honest,andtruthful,and reflects he student'spersonalvoice."Voice" hus becomessynonymouswith "real":f a student'svoicecanbe "heard" n a text ("read" n a text), then the text becomes "real."Its purpose will be clear. The un-real is seen to be writing that isvoiceless has no conviction,no personalism,no authenticity.Gone ishuman subject/speaker/voice.

Moving from Voice to Text: The Possibilities for PracticeThe concept of voice as the powerthat makes a text intelligibleandreadable is both an unhelpful and misleading explanation of howmeaning is produced in discourse. Further,it is a disempoweringconcept for learners and teachers.What, for example, do we do forthe studentwho has no "voice"?How do we facilitatethe acquisitionof "voice"?And if "voice" s so important n writing, s it good enoughto say,"I don't know how it works"(Elbow,1973, p. 6)?Voice metaphorsseem to suggestthat finding a personalvoice islike "findingyourself": indingconfidence,self-esteem,authority.Theymask the way in which texts that seem to have a voice have beenconstructed,and they mask our reasons as teachers for wanting to"hear"voice when we make meaningfrom student texts. Such meta-phors provide no linguisticor social knowledgeto help us clarifytheway in which student texts function in discourse. Howeverif writingand readingareconceptualizedas social activities,then the conditionsof production and the conditions of interpretationof texts can bedescribed as social and cultural practices:as observable, knowable,possible.Writing/speakingthe productionof texts)and reading/listen-ing (the interpretationof texts) can then be seen as integrallyrelated


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Gilbert From Voice to Text 207to a discursive site. This will mean that the generic forms convention-alized through such a site, including the specific subject matter, can beconsidered directly. Further, and perhaps most importantly for myargument here, how particular reading positions are constructed intexts- how roles and relationships are determined by discourse- nowbecomes a primary concern for the English teacher.For instance, if "voice" seems to be something that readers canrecognize ("hear"), it is clearly the result of reading (framing) a text ina particular way, or of recognizing certain conventional textual featuresassociated with voice. In other words once the text is placed within aparticular reading practice, the concept of "personal voice" can be usedto describe the construction of a particular reading position in thattext: a reading position that allows*a teacher-reader, in a school-site,to recognize an apprentice-writer's attempts to construct a "plausible"text. It could be argued that the desire to want to see evidence of apersonal voice in a student text can be understood through a closerconsideration of teachers' positions within this particular discursivesite. In a site that is patently un-real and un-truthful, the personalvoice metaphor seems to offer something that appears to be real andtruthful- evidence of the human subject. Consequently English teach-ers, caught within a number of not entirely compatible or empoweringdiscourses, may find the potential promise of such personalist languagediscourses compelling and attractive.Still, the danger of this limiting reading position is that it movesour attention away from concepts of critical literacy.Language educationshould be conceived of more broadly than this metaphor will allow ifthe complexities of language as a social semiotic system are to beaddressed in the classroom. The complex discursive positioning of theEnglish teacher of course holds many contradictions and dilemmas.The question that still needs addressing, however, is what languageknowledge can be taught to students, and how might this knowledgebest be taught. Such an issue demands careful framing within theoriesabout discourse. For instance while a dominant current debate inEnglish education is whether an understanding of generic forms mightbe powerful knowledge to share with students (Reid, 1986), suchconcerns need to be placed within a broader framework. An under-standing of the generic conventions of a society at a given time isundeniably important social knowledge, but such knowledge is usefulonly if it is social knowledge. This means it must account for the rangeof conventions that texts display in social practice, it must account forthe way generic forms are used to regulate and control social meaning,


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205 EnglishEducation December1991and, finally, t must acknowledge he role of reading n how texts aregenericallydesignated Cohan& Shires, 1988).As has been arguedearlier,generic forms vary in significantwaysdependent upon their specific locations and the discoursesto whichthey are linked. A business letter is not everywhereand always thesame, nor is a conversation,a sports commentary,a film review,or aquiz program.The social institutionswithinwhich such genresoccur,the discoursesupon which they have drawn,the writingand readingpositions they establishand rely upon, result in the productionof aparticular ext which is recognizablegenerically,but which reliesuponbroader ocialunderstandingso be unpacked,reworked, nd repeated.By exploring he socialdynamicsof language n use, Englisheducationcan offerstudentsan understanding f discourse heory,which is crucialto both the makingand remakingof texts. In otherwords,the way inwhich languageworksmightbecome a majorclassroomfocus.The analysisof texts which occur in a rangeof differentsites, butwhich exhibit similar generic features, provides an ideal classroomactivityfor displaying he dynamicnatureof languageand for empha-sizing the importanceof site or social location (Mellor, 1987). Someof the traditionalwrittengenresof the Englishclassroom the poem,the story,the book review,the news item, the essay,the diary andmany of the traditionalspoken genres the debate,the interview, hepersuasive speech, the role play, the sales pitch display dramaticvariationsof textual convention dependingupon wherethey are situ-ated, and the reason for such variation can become a key researchfocus for the Englishclassroom. Insteadof just askinghow languageworks,discoursetheorycan push questionslike whyand where.The way in which readingpositions are constructed and recog-nised within texts becomesintegrallyrelated o such questions.Howdoes a writerproducea plausibleand coherenttext, and why are sometexts more plausible,more coherent, more seemingly"natural" hanothers? How importantfor the recognitionof plausibility, oherence,and "naturalness"s the reading ramethatthe readeradoptsto receivethe text, and how much freedomdo readershave to decide how theywillreadparticularexts?Howarewritingandreadingpositions earned,and what space exists within such positions for resistance,rewriting,or remaking?Analysisof a varietyof readingpositions again throughworkingwith generically imilartexts, but sited in differentcontextsdemonstrates ways in which readers are coerced and seduced byfamiliarityand repetition,and waysin whichreadingpositionsline upin variousreadingformations o furtherentrenchthe commonsensical


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Gilbert From Voice o Text 209nature of reading. Bronwyn Mellor's Reading Stories and ReadingHamlet, are good examplesof books that provide workshopactivitiesfor the secondaryschool on how readingpositionsareconstructedandhow students might better recognizedifferentreadingpractices.Theways in which girls are particularlyaffectedby invisiblereadingfor-mations, and the possibilitiesthat exist for resistanceand re-reading,are discussedby myselfand SandraTaylor n Fashioning he Feminine:Girls,PopularCultureand Schooling.But perhapsthe initial practiceto analyze s the wayin which teachers ramea text to look forevidenceof personalvoice. What student texts can be readin this wayand whattextual featureskey Englishteachersto such a reading?The shift from voice to text in the Englishclassroom fromspeechmetaphors o discourseanalysis restsfirmlyon threebroadtheoreticalassumptions:1 writing s not tied to a voice, a presence,or an ultimatemeaning;2) discursivepower networksare constructedand serve toorganizeand systematizesocial and culturalpractice;and 3) readingis predominantly socialactivity hatinvolves earninga set of arbitraryculturalpracticeswhich privilegecertainmeanings.Such a shift, withits emphasison textualityrather han voice, would not only demystifymany of the confusingand misleadingpracticesthat predominate nlanguageclassrooms,but it would make the craftof writing,and thepracticeof reading,more accessibleto students(and teachers).In thisway social and critical literacy how languageworks presentlyandhow language might be made to work differently n the futurebecomes the properfocus of languageclassrooms.By denaturalizingour own classroomand readingpractices,we not only beginthe processof making classroom languagepracticesmore explicit, but we alsobegin the process of making explicit how all languagepracticesaresocial practices.And this, I would argue, representsa powerfulshiftforward n English pedagogy.School of EducationJames Cook Universityof NorthQueenslandTownsville,Queensland,Australia4811

Works CitedBaker,C. & Freebody,P.(1989). Children'sirst schoolbooks. Oxford:Blackwell.Belsey,C. (1980). Criticalpractice.London: Methuen.


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