Re: Single voice in collaborative papers

[gillespiep@vms.csd.mu.edu]

Eric, I agree with you.  My students wrote two reports to deans of 
student affairs, and the first, especially in one report, had a lively 
contrast I liked. But the deans came to the class and specifically asked 
them to work on making the reports unified, but they challenged them to 
continue to sound like students.  In the second report they did it; one 
of the reports was a bit bland, but the rest were good-humored and 
lively, showing the great personalities of the great kids that wrote 
them.  

Paula Gillespie

On Tue, 5 Nov 1996, Eric Crump wrote:

> I realize that quite often audience expectations suggest that a unified
> voice is the way to go in collaborative papers, but I wonder why that is,
> or why we necessarily comply with that expectation. 
> 
> I remember seeing Christina Murphy talk at a CCCC workshop a few years ago
> & she was rather critical of collaborative writing. One of her points was
> that the prose was so often so bland--so, well, *unified*. 
> 
> I agree! but I don't think it's necessarily an indictment of
> collaborative writing but rather of homogenous voice, of the misplaced
> assumption that a single text should, if collaboratively composed, try to
> imitate the unity of a single-author work, as if that was the standard to
> meet. Better, I think, to have a rich mix of voices present. More fun,
> more interesting, perhaps more provocative.
> 
> --Eric Crump
> 
>