Re: Single voice in collaborative papers (fwd) -Reply (fwd)

[Eric Crump <wleric@showme.missouri.edu>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 10:10:36 -0800
From: Lisa Ede <edel@cla.orst.edu>
Reply-To: "Moderated Writing Center forum." <WCENTR-L@MIZZOU1.MISSOURI.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list WCENTR-L <WCENTR-L@MIZZOU1.MISSOURI.EDU>
Subject: Re: Single voice in collaborative papers (fwd) -Reply

These are interesting comments about voice and collaboration.  I find
myself wondering if the issue about voiceless or dull collaborative
papers doesn't have as much to do with the rhetorical situations in
which such documents are often written as with the material fact of
the collaboration.  Students working on a collaborative business
report, for instance, are constrained by the textual conventions
characteristic of business writing.  Now we could probably have a
pretty lively discussion about those conventions--but might not they
have as much a role in the persona/voice that emerges from the text
as the fact of collaboration?
     In the writing class I'm teaching this term, we're spending a
good deal looking at the social grounding of various
textual/rhetorical conventions, asking questions like these:  Who
gets to experiment with texts?  Why?  How can students know when they
can be "free" to experiment with academic texts, and when it's not
"safe."  It's been a pretty interesting discussion.
     I'd also like to address the practical question that originated
this thread, for I think that there are times when collaborative
writers do need to develop a unified voice.  Probably the strongest
advice I give students writing collaboratively is to begin exchanging
drafts and revising one another's writing IMMEDIATELY.  This
encourages group ownership of text, and it also works agains the "cut
and paste" approach to collaboration that students are drawn to.  In
a few cases that approach can work, but only if the textual
conventions governing the particular document are very clear--and all
the students understand them.
      (Sorry for the long post.)
Lisa Ede
edel@cla.orst.edu