Journal of Second Language Writing

10 (2001) 83 106

Coming back to voice

The multiple voices and identities of
mature multilingual writers
Alan Hirvela*, Diane Belcher1
ESL Composition Program, The Ohio State University, 60 Arps Hall, 1945 North High Street,
Columbus, OH 43210-1172, USA

Abstract
Compositionists often speak of the need to help students acquire a voice or identity in
their writing. This interest in teaching voice is understandable but also problematic.
Satisfactorily defining ``voice,'' especially from a second language (L2) point of view, is
one of those problems. Another is a reliance on various conceptualizations that privilege a
``Western'' or a romantic or individualistic notion of voice in classroom situations where
many students do not share such a background. In this paper, we use three case studies to
address a third problem: a tendency in L2 writing instruction and research to overlook the
voices, or identities, already possessed by L2 writers, many of whom at the graduate level
bring a history of success as professional/academic writers in their native language and
culture to the L2 writing classroom. We examine the role voice can play not as a teaching
device but rather as a means by which to investigate and understand the voice-related
issues these mature writers encounter in L2 contexts. D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All
rights reserved.
Keywords: Voice; Identity; Self-representation; Multilingual writers; Graduate students

1. Introduction
Voice, as Elbow (1994a, p. xliii) has observed, is both ``a lightning rod that
attracts ideological dispute'' and a powerful metaphor that allows composition* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-614-292-6360; fax: +1-614-292-4054.
E-mail addresses: hirvela.1@osu.edu (A. Hirvela), belcher.1@osu.edu (D. Belcher).
1
Also corresponding author.
1060-3743/01/$ see front matter D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
PII: S 1 0 6 0 - 3 7 4 3 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 3 8 - 2

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ists to address the complex question of how writers establish an authorial

presence or identity in their writing and how students can be taught to do so.
Yancey (1994, p. vii) calls voice ``one of the most frequent metaphors employed
in rhetoric and composition.'' Bowden (1995, p. 173) observes that voice
``remains extraordinarily popular among American composition teachers and
has a strong presence in contemporary classrooms and discussions of writing.''
However, amidst this popularity, says Elbow (1994b, p. 2), ``The term has been
used in such a loose and celebratory way as to mean almost anything.''
Furthermore, as Bowden (1995, p. 173) points out, ``there has never been a
consistent methodology for how to use it in the teaching of writing.''
We see another problem with voice, one situated in the common belief that
second language (L2) student writers must be taught how to develop or acquire a
voice. As writing teachers and researchers, we have often encountered students,
particularly at the graduate level, who already possess voices and established
identities as professional writers in their native language. Having achieved some
measure of success and recognition as first language (L1) writers, these students
come to our classrooms with an already existing self-representation of themselves
as writers, indeed as good writers. They have, by virtue of their experiences and
achievements, already grappled with many of the issues we address in L2 writing
instruction, albeit in an L1 context. They have already learned how to establish
relationships with the texts they create and the readers they address. Thus, they
are not voiceless or devoid of a writerly identity when they enter our classrooms.
As we have learned more about these students through our teaching and
research, we have come to question the emphasis placed on teaching voice. Our
concern is the extent to which it is based on the belief that students are voiceless
writers, when in fact many are not. On the other hand, we have observed that
students' success as L1 writers often fails to give them what might seem to be an
expected advantage when trying to construct a voice, or identity, as an L2 writer.
How do we explain this? What does this mean with regards to teaching voice to
such students? Are there other conceptualizations of voice that might better serve
us and our students in our writing instruction and enable us to account more
meaningfully for the issues and problems these students face in the transition from
L1 to L2 writing? These are some of the voice-related questions we have explored
in recent years in a study of several of these mature or successful writers.
In this paper, we present three case studies in which we treat voice not in its
customary role of an instructional goal, i.e., as something to be taught and
acquired, but rather as a kind of analytic device by which to understand some of
the complexities experienced by these mature writers as they undergo the often
difficult transition from L1 to L2 writing and from one writing identity to another.
That is, we investigate how we can use the concepts and terminology of voice
such common voicist terms as identity and self-representation to unravel the
ways in which voice may impact the experiences and struggles of mature
multilingual writers. For our purposes, then, these closely related voicist terms
overlap to some degree, in that we explore the various ways in which voice might

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85

be manifested in students' writing and in their thoughts about writing. Consistent

with our purposes, we find Bowden's (1999, pp. 97 98) definition of voice to be
especially useful: ``Voice as a metaphor has to do with feeling-hearing-sensing a
person behind the written words, even if that person is just a persona created for a
particular text or a certain reading.'' Using what might be called the architecture
of voice, what we are attempting to do in both our teaching and research is to
locate ``the person behind the written words'' so as to enhance our efforts to help
students engage voice in meaningful ways.
Our approach to voice is also influenced by Halasek's (1999, p. 32) reading of
the term: ``Claiming that a writer has one voice is analogous to suggesting that
she has only one writing process. Insisting that a writer has or even uses one
voice suggests that it, unlike other elements in writing, does not adapt to changes
in the rhetorical situation.'' Within the framework of this reading, she asserts that
voice researchers need to investigate ``the plural rather than the singular nature of
voice'' (p. 45). This is what we are attempting to do as we sort through the L1 and
L2 voices of our students.
In the remainder of the paper, we first look at some of the ways in which voice
has previously been treated in L2 writing scholarship and then present our own
case studies of student transitions in voice.
2. Voice in L2 composition
In the L2 domain, culturally based issues are currently dominating discussions
of voice. Ramanathan and Kaplan (1996, p. 22), for example, point out that
``audience and voice are largely culturally constrained notions, relatively inaccessible to students who are not full participants in the culture within which they are
asked to write.'' Citing Carson (1992, p. 26), they add that ``the notion of presenting
a strong self or voice in writing is a Western notion and one that is not necessarily
relevant in other cultures.'' Ramanathan and Atkinson (1999) extend this concern
by describing what they call an emphasis in composition teaching on an ``invisible
pedagogy of progressivist education'' (p. 64), an approach ``in which the individual
is foregrounded and valorized'' (p. 48). They go on to say that ```Voice' in this sense
is seen to represent linguistic behavior, which is clear, overt, expressive, and even
assertive and demonstrative,'' while recent research on communication styles
suggests that ``a broad range of the world's peoples conventionally adopt models of
and norms that are almost diametrically opposed to the one just described, in that
they foreground the subtle, interpretive, interdependent, nonassertive, and even
nonverbal character of communicative interaction'' (p. 48).
To a certain extent, compelling support for these concerns can be found in
several notable case studies and literacy narratives examining NNS students'
encounters with academic writing in English. For example, the powerful autobiographical accounts of two students from China (Gale, 1994; Shen, 1989) who
entered American universities and experienced major identity conflicts as they

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were taught and expected to write ``academese'' (Tierney, 1995, p. 386) provide
concrete illustrations of the cultural mismatch described earlier by Ramanathan
and Kaplan (1996) and Ramanathan and Atkinson (1999). Gale (1994) and Shen
(1989) offer moving portraits of the deep conflicts they experienced as they
attempted to make a transition from their Chinese selves to what Shen called an
``English identity.'' Casanave's (1992, 1995) account of a Hispanic doctoral
student's painful disciplinary acculturation experience likewise supports this
concern. For example, the more the student, Virginia, used ``Dr. Bernstein's
language'' (i.e., the ``academese'' required by one of her professors) in her
writing, the more she moved away from her L1 peer community of family and
friends. Casanave (1992, p. 165) notes, ``Language in some ways lay at the heart
of her self-identity by helping define who she was and with which reference
group she would align herself.'' In the end, Virginia could not, as a writer,
accommodate the identity represented by academic writing in English and so left
her doctoral program. Fox (1994), too, provides support for such concerns in
Chap. 5, ``Something Inside is Saying No,'' of her book Listening to the World. In
this chapter, Fox (1994) offers narratives of the struggles experienced by several
NNS graduate students as they are confronted with the differences between the
conventions of writing in their native languages and in English ``academese.''
These accounts, and those we will present later in this paper, help us better
understand the pitfalls and challenges which accompany attempts to teach voice.
They alert us to the need to be vigilant in examining the assumptions we make
about voice in teaching and research and to be sensitive to the ideological
implications of our voice-related decisions for our students and for the ways in
which we construct our classrooms.
On the other hand, a closer look at some of these accounts, especially with
respect to self and identity, demonstrates that reports of voice-related experiences
are multilayered and must be viewed from a variety of perspectives. That is, they
are not simply stories of cultural or rhetorical imposition. There are other
readings of these accounts which cast voice in a more positive light and thus
demonstrate the need to use voicist terms to tease out the full meaning of
students' experiences with voice in order to more effectively treat voice in our
teaching and research. Shen (1989, p. 459), for example, says of his movement
from a Chinese to an English identity that ``becoming aware of the process of
redefinition of these different identities is a mode of learning that has helped me
in my efforts to write in English.'' In addition to pointing out the benefit of
acquiring a new means of learning, he goes on to say of the gradual change in
his writing in English to the kind of ``academese'' often expected in Anglophone
settings that ``I welcome the change, for it has added a new dimension to me and
to my view of the world. I am not saying that I have entirely lost my Chinese
identity. In fact, I feel that I will never lose it'' (p. 465). He adds that ``looking
back, I realize that the process of learning to write in English is in fact a process
of creating and defining a new identity and balancing it with the old'' (p. 466).
Of particular interest is the final sentence of his essay, where he advises that

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87

``composition teachers not be afraid to give foreign students English `cheese'''

(p. 466) as long as this is done with proper care and speed. Gale (1994), too,
ultimately casts the struggle over identity in a somewhat positive light. For
instance, after describing her encounters with Anglophone expectations for voice
and identity, she writes of an epiphany arising from these difficult encounters in
which she came to believe that ``moving between two cultures, two languages,
and two peoples, I am allowed a larger space and a better chance for `self' to
develop'' (p. 459). Noting later in her essay that ``my teachers [in America] have
helped change my `self' by opening my eyes to different discourses and
perspectives'' (p. 461), she concludes by saying, ``I want to tell my students
that writing is a process of learning and living that has no closure: we write our
`selves' in the process of living; we learn about our `selves' in the process of
writing we are lucky that we can write'' (p. 462).
Fox's (1994) accounts of her students' experiences in writing ``academese''
also offer some encouraging perspectives on voice (though she does not use that
term). For example, an unnamed Japanese student who appears in the abovementioned chapter in her book speaks about having read the Shen (1989) paper
and describes a similar acquisition of a second identity in writing that ultimately
does not conflict with her L1 identity (pp. 71 72). Other students cited in that
chapter appear to eventually experience something along the same lines,
especially a graduate student named Carla, who speaks of how writing in English
opened up for her once she learned that the existence of different styles of writing
did not require losing her L1 identity (p. 73). Maria, another graduate student Fox
(1994) writes about in that chapter, tells Fox that ``she is happy to have a variety
of styles in her repertoire'' (p. 83) and so does not feel oppressed by the
expectation that she must use English ``academese'' in her writing. Even Surya,
the graduate student who seems to encounter the most difficulty in reconciling his
Nepalese identity with that expected of him in English, eventually reveals to Fox
(1994, p. 71) that he has become at least somewhat comfortable with the type of
writing ``that would work for a U.S. dissertation.'' Spack's (1997) 3-year
longitudinal study of a Japanese undergraduate student's experiences at an
American university also tells a story of a student (Yuko) whose academic
literacy experiences in English gradually provided an opportunity for her to
exercise, in English, powers she already possessed as ``an emancipated learner''
(p. 48). While Spack (1997) does not discuss this transition specifically in terms
of voice, Yuko's experiences may have an element of voice in them. At first, she
struggled deeply with differences between Japanese and English rhetoric and
could neither read nor write successfully in her courses as a result of those
perceived differences. However, like Gale (1994) and Shen (1989), she eventually found that she could satisfy the requirements of English ``academese''
without sacrificing her Japanese rhetorical self. In gradually learning to work
with, not against, differences between the two languages, Yuko was apparently
able to visualize a new writing identity for herself in English while not feeling
that her Japanese identity or voice was threatened.

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What we see in these encounters with voice and identity is that the transitions
in identity are not smooth and, in fact, can cause considerable agony to NNS
students. Hence, we need to be mindful of the concerns raised earlier. However,
these accounts also show us that NNS students possess their own resources in
the struggle to reconcile competing expectations for voice and identity, and that,
once that reconciliation occurs, there can be a certain appreciation for the
acquisition of a new identity as a writer. Therefore, we need to better understand
the nature of these struggles so as to more effectively serve the needs of our
students and help them to find means of self-representation in written English
that complement rather than replace the identities they possess when they come
to our writing classes. To do so requires looking closely at students' encounters
with various voice or identity issues. This is where we see potential in voice as
a tool for explanation and analysis and a need to shift attention away from the
current dominant focus on teaching voice. Instead of conceptualizing voice as
an end to be acquired or achieved by students, we can reconstruct it as a means
of creating meaningful opportunities for classroom discussions of voice,
identity, and self-representation in L2 writing centered on students' L1 and
L2 experiences with voice.
3. Additional constructions of voice useful in an L2 context
In their book Theory and Practice in Writing, Grabe and Kaplan (1996, p.
373) note that ``the ability of students to find their own `voice,' and to develop a
voice that is appropriately academic, is a difficult task.'' In this section of the
paper, we want to focus briefly on two general ways in which we may be able to
ease that difficulty somewhat while at the same time bearing in mind the
legitimate voice-related concerns and problems discussed earlier. One is to
recognize that NNS students entering academic writing courses are multilingual
writers who are not voiceless, particularly the mature students with a track record
of L1 professional or academic success in writing. They are literate in their native
language and perhaps in another in addition to English. For instance, Korean and
Japanese students are also required to learn to read and write Chinese characters.
Students in European countries frequently learn to speak and perhaps read and
write in at least one other language besides their own and English. Those students
who develop some degree of literacy in this additional language might have
encounters with voice, though perhaps not explicitly or extensively. For one
thing, as Tierney (1995, p. 383) points out, ``Regardless of one's particular
theoretical outlook [on voice], an author needs to deal with who will read the
text.'' This entails an author accounting for the kind of presence s/he wishes to
establish to enhance his/her contact with the reader, and it is here where voice
may play a role. The reference to audience also brings into play the long-standing
notion of the rhetorical situation, that is, the interplay between the writer, the
subject of the text, and the reader of the text. Cherry (1988, p. 265) notes that the

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89

existence of the rhetorical situation requires consideration of ``self-representation

in written discourse'' because ``self-portrayal will vary according to the way in
which audience and other factors of the rhetorical situation are characterized.''
Ivanic (1995, p. 20) adds that ``there is an important distinction between what the
writer is doing, and who s/he is being.'' ``Being'' here refers to the writer's selfrepresentation within the rhetorical situation. What L2 writing instructors need to
bear in mind is that the multilingual writers in academic writing courses have
already gained some experience in this process of ``being'' in writing. As the
Gale (1994) and Shen (1989) literacy narratives demonstrate, that experience can
complicate the acquisition of an academic voice in English, a point that writing
instructors must bear in mind. But it also means that we know our students,
especially the mature or more experienced students, have identities as writers and
that, in that sense, discussing voice with them does not mean introducing a new
concept for which they have no schemata to draw from as these voicist
discussions take place. Instead, we need to find ways to help them make effective
use of these voice-related schemata. This leads into the second general means of
assisting the teaching of voice. Here, we want to briefly review recent conceptualizations of voice that may help us account for both the experiences and the
needs our students bring into our courses.
Perhaps the most important of these is Ivanic's (1995, 1998) notion of ``life
history.'' Ivanic has conducted extensive research involving L1 students who
return to school after years outside the school environment. In her research, she
investigates the impact of the experiences, i.e., the life histories, these students
carry into their new experiences in education. She focuses in particular on how
they approach self-representation in their writing in light of how they have
learned to identify themselves beyond school settings and how they are expected
to represent themselves in their academic writing. Noting that ``multiple and
conflicting identity is hard to ignore'' (p. 6) in these students, she frames her
examinations of these identity conflicts in explorations of their life histories.
Given the multilingual nature of students in English for academic purposes (EAP)
writing courses and, as we will discuss later, the fact that some of them have wellestablished professional identities as writers in their L1, a device like the ``life
history'' notion is extremely useful as a means of probing into the causes of
voice-related problems some students may encounter while acquiring a command
of English ``academese.'' The more we understand these life histories as they
relate to students' backgrounds as writers, the better we are able to construct the
teaching of voice to account meaningfully for those backgrounds. Imagine, for
example, how useful knowledge of the life histories of Shen and Gale would have
been to their American writing teachers insisting that Shen and Gale ``be
themselves'' while writing in English.
Another useful device is Ede's (1992) notion of ``situational voice.'' While
instructing students on style in her composition textbook, Work in Progress, Ede
(1992, p. 171) points out that ``just as people dress differently for different
occasions, so too do writers vary their style depending upon the rhetorical

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situation.'' In the same way, writers will, as pointed out by Cherry (1988), alter
their voice or presence as the elements of the rhetorical situation shift. Presenting
voice in the context of ``situational voice'' to our students can be a valuable
means of helping them adopt the ``appropriate academic voice'' Grabe and
Kaplan (1996) speak of without abandoning their L1 voices. That is, the concept
of ``situational voice'' allows us to present the kind of voice expected in
``academese'' as one more kind of voice to be included in students' repertoire
of voices, including the L1 voice or identity they already possess. This, in
essence, seems to be the discovery that Shen, Gale, Yuko, and other students
discussed earlier made over the long-term in their English writing courses and
experiences. They learned to alter their voices to meet the demands of various
rhetorical situations and to see the ability to situate their voices appropriately
within these situations as something to appreciate. Elbow (1994b, p. 19), while
discussing his controversial notion of ``resonant voice,'' says that ``selves tend to
evolve, change, take on new voices and assimilate them.'' Teaching voice
through the lens of ``situational voice'' may be a way of helping NNS students
see the acquisition of a new voice in that light, that is, as the development of an
additional and beneficial voice.
In her book Voices on Voice, Yancey (1994) draws attention to another
meaningful conceptualization of voice, one that overlaps to some degree with
Halasek's (1999) notion of voice cited earlier: multiple voices. In this view of
voice, she says, ``voice is not singular, but multiple, a medium created through
the weaving of different strands of self or selves into the fabric that at best
only pretends to be whole'' (p. xi). Here, as with situational voice, we can
introduce students, especially the already accomplished writers our research
focuses upon, to the idea of an English academic voice (that is, the voice
generally found in writing within their discourse community or preferred
research paradigm, e.g., qualitative in the humanities or quantitative in the
sciences) by drawing attention to two important points. One is the fact that they
are multilingual writers already owning at least one writerly voice in their native
language. The other is looking at English academic voice as an extension of
their already existing writing selves. While the components of English academic
voice may still seem strange, elusive, and perhaps even threatening or repressive, for reasons described earlier by Ramanathan and Atkinson (1999), the
representation of voice within the framing of ``multiple voices'' makes it easier
for us to privilege the voices already owned by students and to show them that
what we are offering them is the opportunity to add one more self or identity to
their rhetorical repertoire.
One other notion of voice that can be especially useful in the EAP writing
classroom is Cummins' (1994) concept of ``voicing.'' Interestingly, Cummins
(1994) uses the verb form of voice so as to capture its nature as an activity, as
a process, not as a fixed or final product to be measured in a piece of writing,
as represented by the much more commonly used noun form of the term. As
she explains it, ``Voicing in writing is a process of continually creating,

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91

changing, and understanding the internal and external identities that cast us as
writers, within the confines of language, discourse, and culture'' (p. 49). It is
while we are ``voicing in writing,'' she says, that we ``come to voice.'' When
we teach voice to multilingual writers (who, again, already own voices), an
emphasis on ``voicing'' may be useful in showing them that what we are
asking them to do is not to lay down a previously acquired and established
voice, but instead to continue their experience or process of voicing by
engaging voice as it is generally represented in the context of ``academese''
as defined within their discourse community. By characterizing their experiences with English academic voice as this process of voicing, we may reduce
the threats or intimidation posed by different expectations for voice and
minimize the resistance Fox (1994) speaks of in her ``Something Inside is
Saying No'' chapter.
4. Case studies of mature writers and their encounters with voice
In this section of the paper, we will focus on the voice and identity-related
experiences of three NNS graduate students who, as the title of our paper
suggests, were ``coming back to voice'' when we conducted the research reported
here. We say ``back'' to voice because voice was not a new construct or
experience for these multilingual writers. As mentioned earlier, we, as writing
instructors and as researchers, have become increasingly aware of and interested
in the prior writing experiences of our students, that is, the ``life histories'' Ivanic,
cited earlier, speaks of. In particular, we have been intrigued by those students
who had professional writing experiences, and thus established L1 voices and
identities, before encountering the demands and conventions of English ``academese'' in Anglophone university settings. In previous work (Belcher & Hirvela,
1996, 1997a, 1997b), we began examining how students like these reconcile
identity-based conflicts as they make transitions from their already formed L1
writing identities to the domain of L2 identities. In our research, we have, through
interviews of students and their graduate advisors, as well as analysis of samples
of their writing, tried to identify where, in the students' experiences and attitudes,
voice-related issues and dilemmas have been most dominant and what strategies
the students have employed to cope with the changing demands of the rhetorical
situations they have faced in moving from being professional writers in their L1
to novice writers in academic English. In the case studies that follow, we focus on
student interview data and use what we called earlier the ``architecture of voice''
to trace the presence of identity, self-representation, and voice in students'
comments on both writing and life as graduate students. Our belief is that
employing voice within this analytic framework helps foreground the voicist
issues and concerns students with established L1 voices face and thus equips
writing instructors with a deeper understanding of how to address those areas in
their pedagogy.

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4.1. Case study no. 1: Fernando

Fernando, a doctoral student in the field of mechanical engineering, was in his
mid-40s when he left his native country, Venezuela, to pursue his PhD. He had
obtained his master's degree in the same field from a large American research
university in 1982 and then returned to Venezuela to teach at a university there.
Prior to entering doctoral study, he had attained the rank of associate professor
and had served as the chair of his department. The completion of his doctorate
would bring immediate promotion to full professor. He had a total of 19 years of
teaching experience and had published what he estimated to be 40 60 scientific
papers in his native Spanish as well as two papers in English. All of these papers
were available in his department's own library. While virtually all of his
professional writing had been in Spanish, 90 95% of his professional reading
had been in English. Upon embarking on his doctoral study, then, he had
achieved success as an academic writer in his L1 and was comfortable and
confident writing in that language. As for writing in English, he expressed no
concerns about the content side because his extensive reading (in English) of
papers in his field had enabled him to maintain a solid technical vocabulary.
Because he had been writing almost exclusively in Spanish, however, he had not
retained much of the control of the nuances of written English he had acquired
while studying for his master's degree. Thus, after being admitted into his
doctoral program and writing the university's English placement exam essay, he
had been placed in the middle of the university's ESL graduate writing course
sequence rather than the higher level he might have attained previously.
In the early days of his doctoral study, what was most striking to Fernando was
what he called ``a matter of confidence.'' He explained that ``it was down,
because it's just the beginning again. This is the first thing that I faced: my selfconfidence.'' He had come from a background in which ``I was an adviser; I was
doing projects; I was teaching. I was teaching graduate courses, dealing with
professional students.'' And, as noted earlier, he had published widely in his field.
Then came the sudden transition to being a student again and to no longer writing
in the language in which he had succeeded professionally. Hence, he felt a
compelling need to establish himself, both as a writer and as a presence in his
department, in order to regain the status and confidence he had possessed in
Venezuela. In other words, he appeared to be in search of a voice, or an identity,
that would begin to approximate the one he was moving from.
The identity issues, as reflected in writing and in his other contact within his
department, emerge most powerfully in the following portion of the interview
data. Here, he had been asked whether his academic success, especially as a
professional writer, helped him as a doctoral student and whether it would help
others recognize his success. He replied:
It would be for the people who went through my papers and saw my curriculum.
It could be. But they don't know me. They don't know me at all. So my first

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93

thing, my first part, my first job was to let them know me first . . . This kind of
thing I don't have to face at this point in my own country. Here I have to do it.

In response to a follow-up question based on the answer above, he explained

that what was important to him was to help others ``to know that I have the
capability to be good at something. Yes, that's what I was trying to say when I
said, `to know me.''' Later, he added:
But it was very important for me to let them know that I'm here. Because before
coming here, I was director at a school. That means I was the chairperson of the
department. So, I was a professor, I was the chairman of my department, I was
the academic coordinator . . .

We can see in these comments that Fernando is proud of his professional

achievements and his status as a faculty member. However, there also seems to
be considerable frustration arising from his belief that these accomplishments,
even if others are aware of them, are not bringing him the level of recognition he
desires. This is reflected in his statement, ``they don't know me,'' and in his shift
from the definite ``would'' to the less certain ``could'' when he discusses the
impact knowledge of his writing would have on those around him. Interestingly,
he revealed later that ``most of my writing is going to be in English'' upon
completion of his doctorate. This intention to produce papers in English,
together with the other comments we have reported, suggests that an ability to
publish in English, with the subsequent development of an English writing
identity (within the context of what he called the ``technical writing'' dominant
in literature in his field) accompanying acquisition of English ``academese,''
might best suit Fernando's needs. In other words, this is not a case of ``something inside is saying no,'' to use Fox's (1994) language, with regards to writing
in English. Even though Fernando fully intended to return to his native country,
where he could once again publish exclusively in Spanish, it appeared that he
had begun to equate achievement, and in our view identity, with writing (and
other scholarly activities) in English as well. In other words, something inside
was saying yes (to paraphrase Fox, 1994) to this experience. Looking ahead to a
future in which he hoped ``it would be easy for me to publish articles in these
technical journals'' in English, he appeared to be open to acquiring the knowledge and conventions of English academic writing that would enable him to
achieve recognition in the department in which he was a doctoral student and in
the years beyond acquiring his degree. Here, we come again to his desire to have
members of his disciplinary community ``know me.'' This emphasis on ``me''
suggests to us that he wanted something beyond the technical aspects of the
papers to shine through. He apparently hoped that something of himself,
something deeper than the correct verb choices and rhetorical structure of an
academic paper, would be revealed in his texts. We believe that something extra
falls in the domain of voice, identity, and self-representation. And this ``me'' he
referred to was not necessarily a new me, because it was the expertise he already
possessed that he wished to be recognized for. Thus, the development of a voice

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in English would be an extension of his already highly established Spanish voice

or identity.
In this case, then, there was not a problem of cultural imposition, though
Fernando spoke of cultural differences between writing in English and in
Spanish. He also spoke of the extreme similarities of scientific papers in the
two languages, so that there was in fact not a great cultural divide he would
have to cross to write scientifically in English. He referred to having ``lost
my practice'' in English after completing his master's degree and returning
to Venezuela, but he did not see regaining this ``practice'' as a major
obstacle. Indeed, he worked hard in his EAP writing course and reacquired
that practice so quickly that he was exempt from the EAP coursework that
otherwise would have followed. Here, it is important to remember that, while
he had not written in English after his return to Venezuela (he had published
his two papers in English during his first period of study in the U.S.), he
had maintained steady contact with English ``academese'' through his reading
of professional journals. This is an important point to bear in mind with
regards to many NNS students. While they may have few opportunities to
use other language skills in English, they are likely to have read frequently
in English prior to their overseas study. And in this reading, they are
encountering voice as represented in English, so that, when faced later with
demands to write in an English voice, they are not unfamiliar with that
voice. Students in the sciences, for example, may well have detected some
of the elements of what might be called ``scientific voice'' through
their reading.
With regards to Fernando, his comments suggest that he was eager to
acquire an additional identity that would complement the one he already
possessed and would be advantageous to his future as a scientist and a faculty
member. With intentions to publish in the future in English (as well as
Spanish), he appeared to see himself as being multivoiced, and could be said
to be developing a kind of ``situational voice'' concept in which he would
move between his L1 and L2 voices as circumstances dictated. Furthermore,
because of the strong similarities he identified between Spanish and English
``technical'' (to use his term) writing, the writing he was performing in English
as a doctoral student could be seen as an example of Cummins' (1994)
``voicing in writing.'' That is, he was not adopting a new voice or persona as a
scientific writer; instead, he was drawing upon the knowledge of technical
writing in Spanish he already possessed, as well as what he had previously
learned while publishing his two papers in English, to accommodate his
changed circumstances as a doctoral student. In the course of this voicing,
he was attempting to construct an English identity necessary (in his view) to
gain the respect he desired in his new discourse community. He recognized
that acquiring this new English identity would not be easy, but, like students
whose experiences we analyzed earlier, he saw value in the identity he would
develop and the English voice through which his work would be expressed.

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4.2. Case study no. 2: Jacinta

Jacinta was a doctoral student in agricultural economics who was well into the
data gathering and writing of her dissertation when we began interviewing her as
part of our voice research. A Spanish-speaking native of Peru, she had spent 10
years there teaching at a private, Catholic university prior to coming to the U.S.
and entering her doctoral program. She had published a number of academic
papers in Spanish but had not, at that point, attempted to publish in English.
However, it was her intention, upon returning to Peru, to shift to some extent to
publishing internationally in English in addition to continuing to publish in
Spanish. She hoped to publish a few papers in English with her professors in the
U.S. while completing her doctorate and expressed some frustration and confusion over the fact that this had not happened up to that point.
Like Fernando, Jacinta was confronted with a difficult change in status when
she left Peru and became a doctoral student. As she explained, ``Starting here to
study was really hard, because I was coming from my position as professor.''
For one thing, she said, she was sometimes taught by professors younger than
her. In addition, a number of students in her program were also from Spanishspeaking backgrounds, and she felt a natural inclination to respond to them
from her customary position within the professor student dynamic. Then, too,
their expectations for Jacinta because of her professorial standing were quite
high and created additional pressure as she negotiated the challenges and
struggles of life as a doctoral student. Interestingly, Fernando had reported
feeling the same kind of pressure. He was acutely aware of how his doctoral
classmates as well as students he taught as a graduate assistant might react if he,
``the professor,'' was, for example, unable to solve certain problems. In the end,
according to Jacinta, ``It's much better if you are not having background'' when
returning to school as a student.
In some important regards, though, especially with respect to writing and
voice, Jacinta's experiences contrasted sharply with Fernando's. For instance,
Fernando's doctoral professors apparently had little sense of the extent of his
professional background and achievements in Venezuela, and for him, as we have
seen, it was a matter of considerable importance to help them see how
accomplished he was. Jacinta faced a very different situation. This had to do
with confusion over the degree to which her identity was, and should be, rooted
in a Marxist paradigm. For instance, one of her coadvisers stated that ``she
[Jacinta] was an established professional writer in a Marxist paradigm,'' with
reference to her scholarly work in Peru, and felt that she would need to adopt a
different paradigm in her doctoral work a situation Jacinta was not comfortable with. He attributed some of the problems she experienced as a doctoral
student to her difficulties in making this paradigm shift. Meanwhile, Jacinta
provided ambiguous signals with respect to her paradigm affiliation. It was
important to her to construct an identity in which she demonstrated her deep
social concerns, but the ideological position she believed reflected such concerns

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was not entirely clear. In our interviews, for example, she sometimes distanced
herself from a Marxist ideology, but at other times made comments suggesting a
certain comfort level with Marxism. Because she was in economics, a field where
ideological discussions and rhetorical positioning play more central roles than in
scientific writing (which is also ideological, but at the same time, as Bazerman,
1988 notes, places greater stress on consensus building), Jacinta's identity-based
needs as a writer were more complex than Fernando's. She needed to create an
identity, or self-representation, which clarified her ideology, while Fernando
simply wanted to draw attention to an identity he already possessed by forming
an equivalent identity as a scientific writer in English.
In addition, Jacinta did not feel the confidence in her L1 writing voice that
Fernando did. She explained that ``even in Spanish I have some problems. It
will take me time to think the ideas clearly because I have to consider the
background to justify the arguments.'' As such, she was usually ``giving my
drafts to somebody else two or three other professors [who] were helping
me to do some improvement in the presentation of the ideas in Spanish.'' By
contrast, Fernando expressed strong confidence in his understanding of the
rhetorical structure of scientific papers in Spanish and in his ability to
manipulate that structure.
That Jacinta had published a number of papers in her L1 was a matter of pride
to her. She commented, for example, on how happy (and surprised) she had felt
while back in Peru conducting her doctoral research when people mentioned that
they had read her publications. Still, it might be said that, to some extent, Jacinta
relied on others in the construction of her L1 voice note that the help she
sought from colleagues was in the development of arguments, in which an
author's presence or voice is reflected, not in correcting minor stylistic points
while Fernando seemingly had constructed and maintained his own L1 voice. His
writing, focusing as it did on more technical matters, did not entail overtly
establishing ideological positions or writing in an explicitly persuasive mode, as
Jacinta's did. While scientific writing does involve the construction of an
argument in the sense of persuading readers of the relevance of the research
conducted, the validity of the research methodology selected, and the accuracy
and significance of the results reported, these rhetorical elements can be
controlled by straightforward descriptions of the research conducted. Because
she was writing in the discipline of economics, Jacinta needed to engage in
complex rhetorical positioning with respect to competing theories and ideologies
and with respect to where her data and interpretations located her within
controversies and points of contention in her field. She spoke, for example, of
the physical dangers arising from the arguments writers in her field developed in
view of the complex and volatile political situation in her country. For instance,
would a certain argument on economic development cast the author in dangerous
support of, or equally dangerous opposition to, the Shining Path revolutionary
group? Voice and self-representation in academic writing, then, carried a weight
for her that did not apply in Fernando's case.

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Like Fernando, Jacinta had long read extensively in English in her field.
However, where Fernando's reading had helped him recognize the similarities
between writing scientifically in Spanish and English thus adding to his
confidence level and probably assisting in his ``voicing'' in Jacinta's case, it
appeared to have made her more aware of, and perhaps intimidated by, various
rhetorical differences between the two languages. For example, reading provided
her with valuable awareness of differences in Spanish and English argumentative
development, but it did not appear to have supplied her with the kinds of
schemata Fernando had obtained and was able to put to use with some degree of
comfort. Although reading had offered her some insight into what needed to be
done, Jacinta struggled to find ways to position her dissertation data and analyses
so as to develop coherent and persuasive arguments.
At certain crucial turns in her academic writing road, then, Jacinta experienced
struggles that significantly complicated her acquisition of an effective L2
academic voice. She sought a self-representation or identity that was neither
Marxist nor capitalist (``I don't think I am Marxist . . . there are other positions
than two'') in a situation where there appeared to be a mismatch between
Jacinta's and the coadviser's notion of what would constitute an appropriate
ideological stance and voice in her dissertation. At the same time, she had to write
within a rhetorical mode argumentation that she was not entirely
comfortable with in her L1 and that she believed was constructed quite differently
in her L1 than in English. She also faced the pressure of satisfying the demands of
her other coadviser, a native speaker of English, who, according to Jacinta, was
``always correcting me in red, and always saying `Nobody will be interested in
this! You're always doing the same mistakes. Try to remember, Jacinta.'''
In light of these circumstances, Jacinta's journey ``back to voice'' presents
more serious challenges in terms of the acquisition of a new voice than does
Fernando's. Her success at publishing in Spanish suggests that she carried a
certain level of familiarity with voice-related issues into her doctoral study, while
her return to life as a student within a different linguistic and cultural context,
together with her hopes of publishing in the future in English, suggest that she
sensed the value of adopting a new writing voice if she were to achieve her goals.
She knew that her dissertation, given her field, would require developing a
persuasive voice in English. Thus, while acquiring this new voice would be a
difficult task, she did not resist the idea of acquiring such a voice. Indeed, the
voice she would adopt in her dissertation held significance to her not only in the
context of the practical value and self-esteem accruing from receiving her
doctoral degree but also in the sense of establishing an enhanced self-representation that would guide her professional development.
Knowing these aspects of her ``life history,'' to use Ivanic's term, would
enable writing teachers to conceptualize Jacinta's rhetorical situation in ways
helpful to her needs and demands. It would also allow them to see how
sensitive and complex her voice-related needs would be. Here is where the
teaching of voice becomes problematic due to the difficulties involved in

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helping a student achieve the voice-related goals Jacinta held, but it is also
here where the tools described earlier can be most useful. Helping Jacinta
understand that she was not voiceless rather that she was multivoiced and
``voicing'' as she attempted to construct an academic voice in English might
be especially important. Meanwhile, it is useful to bear in mind that for
Jacinta, as well as Fernando, the acquisition of an English voice was a deeply
felt desire they themselves initiated within their new learning situation, rather
than a culturally based requirement imposed upon them. For each of them,
development of an English academic voice would assist them in situations
where they felt some degree of urgency: Fernando yearning for greater
professional recognition from his professors, and Jacinta wanting a selfrepresentation that would clearly be seen, and accepted, as neither Marxist
nor capitalist.
While not wanting to minimize the voice-related difficulties accompanying
both Fernando's and especially Jacinta's situation, we are also reminded here of
a point made by Elbow (1999, p. 328), who maintains that ``we do no favor to
L2 students who want to prosper in an individualistic culture'' by denying them
the opportunity to acquire those elements of ``academese,'' which lead to
success as writers within that culture and which they actively seek. It seems
reasonable to assume that Jacinta and Fernando, recognizing how they would
benefit from possession of an English academic voice, would want help from
their writing instructors (and other faculty providing writing-related supervision
or instruction, such as thesis and dissertation advisers) in acquiring those
aspects of Anglophone writing that would facilitate the construction of their
new voices. For Jacinta, in particular, such instruction, far from creating unfair
barriers she would have to resist or overcome, might instead empower her as a
multivoiced individual in search of an accurate self-representation within the
English ``academese'' of economics.
4.3. Case study no. 3: Carmen
A longtime writer by profession, Carmen's encounters with English academic voice and issues concerning self-representation in writing are especially
interesting in the context of ``voicist'' discussions presented earlier. She brought
to her graduate study in the U.S. a particularly intriguing ``life history,'' in that
her entrance into graduate school represented not just a change in status but in
career as well. Prior to entering her master's degree program in the U.S.,
Carmen had worked in her native Brazil as a print journalist reporter, writer,
and editor for 20 years and had achieved considerable success in this field.
Most of her journalistic work had dealt with agricultural issues, leading her to
study in the U.S. in the field of agricultural education. Of particular significance
in Carmen's case is the fact that she came into graduate school with an
established and respected journalistic voice as well as a great deal of confidence
and self-esteem as a writer in her native Portuguese.

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Our research with Carmen extended from the beginning of her master's level
study to the completion of her doctorate. During this 5-year period, we saw her
repeatedly engage issues of voice and self-representation as she traversed the
complex paths crossing back and forth between her established L1 voice and the
L2 voice that she gradually constructed. Her painful and yet ultimately successful
engagement with voice was perhaps best captured in a phrase we heard her use
time and again: ``my struggle.'' This struggle entailed many mini- or substruggles. One resembled that which we saw in our discussions of Fernando
and Jacinta: the extreme difficulty of making the transition from holding a
position of professional respect in the native country to the anonymous and
relatively powerless life of a graduate student in the new country. Another was to
find ways to fully enact the idealism that had motivated her entire professional
life. As she told us in our first interview, ``I always had this ideal of helping
people like change their lives, not only in agriculture, but in my other areas.'' As
she moved through her master's and doctoral programs, this remained a key goal
for her and played a major role in her selection of a dissertation topic. For this
reason, both her master's thesis and doctoral dissertation were not just written
documents; they also represented what she called ``my life as a person'' in the
sense that through them she would be empowered to help people improve their
lives while at the same time finding a vital voice for herself in articulating the
findings and significance of her research. With this sense of mission guiding her
throughout her graduate school years, Carmen placed particular importance on
having thesis and dissertation advisers who shared a passion for her struggle. This
was keenly reflected in the intensity with which she informed us, early in her
doctoral program, that one of her dissertation advisers ``likes my struggle'' and
had wanted to advise her in part for that reason.
What stands out most of all, however, is the compelling combination of
Carmen's difficulties and desires with respect to ``coming back to voice'' in the
context of writing in English. Whereas Fernando and Jacinta were voiced
individuals within the fields they had established themselves in professionally
and so were ``coming back to voice'' by extending the voices they already
possessed, Carmen was faced with the prospect of adopting a very different
voice. She was powerfully voiced in Portuguese as a journalist; now, she was
seeking to develop an academic voice in English that would fit her needs as a
graduate student but at the same time be intimately connected to her struggle.
Because writing had been the source of her livelihood in Brazil as well as the
means by which she attempted to change people's lives, Carmen sought a voice
in English that would have similar powers. Like Fernando and Jacinta, then, she
came to graduate school seeking a new voice rather than being opposed to having
to acquire one. However, unlike them, she was forced to confront expectations for
this new voice that were diametrically opposed to the ways in which she had
voiced for 20 years as a journalist in Portuguese. From the very beginning, she
saw this as a difficult change from what she called the ``emotive'' journalistic
writing she had done, and succeeded at, for so long, to the ``scientific'' writing

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expected of her in graduate school. And because writing, whether in Portuguese

or English, was a central part of ``my life as a person,'' this shift to scientific
writing was, from the start, a voice-related experience for her. It was also a
transition in voice that she appeared to accept from the start. As she said, ``So I
think that the scientific writing . . . I have to change to that method . . . It's the
more scientific texts that have some changes which I need to make.''
Perhaps because she had been a writer and editor for so long, Carmen was a
careful observer of writing and so developed a solid understanding of what
constituted this more scientific style of writing, but she struggled for several years
to gain a command of such writing. As she put it early in her graduate school
years, ``I never had to put so much effort in anything [in writing] like I'm having
to now.'' Here, she noted that this was not just a matter of English or of the
demands of an American graduate school; she doubted her ability to write quality
``scientific Portuguese'' if she were a graduate student in Brazil. Part of her
struggle, then, became an ongoing personal investigation of ways of applying her
Portuguese journalistic writing skills to the rhetorical situations she faced as a
graduate student writing in English. As she worked through her master's degree
thesis, she believed that she would need to abandon her journalistic style and
voice, though the desire to use them remained. She felt she could use other skills
she had developed as a journalist ``Probably I have to use the training of, like,
being aware of people's reactions'' but the journalistic ways of approaching a
topic, as well as differences between the Portuguese and English languages,
required considerable distancing from her long-established L1 writing practices.
In the midst of her master's degree program, for example, she explained of
writing in English that ``every time I'm going to write something, gosh, I keep
moving things upside down, backwards, you know, trying to make sense
looking for good English, but never good English.'' At this point, she also faced a
situation in which she felt there was no room for her own voice, whatever the
language. This was as she attempted to write her thesis and encountered her
adviser's strongly held ideas about ``academese.'' She noted that ``I was coming
into despair because I couldn't say (emphasis hers) what he [her adviser] wanted
me to say.'' This dilemma, in which she felt her voice was completely excluded
from her thesis, eventually led her to distance herself from that document, despite
its importance and the amount of time and effort she invested in researching and
writing it. A few years later, after completing a doctoral dissertation in which she
felt she could write scientifically in some comfort, she evaluated the two writing
experiences by saying ``I feel that I own, I own more my dissertation than I did
my thesis. It's mine. I see that. I know every word; I know every comma; I know
where things are.'' On the other hand, there was, by this time, no sense of
ownership at all toward her master's thesis.
Carmen's struggle to acquire a voice in English she was comfortable with
that is, to ``come back to voice'' in a manner consistent with her longtime identity
as a writer was also significantly problematized by the way in which her
English academic texts were read. Here, her ``life history'' as a professional

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journalist created complex challenges for her. As she explained at one point, ``But
usually, and this is my concern here in English this is probably why I feel so
stupid sometimes they [her editors in Brazil] never changed my articles. I used
to have a wonderful text in Portuguese. I always could catch the attention of the
reader.'' Here, we see vivid signs of her identity as an L1 writer and an
explanation as to why writing English ``academese'' posed such problems for
her. She wanted desperately to ``catch the attention of the reader'' in her English
academic papers, but she saw little, if any, room for doing so within the scientific
orientation of such texts. Lacking opportunities to appeal more directly to her
readers, and having her writing corrected extensively in her thesis and dissertation situations, she apparently struggled with a belief that she was not ``voicing''
to the extent that she wished. However, while she saw no representation of herself
in her thesis, there was a sense, as she wrote her doctoral dissertation, of selfrepresentation emerging, culminating in what we saw earlier: her eventual belief
in her ownership of that text.
Interestingly, this was not in the more obvious context of using the personal
pronoun ``I'' (which was frowned upon in her field and which she did not use).
Rather, she had come to feel considerable confidence in her skills as a researcher
and as a reader of professional literature in her area (she spoke at length and with
considerable pride about the writing of her 100+-page literature review, for
example, and noted how she applied her critical reading skills to her L1 as well:
``I can't read anything in Portuguese without being very critical now''), and so
she appeared to believe that a degree of self-representation was reflected in her
approach to academic writing and reading. In this quiet, less overt authorial
presence for herself, some vestige of a new voice had emerged.
That Carmen could come to experience some degree of self-representation
through her handling of her quantitative (survey-based) research was particularly
interesting because, as she entered her doctoral program, she became fascinated
by qualitative research methodologies. She had taken a qualitative research
course and saw parallels between research in that paradigm and in journalism
(where she often wrote feature stories about individuals), leading her to believe
that she might be able to resurrect at least some of her journalistic skills and
voice. She had also been talking with others of her journalistic background. Thus,
early in her doctoral study, she found herself thinking:
I am allowing myself to think now because I was also empowered by
knowledge that I can use some skills that I used to have in building a new text
that will keep people interested in reading. But of course I know that I have a lot.
I'm just allowing myself to think that it might be possible again to merge those
two parts of my life.

Later, though, as she recognized difficulties in researching and writing

qualitatively in her very quantitatively oriented field, she began to reconceptualize the value of her journalistic identity to her dissertation experience. When
asked if she was still looking for ways to connect her journalistic skills to her

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doctoral endeavors, she replied ``Yeah. I have thought of that recently. I think the
connection between my journalistic background and being a doctoral student is
my curiosity. So this field, research, fills the gap between them.'' Writing about
her research, then, even in the cool matter-of-fact manner associated with
describing and discussing quantitative data, apparently became Carmen's new
venue for voice and self-representation, as well as a close link to her past selfrepresentation, since research skills are essential in journalism and doctoral study.
This was probably where Carmen experienced her most direct contact point with
the notion of ``coming back to voice.'' In our first interview early in her master's
degree study, she firmly responded to our question about whether she intended to
return to her journalistic career by declaring, ``I've finished with that.'' Nearly 5
years and a thesis and dissertation later, she explained that ``now I'm tempted to
bring back some of my characteristics as a journalist'' and added, in response to
the same question posed earlier about whether she would return to journalism:
You know, sometimes when I think about all the excitement that you should
have writing and editing these papers, it's so good; it's like a dream. If I could,
with what I know now in terms of analysis and the way I can look at things, now,
with my analytical skills, I would do a great job. And with my planning and my
organization I learned and developed here but it pays so bad [in Brazil].

In this comment, a few notable points emerge. One is that Carmen came back
to voice in two ways: through the development of a strong new voice and
identity as a researcher and through the looping back, in a sense, to her L1
professional voice, which she felt renewed interest in after pushing it aside, by
choice and necessity, a few years earlier. This kind of movement in and through
voice of a mature, multilingual writer adds depth to our understanding of the
complex ways in which such writers experience voice-based transactions and
transitions. Another point is the way in which voice and self-representation
emerged for Carmen: not through the overt ways in which voice is generally
thought to be reflected, i.e., through expressive writing where the author's
thoughts and identity are clearly indicated, but through the activities that made
her writing possible. That is, Carmen found that the procedures she constructed
in her research enabled a voice of her own to be present in her writing about that
research. She still looked for ways of injecting herself into her writing more
directly e.g., asking her coadviser to ``let me have a little bit of myself here''
at certain points in her dissertation but presenting quality research that had
meaningful implications for her readers was a higher priority at this point. The
significance of this change is reflected in her post-dissertation comment that
``I'm more concerned now about where the reader is, more concerned about the
reader. I was very selfish before.'' This observation suggests that she was
satisfied with having a more subtle presence, or self-representation, in the text
than was true in her years as a journalist.
While it is important to remember a point made earlier that Carmen, like
Fernando and Jacinta, sought a new voice (and in the end was pleased by the

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acquisition of that voice) it is equally important to bear in mind how she

struggled deeply with the processes involved in constructing that voice. She
wrote a thesis that ``is not my text'' because of her adviser's directive approach
from beginning to end, and even as she was writing her dissertation was troubled
by the idea that ``I'm not sure if I'm allowed to have a style in English.'' What
she called ``my struggle'' was felt deeply and continually in her encounters with
English ``academese,'' at least in part because she saw herself engaging a
rhetorical situation in which the voice she brought to it was not valued. This
side of the voice equation, one that likely extends beyond Carmen to many other
NNS writers, is of course disturbing. However, there is another side of the voice
equation in Carmen's experiences that is also worth remembering: the sense of
urgency she felt about learning how to represent herself while writing academically in English. She, like Fernando and Jacinta, was determined to ``come back
to voice'' and understood that she was not voiceless in the process, even though
her voice was muted at times.
5. Conclusion
Our primary intention in this paper has been to contribute to discussions of
voice in academic writing instruction by examining how NNS students' already
established L1 voices and identities enter into the L2 writing equation and by
exploring ways in which the terminology of voice can be used to analyze
students' transitions in voice. While we share the concerns raised in previous
studies about the imposition on students of culturally biased notions of voice
which clash with their own L1 experiences of and beliefs about voice or selfrepresentation in writing, we also feel that too little attention has been paid to the
nature of these L1 experiences as well as to students' own hopes and attitudes
regarding acquisition of an L2 voice. Furthermore, we believe that the emphasis
on how to teach voice has obscured the value of voice as an interpretive device.
Acquiring a deeper understanding of students' voicist experiences and problems
by using various constructions of voice, such as self-representation and identity,
to analyze student self-reports on voice will enrich voicist research and create
more meaningful grounds for eventual teaching of voice. Treating voice more
prominently as an analytical tool allows us to highlight and then investigate voice
as students experience it, leading to what can then be more informed pedagogy.
By focusing on the voice-related experiences and needs or desires of three
Latin American graduate students who entered graduate study in an Englishmedium setting as established writers in their native languages, we have tried to
draw attention to the rich diversity of voice-related situations, which occur in
university settings, in that relatively little L2 voice research has focused on
students with such cultural and professional backgrounds. Discussions of voice
and NNS university students sometimes treat these students as one homogeneous
group; we have attempted to put some faces to that group through these case

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studies. In doing so, we hope we have shown that such variables as the students'
status as graduate/mature students, their chosen disciplinary community, their
native language and culture, and their prior academic or professional writing
experience need to be accounted for in discussions of voice. For instance, the
knowledge that Fernando was in a scientific disciplinary community and had a
long record of publications in his own language, publications with a voice
apparently much like that expected of him in English, is essential if we are to
discuss how to teach voice in a graduate level writing course, that is, within a
particular rhetorical situation.
Fernando, Jacinta, and Carmen brought remarkably rich and equally complex
writing and identity backgrounds to their lives as graduate students. They were
multilingual and, as published writers, already engaged in issues pertaining to
voice. Far from voiceless or uninterested in the matter of self-representation or
identity in writing, they were, in a sense, ``voicing'' as they entered the domain of
English academic writing. In the cases of Jacinta and Carmen, there were
significant struggles when they felt they could not voice as they wished to.
Eventually, though, it seems to us that our participants conceptualized voice and
identity on their own terms in accordance with their own needs and hopes. For
Fernando, the new voice, which would closely resemble the voice he already
possessed, would draw attention to his Venezuelan professorial identity. For
Jacinta, the new voice would bring clarity to the question of the extent to which
her identity was Marxist. For Carmen, the new voice, while very different in style
than her L1 journalistic voice, would ultimately connect to the skills that had
been vital in the development of her journalistic voice, thus creating a kind of
bridge between the two voices.
This is not to say that other students would experience voice in the same ways
these three students did. But that is part of our point: It is difficult to generalize
about NNS university students with respect to voice when they bring such widely
varying backgrounds to the voice equation. Woodworth (1994, p. 145) writes of
the need to find approaches to teaching voice in which we are ``leading students
to a fuller awareness of the repertoire of voices they already own.'' While the
teaching of voice entails far more than creating such awareness, we see this as a
helpful starting point in voice pedagogy. We also see a need to better equip
academic writing instructors to acquire awareness of those repertoires by placing
increased emphasis on voice as an analytic tool. Instructors' improved understanding of these repertoires will help to alert and to sensitize them to the
complexities of the voice equation as they will encounter it in their own teaching
contexts. We hope, too, that such awareness will enable them to carefully
configure the elements of the real-world rhetorical situations facing NNS writers.
Yancey (1994) writes of the need to broaden our understanding of ``the
landscape of voice.'' That landscape is particularly complicated in L2 academic
writing instruction. If we are to gain a clearer view of that landscape, we must
better understand the voices and experiences of the students who populate it. We
also need to better define, in an L2 context, voicist terms, such as identity, self-

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105

representation, and of course voice itself. We hope that, in this paper, we have
demonstrated to some degree how those terms are experienced by certain kinds of
NNS writers so that we can factor these experiences into future attempts to define
the terminology of voice. Our research in this paper was framed within the
Bowden (1995) definition cited earlier ``Voice as a metaphor has to do with
feeling-hearing-sensing a person behind the written words'' as a result of our
belief that, as we confront the challenges of voice, we need to better understand
the already existing voices and identities of the multilingual writers we research
and teach as well as the process of voicing they may be undergoing. We need
greater emphasis on trying to locate the writerly person, the identities and selfrepresentations, ``behind the written words'' of our students if we are to assist
them meaningfully in their voicing.
Acknowledgments
Our thanks to the audiences and copresenters at our TESOL presentations on
voice for their valuable comments and insights on the issues and case studies we
have discussed here and to the reviewers of this paper.
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