Voice and Authority in College WritingNVCC- AnnandaleReading and Writing Center Voice is the sense that your audience gets as they read your prose. Voice goes hand and hand with style and strategy. Writing is nothing more than a series of choices. In order to have authority as a writer, your audience needs to feel as though your choices were conscious ones leading to something, not that you are meandering through the English language without purpose. In ENGLISH 111, often the rhetorical strategy is assigned. Examples of rhetorical strategies include narration, description, comparison & contrast, classification, persuasion, cause & effect analysis and argumentation. The ways a narrative and an argument progresses are quite different. Your voice will also be different.To understand voice, we have to go back…to Aristotle.Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, ideas in which he articulated between the years 367-322 BC.On Rhetoric includes a description of the THREE Aristotelian appeals. These appeals include a. LOGOSb. PATHOSc. ETHOS LOGOS (from the verb lego, meaning to count, tell, or say)Logos is an appeal to your audience using logic.Logos, reasoning from logic, can include reasoning from examples, comparisons, consequences, or authority, testimony, and statistics. PATHOS (Greek for experience or suffering)Pathos is emotional reasoning. When you appeal to pathos, you want the audience to identify with your point of view and feelings.Examples of pathos are quotations or descriptions that aim to provoke an emotional response. ETHOS (meaning character)Ethos is reasoning from values or beliefs. This ethical appeal has to do with the trustworthiness or credibility of your writing and speaking.You convey ethos through tone and style and by discussing the ethics, morals, and values of a situation.While your audience reads your work, they will be asking themselves questions, consciously or subconsciously, including the following:a. Is this writer credible?b. Does he/ she present an honest or trustworthy position?c. Does his/ her evidence prove the claim?d. Does he/ she distance or offend me? Repeating phrases like “I think” or “I believe” in front of their positionsYour professor knows the difference between a fact or an opinion, so she can recognize a position readily. She knows it is yours because your name appears at the top of the paper. Overusing “I” in generalBe stingy with your “I”s if you are not writing a personal narrative. Use “I” only when it is rhetorically appropriate. Switching point of view (POV)Select one point of view and keep it consistent throughout your paper. If you change from “I” to “we” to “you” all in one paragraph, your voice loses credibility. Readers will get the sense you do not know who your audience is and what position you’re writing from (your position, a position of a few, or a position shared by the general population). This is the rhetorical move sure to thwart your good reader(s).Here is an example of a hasty point of view switch:When my father had a stoke, it was amazing to me how much he had to relearn. Initially, there was the simple act of swallowing. Then progress was defined by holding up the weight of his body and landing his first step. You never know what you have until you lose it. They use language that is not appropriate to the rhetorical situation. Students who make this mistake often use language that is colloquial or too casual. Writing that is too casual often sounds like a speaking voice. Avoid writing in the ways you would type a text or chat with your best friend. Your professor may have asked you to avoid contractions in formal writing assignments. That has to do with trying to achieve a certain degree of formality. Make the assumption that what is true for them is true for everyoneDon’t forget that your audience is likely to vary in age, race, and background. This mistake is likely to occur subtly with the use of the 2ndperson. Sometimes an audience member can feel “co-opted” by the second person.Imagine if you reading the following statement in the newspaper. What assumptions can you make about the nature of the “you.” How would you feel as a reader?Everyday you come home from working at the hardware store, open a drawer, and take out a spoon so that you can enjoy your favorite ice cream– Ben and Jerry’s Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz. Setting the reader up for one thing in the introduction and something entirely different in the paperThink of the introduction as a set of promises you make to a reader. In the intro, you will lay out where you’re going, when. It’s important you stick to that “plan” because you begin to build ethos with that paragraph. If you are unreliable or unfaithful to that plan, a skeptical reader will result. They claim someone else’s thoughts and words as their own or they cite improperlyNothing will have your audience questioning your ethos as a writer more than if they suspect you of plagiarism. They use language that they have no relationship with, phraseology that is not concise and precise, or “unchecked” suggestions from the thesaurus. William Zinsser, the author of On Writing Well calls this kind of writing “journalese” (32).Here are some examples of what I mean from Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing… “To satisfy her huger for nutrition, she ate bread” vs. “She ate bread because she was hungry” (Harvey 3). “This scene is very important because it helps us understand Cleopatra early in the play” vs. “This early scene helps us understand Cleopatra” (Harvey 4). Watch out for words like very, especially, or great; clichés, which are sure to ring flat and disappoint; and for words that seem to mean the same thing but do not like less vs. fewer. Use precise language.Don’t say “exchange” or “discuss” when you mean “banter.” Don’t say “dismissed” when you mean “banished.” Be cognizant about logos, pathos, and ethos and select subsequent evidence that matches each appeal. Develop a relationship with language by reading regularly and reading critically. Be you while considering positions and perspectives in addition to your own. Your writing should not feel like litany of unrelated facts. Writing and rhetoric should be in conversation with your sources, it should anticipate the questions your