At 23:00 16/10/97 Diane Hodges wrote:
What I was thinking of, actually is the ventriloquating grad students go through
when first encountering theory; the "parrot-speak", as Mary Bryson & Suzanne
deCastel talk about...
while the students will go through those speaking practices in class-based
communications,
and in email discussion lsits which are part of course content (usually
framed with
the expectation that students make reference to the weekly readings in
their communications);
...outside of these contexts, in my experience, students want to silence
the academic voice in their head, the academic voice that they are
expected to speak, and yet which is still alien to them.
It's a self-generated silencing, like learning a foreign language, and
wishing to return to one's "native" tongue...
THIS IS ME< I DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET THOSE ARROWS TO SHOW WHAT ISN'T ME
I was thinking of Bakhtin's notions of heteroglossia--finding a voice when
the voices "(and the roles they express in the social structure_ are felt
by the speaker or writer to be in conflict" from Cazden in Contexts of
Learning)
So it might not be so much that one is trying to "silence the acdemic voice
in one's head" as it is that the beginner's claim to that voice is shakey
and she didn't generate that shakiness all by herself. In classes, and
course-sponsored e-mail, the professor gives you renting privileges on that
voice, but outside, claiming it may be seen as very inappropriate.
What do you think?
Kelleen Toohey
Associate professor
Faculty of Education
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6
ph. 604-291-4418
FAX 604-888-4623