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From Voice to Text: Reconsidering Writing and Reading in the English Classroom

Pam Gilbert The metaphor that dominates much of the current talk about classroom writing and reading- particularly the discourses that advise us of acceptable ways to learn to write- is the metaphor that links "writing" with "voice." So apparently natural is the use of this metaphor that it has now come to control the way we frame our understanding of the nature of school writing and reading (i.e. Moffett, 1981). Both in textbooks written for students, and in coursebooks written for teachers, the metaphor of voice, and the concepts that support it, have become our means of "knowing" about classroom writing practices. Elbow, for instance, in Writing Without Teachers, advises students: In your naturalway of producingwordsthereis a sound, a texture, - a voice - which is the main source of power in your a rhythm how it works, but this voice is the force I know don't writing. that will make a readerlisten to you, the energy that derives the meaning through his [sic] thick skull. (Elbow, 1973, p. 6; my emphasis) In a similar vein, Graves argues that "readers can't read voiceless writing when no one is there any more than they can have dialogue with a mannequin" (1983, p. 228). Graves suggests that voice is the "driving force" of the writing process, "the imprint of ourselves on our writing," "the person in the piece." Voice ... is that part of the self that pushes the writing ahead, the dynamo in the process. Take the voice away and the writing collapses of its own weight. There is no writing, just words The voice shows how I choose information, following words organize it, select the words, all in relation to what I want to say and how I want to say it. The reader says, "someone is here. I know 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 the 195

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

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productionof writtentexts to a speech metaphor?Why is the concept of voice seen as so "powerful"? Why is the readingof texts seen to be so associatedwith hearinga writer's"voice"?What assumptionsabout the nature of writing and readingare constructedand then supported by the use of such a metaphor? We might answer some of these questions by consideringwhere the roots of the "voice" metaphorlie and tracingthe discoursesto which such rootsmost comfortably belong. In so doing, I also want to examine what aspectsof writingand reading are promotedthroughsuch discursiveconnectionsand what alternative approachesto writingand readingmight be emphasizedin their stead. classroom change Finally, how might practicesin the reading/writing if we shift away from this dominant "voice" metaphor?
Voice: "The Person Behind the Text"

The desire of educatorsto hear and locate a voice in a piece of writing can be seen as a need to identify a human presence in the words on the page, to locate a "person"behind the text, to be assuredthat a human will generated the work in question. As such, this desire is entirely compatible with other preoccupationsin Westernthought and an essential for with the search for human "presence," "self," thereforefor non-contingent"truth."A criticalreadingof these preoccupations in Westernphilosophicaltraditions (i.e. Derrida, 1976) indicates how much they rely on dichotomies or polaritiessuch as, for speech/ example, man/woman, soul/body,life/death,presence/absence, writing. Such dichotomies are not necessarily"natural"or inherently logical (although they come to seem to be), but their construction privileges the first-namedterm, placing the second in a negative or inferior position. For instance, in the case of the opposition man/ woman, woman's position in the opposition places her in an unequal relationshipwith the concept "man."Constructedas a secondarysex, derivedfrom man, she ends up possessingnegativeor inferiorqualities to man. As a result, womanderivesher statusthroughwhat she is not, ratherthan what she is. Similarly, writing,within the binaryopposition of speech/writing,is definedin terms of what it lacks, ratherthan what it has. And the lack is the lack of the human subject, of the "voice," of the living breath. As Derrida indicates, hierarchicaloppositions like these work to favorconceptsof presence,unity,identity,and immediacyover concepts of absence, difference, dissimulation, and deferral. It is within this constructedframeworkthat pedagogicalinterestin "personalvoice" in

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writing and reading becomes both intelligible and plausible. Because speaker and listener are both present when language is spoken, speech becomes privileged as the form of language closest to human presence, closest to the meaning a human presence intended, closest to human truth. Writing, on the other hand, separated from its human subject, can but imitate and compensate for the missing qualities of the human voice/speaker/subject, and remain as a lifeless, alienated form of expression. Consequently it draws its status from what it is not, rather than from what it is, and not surprisingly,this has resulted in metaphors for writing that are drawn from speech and speaking. Discourses about writing have thus become pro-speech discourses (and therefore properson, pro-presence, pro-life), rather than pro-writing discourses, which seem, by comparison, to be anti-person, anti-presence, anti-life. This speech/writing opposition, however, is both misleading and illusory. Privileging spoken discourse as being more honest, truthful, real, sincere, and personal cannot be upheld in terms of the structure of language, for both speech and writing work from the same system of differentiation and deferment (see Derrida, 1978). While the conventional features of spoken and written genres vary, drawing as they do upon different sets of paralinguistic features required to "read" them, in fact speech and writing are but different modes or channels of the same system and so both could be included with the general rubric of language. Spoken discourse carries within it the same traces of absence and deferral of meaning as does written discourse. They are part of the same language system. Texts do not have greater purchase on concepts of reality, truth, immediacy, spontaneity, or human identity merely because they are spoken, or because they sound as if they could be spoken. They have greater purchase on such qualities because readers have come to associate 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 textually produced in any channel of discourse - ionic, kinetic, oral, or printed. Not surprisingly, texts that are produced according to these conventions - texts that seem to have a writer (a human voice or presence) behind them - are more valued in contemporary Western culture than are texts that seem dis-embodied and detached. A "voice" seems to act as a guarantee of commitment, authenticity, truthfulness; "voiceless" texts are, therefore, regarded as lacking commitment, authenticity, truthfulness.

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Classroom Practice: Reading and Writing "Voice"

In popular writing pedagogy,the preferredform of writing is clearly committed, authentic and truthful, presumablybecause it is seen to provide confirmationof a writer'sgenuine emotional and intellectual relationshipto an experience, a text, or a school task. For instance, considerthese teacherstatementsabout studentresponsesto literature: We find it impossibleto believe that Michellewas not deeply movedby Heaney's herexperience poem:the wayshe construes ... and the formshe choosesareeloquent testimony The writeris obviouslytotallyinvolvedhere... he is genuinely thinkingabout the scene, not merelyechoingsomeoneelse's opinion,(quotedin Gilbert,1987,p. 241) Notice the slippagefrom writerto text in these examples.The teacher reads the writing for indications of authentic emotional involvement in an experience;the student texts seem to be a transparentmedium reachesto ascertain out the intentions throughwhichthe teacher(reader) of the person (the writer)on the other side. While it is easy to understandthat teachers would like to believe that their studentsare "deeplymoved"by poetryand "totallyinvolved" in classroom work, it is perhaps perilous, both for teachers, and for students, to assume that readingsof student texts can provide anyone with that information.Yet it is also relativelyeasy to understandhow teacherscan make such assumptionsfrom reading.Readingfor "voice," reading for "the person,"is a reading practice known well to most Englishteachersbecause it is very like the readingpracticewe have all learned as literaturestudents. Discoveringan author's intentions is a dominant focus of interestin much literarystudy and literarydiscourse is frequentlyevaluatedin termsof the qualityof the author'sperception of the human condition (Belsey, 1980). Even much of the more recent aestheticsfindsit hardto escapethe tyrannyof authorial reader-response "voice" (Gilbert, 1987). Much of the personal,imaginative,reflective,and responsivewriting - sometimes called the literatureof the classin the Englishclassroom room- is easily recognizableto teachers, and easily read by them, The becauseit has many of the featurestypicallyexpectedof literature. of literature know is a form of teachers well, reading readingEnglish and many teachershave, as Culler (1975) would suggest,considerable "literarycompetence."Englishteachershave learnedthat the personal can be read as "universal," the concrete detail as "abstractsymbol,"

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the particular selection of incident as "significant": in short, they know the conventions of literature. But what is sometimes lost sight of in classrooms is that these strategies for constructing and reading texts are in fact conventions and as such have to be "learned." These particular textual conventions are culturally and historically quite specific, as studies of basal reading schemes (Luke, 1988; Baker & Freebody, 1989)), textbooks (Gilbert, R., 1984), fairy tales (Zipes, 1983), or feminist aesthetics (Belsey & Moore, 1989) have demonstrated so effectively. Learning culturally preferred ways of reading- and of writing- is part of what we have traditionally emphasized in school, and yet, ironically, the social specificity and potential arbitrariness of such practices are more often recognised by students than by teachers. In interviews I completed with twelfth grade writing students in an Australian high school (Gilbert, 1989a), several of the students were able to describe various "reading practices" their teacher seemed to prefer: I was pleased when she said she enjoyed reading it and that I understoodpersonalvoice, because that was what I was tryingto achieve. I was trying to show that I understood it. I was happy that she recognisedit. (p. 130) I tried really hard to make it more personalizedand I riggedthe whole thing to make it look really personal,whereasall the other ones ... I hadn't and I had been given really low marks and she gave 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, I think what the teacherwould like and the way they dress conies into it even. The way they'd like to see it written. Then I have to go and rewritewhat I thought before into what they'd like to see. (p. 158) Of course not all students had this cultural knowledge; many were still operating invisibly within the conventional reading paradigm, as, frequently, was their teacher. Rather than focussing on the constructedness 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 it really difficult to work out what her teacher meant by "personal voice" and how she might write in the way her teacher seemed to want. Her first grading for the year had been a "C" (in an A-E spread) for a reading journal that she had completed, and she was very disappointed with the result. She had transferred in to this school at the beginning

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of the school year, and had been used to much higher results in her previous school. The teacher's main criticism of "Helen's" journal was that it did not quite get the personal voice effect properly: Your tone (personal voice) improves in the last section of your journal- probablybecause your reactionsare strongerand you're more sympatheticto the characters. Still a little too muchemphasis on plot- but I realizethat this is the strongpoint of this particular novel [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 think had sufficient "personal voice": The front cover of the book pronouncesthe fact that the book is a world best seller. This adds a bit of encouragement.It shows a plane wreckagein amongst some snow-coveredmountains. It is quite an artistic cover, but gives little indication to me of what the book is about. The blurb, however, makes me want to read the book. It tells of how a plane crash occurs and the survivors are forced to eat the flesh of their friends in order to survive. They have broken the greatest taboo of mankind. I think the book will tell the story of how they are forced to eat the human flesh, how desperatethey must have been and the sufferingthey must go throughto actuallydo it. There was a quote in the front of the book which I thoughtwas reallytouching.It read, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."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, probably because it was a true story. I know that sounds awful to say consideringwhat the survivors had to do but it really makes you stop and think. I don't know whether I would have had the courage. I'm glad no-one held it against them. I know that none of the men that survived would never have a free conscience but I don't think they should be ashamed of what they did. It was quite a normalreactionwhen facedwith deathbecausethe greatest goal of mankind is to survive and that's exactly what they did and they should be proud of their courage. This last paragraph is clearly different in style from "Helen's" first paragraph. The most obvious differences include the exclamatory

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punctuation markers, the variation in sentence mode ("Finished! What a 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 uses verbs 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 constructed characters in the book. She says she "enjoyed" the book, and that she related on a personal, human level to the survivors and their actions and to her teacher reader ("I know that sounds awful ... it really makes you stop and think"). This common classroom practice of "reading through character" is in itself a clearly constructed and learned reading practice, but one that has particular prominence and popularity in English pedagogy (Freebody, Luke & Gilbert, in press; Mellor & Patterson, 1991). But apart from this familiar cultural ("literary") reading practice, it is also possible 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 the specific textual features it contains. Reading through character is not a reading practice that clashes with reading through voice because both have personalist and humanistic orientations. However, not all reading practices sit so comfortably with "personal voice" or the search for the person behind the text. The tension that can exist between a learned cultural practice and personal writing was clearly demonstrated in the same study when student were set a lyric poetry writing task. The teacher in the study had particular difficulties with this task, and in many ways the construction of "the poem" brings together a number of very different and problematic issues associated with "voice" and "text." Somehow you feel they are much more personallyinvolved with the poetry they write and your criticism of them is somehow more personal when it's about their poetry than when it's about their short stories, especially when you feel that they're trying to expressemotions and have failed and then you'recriticizingthem for failingand yet the fact that they tried somehow deservesmore credit than writing a short story. (Gilbert, 1989a, p. 154-5). Unquestionably, as the teacher recognized, poetry is a form of literary discourse that has become closely associated with the human subject. Poetry is potentially a very personalized and emotionally intense generic

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form, yet, at the same time - as the teacher also recognizes- poetic discourse usually operates at a complex level of intellectual abstraction, syntactic fracture, and elliptical nuance. Yet in the classroom, how easy is it for a teacher to read broken syntax and elliptical fragments as evidence of complex intellectual abstraction? . . . with Paul, I made a comment there, have you deliberately left out punctuation?It wasn't clear whether it was a deliberate thing in a poem or he hadn'tjust put it in because he never puts it in... (p. 152) The resurrection of the intentions of the person behind the text is here seen 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 classroom are not as simple as readings of "public" literature. Fascinatingabout this. It's the way I read it. When I first read it- terrible punctuation, spelling etc. I first read it and I was really put off. This is hopeless. I don't know why he bothered; he's got the wrong tone Then I was starting to go through them again and I said to someone, "Listen to this." And I had - it to read it aloud to them. When I read it aloud I suddenly of humor and but because did have those elements surprise really I was so put off with the lack of punctuationwhen I first started, I hadn't picked them up ... (p. 151) Poetry cannot often be simply and easily written, so why should it be simply and easily read? Readers need access to reading practices which show how to find coherence and intelligibility in the broken syntax and elliptical fragments of the poem, and writers need access to the conventions of poetic syntax and elliptical fragmentation. Because poetry 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 most crafted of generic constructions, and poetry reading one of the most difficult practices to teach to undergraduates. It is not surprising that the reading and writing of poetry in the school classroom should provide an example of how difficult it is to deal with the constructed nature of texts, if the predominant reading and writing frames are drawn from personalism and "voice," rather than language practices and "text." Poetry reading and writing, however, is but one example of the dilemma teachers face if they focus on "voice" rather than "text." Whereas the voice metaphor may well be closely aligned to the literary search for authorial presence, and to the privileging of the personal that results, it has also slipped into general usage within many peda-

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gogical discourses as an expectation of what "writing" should contain and accomplish. For instance, position papers on writing often draw upon metaphors of human presence as they describe how teachers might best recognize "authentic writing." Real authorship,or authentic writing. . . involves the fullest engagementof the writerin the productionof meaningfultext under the pressure of her conscious and unconscious intention. . . . Conceived in this manner, writing involves the most active and direct interplay between thought and language, a transactionwhich is highly personalizedand specific to the individual writer. Such writing clearly and firmly announces the presenceof the writerin the world.It is a significantact of original and responsible meaning-making,in the best sense. (Cook et al, 1980, p. 5) Similarly it is voice metaphors which are often used as the focus of the writing experience or as the motivation for writing and revising. ... the force of revision, the energy for revision, is rooted in the child's voice, the urge to express. Every teacher has heard the words, "Do I have it do it over? Why do I have to write?"These children are saying: "I don't have a voice. I don't see the sense in what I am doing."(Graves, 1983, p. 160) Recent work by Freebody (1990) also shows how entrenched such metaphors are in the reading of school writing. His analysis of HSC (Higher School Certificate) Examination Committees in New South Wales, who were responsible for evaluating the performances of candidates sitting for the English papers, concludes that: One of the balancingacts for successful performancein English at the HSC level is the demonstrationof a personallyfelt, somehow genuine and authentic response to the set texts or the unseen pieces, without appearing to be idiosyncratic or "subjective" . . . what is sought in the students' scripts is discourse that is read as evidence of a genuine, authentic, personal response. . .(pp. 12-13). Discourse, Genre, Text: and Reading in the English Classroom Writing

Given the predominantdiscourseswhich have traditionallyinformed English teaching, it is not surprisingthat many teachers(and teacher examiners)think it importantto find evidence of a student'spersonal - to hear the student'spersonal involvement in the writingexperience voice. At a time when standardizedtesting and national curriculum

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documents either threaten or prevail, this concern for voice is in many ways reassuring, for it indicates that English teachers are still in the forefront when it comes to locating teaching and learning within frameworks of egalitarianism and child-centeredness: that English teachers care about the person behind the text. But while we currently live with the potential dangers of standardized testing and curriculum, we also live with the real dangers of social and critical illiteracy. These are not times for us to dwell only in the heady glow of personalism and child-centeredness. Today we need sophisticated textual understandings and competencies, and the dominant personalist and individualistic language pedagogues of the sixties and seventies are beginning to strain credibility. Reconceptualizations of psychology (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 is for us to frame language events in the classroom according to theories rooted in concepts of language as social practice, rather than in concepts of language as personal expression. A shift of this nature means that teachers and students can then focus on the way that the production and reception of texts, which are produced within specific situational sites such as the classroom, are integrally related to various literacy practices that operate at broader institutional and social levels. In other words, texts that are produced within the classroom site need to be read from within the discursive network that such a site represents. And understanding such local discourses will naturally involve considering the various power relationships that are brought into play. For instance, to return to the example of poetry writing, when a student constructs a poem in an English classroom, the text that results will seldom be read only in terms of the student's understanding of poetic discourse (however that has been introduced into the classroom site). It will also be read in terms of other discourses that are drawn into the school site. The text that a student attempts to construct, within this discursive network, draws obviously from an identifiable generic form- say the lyric poem - but the site (the classroom) means that the production of that genre will vary in important ways. In the classroom, the reading of literary genres- their recognition, framing, and interpretation- must vary in significant ways from orthodox literary sites, and the teacher's comments quoted earlier indicate some ways in which this happens. Concepts of authorial superiority ("authority")

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and of intellectualand emotional insight ("poetic vision"), are clearly difficultto attributeto studenttexts, when the teacher'sreadingpractice is determined by the traditionalperspectivesfrom learning, language competence, adolescentdevelopment,pedagogicalpractice,and assessment. Ratherobviously,a student poem could be placed in a different the usualpresentational site (saya recognizedpoetrymagazine),afforded featuressuch a site guarantees,and then be "read"differently.While most genres rely on particularreadingpracticesfor their production, readingpracticesare, in turn, dependentupon other situationalfactors for their realization. In particularthe usual roles and relationshipsthat are conventionalized within a lyric poem, for instance, become difficultto construct and difficult to interpretat the classroom site. The lyric poem, as is the case with all literature,genericallyconstructs a reading position which defers to the writerand the significanceof the literaryevent. It is a convention of literary discourse to have speaking positions of authority like this, but such a convention is clearly at odds with the speakingpositions of authorityin a classroomsite. The teacher is the voice of authorityin the classroomand, much as we attemptto change this, the discursive site of the school and the classroom cripples our we can neverescape efforts.At best we can reducea teacher'sauthority: this it completely.Indeed,educatorssuch as Elbowhave acknowledged dilemma for some time when they writeof the value of the "teacherless" writingclassroom (1973). There are few discoursesfrom which students can speak authoritatively in the classroom, and the discourse of "the person" is no exception. Even if the person/the individual/theself could be "known authoritatively" by the student(Henriqueset al, 1984),ways of writing, talking, or constructing such knowing are still limited by available discoursesand genres(Gilbert, 1989b;Gilbert& Taylor,1991). Personal writing can be recognizedwhen a writing position is taken up from within discourseswhich conventionalize such a relationshipbetween writerand readerand literarydiscourseis clearlyone of the best known - the of these discourses. As a result, narrative and poetic genres - have come to be regardedas common genres of literarydiscourse naturalforms of self expressionand of personalvoice. The constructed nature of both the genres and their discursive roots, however, often remains unnoticed or it is simply bypassedin the slippagefrom voice, to person, to authenticity. thus takes The interactionbetween student-textand teacher-reader and but a within mostly invisiparticular extremely complex place

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ble- discursive network. In the school, student writers attempt to construct recognizable social language forms such as letters, news or sports reports,book reviews,shortstories,advertisements, arguments, commentaries,but without any of the conventional social conditions which make the production(both the constructionand interpretation) of such texts possible. Few real readersand few real purposes finally exist in the high school English classroom. The subtle but crucial nuances of "sites"can only be imaginedor simulated:all is, as Britton cogently put it, a sort of "dummy run" for the real thing. In partial recognition of this potentially unproductivesite for language practice, teachers have often been advised to provide "real" audiences and "real"tasks for students (to specify what audience and what purpose the text is to serve), and to aim for writing that is personal,honest, and truthful,and reflectsthe student'spersonalvoice. "Voice"thus becomes synonymouswith "real":if a student'svoicecan be "heard"in a text ("read"in a text), then the text becomes "real." Its purpose will be clear. The un-real is seen to be writing that is - has no conviction, no personalism,no authenticity. voiceless Gone is human subject/speaker/voice.
Moving from Voice to Text: The Possibilities for Practice

The concept of voice as the power that makes a text intelligibleand readable is both an unhelpful and misleading explanation of how meaning is produced in discourse. Further, it is a disempowering concept for learnersand teachers. What, for example, do we do for the student who has no "voice"?How do we facilitatethe acquisition of "voice"?And if "voice"is so importantin writing,is it good enough to say, "I don't know how it works"(Elbow, 1973, p. 6)? Voice metaphors seem to suggest that finding a personal voice is like "findingyourself":findingconfidence,self-esteem,authority. They mask the way in which texts that seem to have a voice have been constructed, and they mask our reasons as teachers for wanting to "hear"voice when we make meaning from student texts. Such metaphors provide no linguistic or social knowledgeto help us clarify the way in which student texts function in discourse. However if writing and readingare conceptualizedas social activities,then the conditions of production and the conditions of interpretationof texts can be described as social and cultural practices:as observable, knowable, (the productionof texts) and reading/listenpossible. Writing/speaking of ing (the interpretation texts) can then be seen as integrallyrelated

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to a discursive site. This will mean that the generic forms conventionalized through such a site, including the specific subject matter, can be considered directly. Further, and perhaps most importantly for my argument here, how particular reading positions are constructed in texts- how roles and relationships are determined by discourse- now becomes a primary concern for the English teacher. For instance, if "voice" seems to be something that readers can recognize ("hear"), it is clearly the result of reading (framing) a text in a particular way, or of recognizing certain conventional textual features associated with voice. In other words once the text is placed within a particular reading practice, the concept of "personal voice" can be used to describe the construction of a particular reading position in that text: 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 a personal voice in a student text can be understood through a closer consideration of teachers' positions within this particular discursive site. In a site that is patently un-real and un-truthful, the personal voice metaphor seems to offer something that appears to be real and truthful- evidence of the human subject. Consequently English teachers, caught within a number of not entirely compatible or empowering discourses, may find the potential promise of such personalist language discourses compelling and attractive. Still, the danger of this limiting reading position is that it moves our attention away from concepts of critical literacy. Language education should be conceived of more broadly than this metaphor will allow if the complexities of language as a social semiotic system are to be addressed in the classroom. The complex discursive positioning of the English teacher of course holds many contradictions and dilemmas. The question that still needs addressing, however, is what language knowledge can be taught to students, and how might this knowledge best be taught. Such an issue demands careful framing within theories about discourse. For instance while a dominant current debate in English education is whether an understanding of generic forms might be powerful knowledge to share with students (Reid, 1986), such concerns need to be placed within a broader framework. An understanding of the generic conventions of a society at a given time is undeniably important social knowledge, but such knowledge is useful only if it is social knowledge. This means it must account for the range of conventions that texts display in social practice, it must account for the way generic forms are used to regulate and control social meaning,

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and, finally,it must acknowledgethe role of readingin how texts are genericallydesignated(Cohan & Shires, 1988). As has been argued earlier,generic forms vary in significantways dependent upon their specific locations and the discoursesto which they are linked. A business letter is not everywhereand always the same, nor is a conversation,a sports commentary,a film review,or a quiz program.The social institutionswithin which such genres occur, the discourses upon which they have drawn, the writing and reading positions they establish and rely upon, result in the production of a but which relies upon particulartext which is recognizablegenerically, and repeated. broadersocial understandings to be unpacked,reworked, By exploringthe social dynamicsof languagein use, Englisheducation can offerstudentsan understanding of discoursetheory,which is crucial to both the making and remakingof texts. In other words,the way in which language worksmight become a major classroomfocus. The analysis of texts which occur in a range of differentsites, but which exhibit similar generic features, provides an ideal classroom activity for displayingthe dynamic natureof languageand for emphasizing the importance of site or social location (Mellor, 1987). Some - the poem, of the traditionalwritten genres of the Englishclassroom - and the story, the book review, the news item, the essay, the diary the the of the traditional interview,the debate, spoken genres many sales role the the pitch display dramatic persuasive speech, play, variationsof textual convention dependingupon where they are situated, and the reason for such variation can become a key research focus for the English classroom. Instead of just asking how language works, discoursetheory can push questions like why and where. - and recogThe way in which reading positions are constructed nised- within texts becomes integrallyrelatedto such questions. How does a writerproducea plausibleand coherenttext, and why are some texts more plausible, more coherent, more seemingly "natural"than others? How important for the recognition of plausibility,coherence, is the readingframethat the readeradoptsto receive and "naturalness" the text, and how much freedom do readershave to decide how they will readparticular texts?How arewritingand readingpositionslearned, and what space exists within such positions for resistance,rewriting, - again through or remaking? Analysisof a varietyof readingpositions in different contexts similar but sited with texts, working generically demonstrates ways in which readers are coerced and seduced by familiarityand repetition,and ways in which readingpositions line up in various readingformationsto furtherentrenchthe commonsensical

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nature of reading. Bronwyn Mellor's Reading Stories and Reading Hamlet, are good examples of books that provide workshopactivities for the secondaryschool on how readingpositions are constructedand how students might better recognize different reading practices. The ways in which girls are particularlyaffected by invisible reading formations, and the possibilitiesthat exist for resistanceand re-reading, are discussedby myself and SandraTaylorin Fashioningthe Feminine: Girls, Popular Cultureand Schooling. But perhapsthe initial practice to analyzeis the way in which teachersframea text to look for evidence of personalvoice. What studenttexts can be read in this way and what textual featureskey Englishteachersto such a reading? - from speech The shift from voice to text in the Englishclassroom metaphorsto discourseanalysis restsfirmlyon threebroadtheoretical assumptions:1) writingis not tied to a voice, a presence,or an ultimate meaning; 2) discursive power networksare constructedand serve to organize and systematize social and cultural practice;and 3) reading a social activitythat involveslearninga set of arbitrary is predominantly cultural practiceswhich privilegecertain meanings. Such a shift, with its emphasison textualityratherthan voice, would not only demystify many of the confusing and misleadingpracticesthat predominatein languageclassrooms,but it would make the craft of writing, and the practiceof reading,more accessibleto students (and teachers).In this - how language works presently and way social and critical literacy how language might be made to work differentlyin the future becomes the proper focus of language classrooms. By denaturalizing our own classroomand readingpractices,we not only begin the process of making classroom language practices more explicit, but we also begin the process of making explicit how all language practices are social practices. And this, I would argue, representsa powerful shift forwardin Englishpedagogy. School of Education James Cook Universityof North Queensland Townsville, Queensland,Australia4811
Works Cited

Baker,C. & Freebody,P. (1989). Children's first school books. Oxford: Blackwell. Belsey,C. (1980). Criticalpractice.London: Methuen.

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Belsey, C. & Moore, J. (Eds). (1989). The feminist reader:essays in gender and the politics of feminist criticism.London: Macmillan Education. Cohan, S. & Shires, L. (1988). Tellingstories:a theoreticalanalysis of narrative fiction. London: Routledge& Kegan Paul. Cook, J.; Green, W.; Jeffery, C; & Reid, J. (1980). Writing: an educationalperspective. Norwood, SA: AustralianAssociationfor the Teachingof English. Culler, J. (1975). Structuralistpoetics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Derrida,J. (1976). Of grammatology.Baltimore:Johns Hopkins. and difference. London:Routledge& Kegan Derrida,J. (1978). Writing Paul. Eagleton,T. (1983). Literarytheory Oxford:Blackwell. Elbow,P. (1973). Writingwithoutteachers.London: Oxford. Fairclough,N. (1989). Language and power.London: Longman. Foucault,M. (1970). The orderof things. London: Tavistock. distinctions in the Freebody, P. (1990). Inventing cultural-capitalist assessment of HSC papers: coping with inflation in an era of "literacy crisis." Paper presented at the Inaugural Australian SystemicsConferenceof Literacyin Social Processes. Freebody,P.; Luke, A.; & Gilbert, P. (in press). Readingpositions and practicesin the classroom. Curriculum Inquiry Gilbert, P. (1986). From voice to text: a reappraisalof discourseson school writing in the secondary English classroom. Doctoral JamesCook Universityof North Queensland,Townsdissertation, ville, Australia. the deconstructivecritique.In Gilbert, P. (1987). Post reader-response: B. Corcoran& E. Evans(Eds.)Readers,texts, teachers.Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook. Gilbert, P. (1989a). Writingschooling and deconstruction: from voice to text in the classroom.London: Routledge& Kegan Paul. Gilbert, P. (1989b) Personally(and passively)yours:girls, literacyand education. OxfordReview of Education, 15, 257-265. Gilbert, P. & Taylor,S. (1991). Fashioningthefeminine: girls, popular cultureand schooling.Sydney:Allen & Unwin.

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Gilbert, R. (1984). The impotentimage: reflectionsof ideology in the secondaryschool curriculum.Lewes:FalmerPress. teachersand childrenat work.Exeter,NH: Graves, D. (1983). Writing: Heinemann. Henriques, J.; Hollway, W.; Urwin, C; Venn, C; & Walkerdine,V. (1984). Changingthe subject.London: Methuen. Kress,G. (1985). Linguisticprocessesin sociocultural practice.Geelong: Deakin University Press. Luke, A. (1988). Literacy textbooksand ideology.Lewes:FalmerPress. WA:ChalkfacePress. Mellor,B. (1987). Reading stories. Scarborough, WA:ChalkfacePress. Mellor,B. (1989). Reading Hamlet. Scarborough, Mellor, B. & Patterson,A. (1991) Reading throughcharacter. English in Australia,95. Moffett,J. (1981). Active voice. Montclair,NJ: Boynton/Cook. Reid, I. (Ed.). (1986). The place of genre in learning:currentdebates. Geelong: Deakin University Press. Weedon, C. (1987). Feminist practice and poststructuralisttheory Oxford:Blackwell. Zipes, J. (1983). The trials and tribulationsof Little Red Riding Hood. London: Heinemann.

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