Questioning Our Literacy

Facebook and texting is more conversational writing. Writing is a large umbrella with many little topics underneath it, such as conversational writing, scholarly writing, and free writing, just to name a few. People are able, hopefully, to tell when each one is appropriate to use when composing something.

I think, to find one’s own voice, you have to write how you feel comfortable with and in a way that gets the point across. We believe the writer might take bits and pieces of anothers' opinion but not all of it. Once they read some topic, that idea is in the mind of the other person and the writer works from there to construct their idea. Everyone’s voice is kind of a patchwork of others but by doing that, we are able to create our own.

By copying a voice or someone else's voice, writers might not exactly have their own genuinely authentic voice of their own. I think many people would like to keep to the norm, so there is little room for variations in writing. In school, it might be hard to grow a new, unique voice because teachers (at least in high schools and middle schools) try to make their students write in a certain way because some ways of writing might be too “out there.” Not trying to bash the school system or how teachers teach, but sometimes they try to push their thoughts, habits, and ways of writing onto their students.

“It depends on what you open yourself up to…what you experience and even how you’re raised.”

“I think it goes back to what we said earlier… you adopt certain ideas from other readings and use a combination of them to make your own voice. … it really depends on each person because it varies”

The media plays a big role because it exposes societies to certain things that could influence certain behaviours, way of speaking, and even people’s way of life.