Empowering Voice When You Have Something Worth Saying

by Justice Britton

Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm Theory provides a conceptual framework and/or a shared perceptual filter which centers the process of meaning-making and knowledge production within a vision of the world as a set of stories from which various communities construct and constantly re-construct their lives around. This storytelling paradigm helps social researchers explain how humans are able to understand and communicate complex chains of information over vast periods of time through narrative devices, like stories. Thus, a story derives meaning when it provides good reasons to guide future actions. What we view as “ethical” and “humane” are constantly being both preserved and re-created in how our oral traditions are maintained and modified, depending on how a particular audience’s experiences change over time. Such a rhetorical framework better emphasizes the intrinsic value that oral traditions and folktales have in shaping and reshaping everyday experiences.

I believe that Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm and how Paul Conolly and Patricia Vilardi conceive the mediative power of language in their Writing-to-Learn paradigm are essentially two sides to the same coin. Writing, much like mathematical formulations, stories, or other artistic expressions, acts as a medium by which individuals and groups can grasp or conceptualize shared understandings, experiences, and knowledge. However, in my experience as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Georgia, it has become apparent that many students are arriving in college classrooms with an inhibition to apply their own language and unique voice in both critical and informal writing.

One of the main concepts which has gained much attention in our Pedagogy of Writing in the Disciplines course this semester has surrounded the development of a false dichotomy perceived between the presentation of course content and the application of practical writing skills in the classroom. This division between educational products and their producers obstructs the ability of students to envision themselves as capable of producing socially or scientifically viable materials. And as a result, the idea that learning—and by extension writing—is merely interpreted as an empty medium for demonstrating knowledge, without really thinking critically or contributing anything to the collective understanding of an issue. However, students do not develop the critical thinking and communication skills necessary for any career in STEM, let alone the ability to equitably contribute to any form of knowledge production, by regurgitating information they cannot identify with. Rather learning and writing should be envisioned as an ongoing and collaborative process of inquiry, knowledge-sharing, and collectively developing solutions.

Learning and writing should be envisioned as an ongoing and collaborative process of inquiry, knowledge-sharing, and collectively developing solutions.

An effective reform of such stunted writing practices embedded across a variety of disciplines requires an integrative effort of developing courses and coursework which promotes practical content engagement, learning through writing, and the enactment of that engagement through more accessible writing assignments. The writing process can essentially be seen to act as a performance, demonstrating students’ abilities to comprehend subject matter, think critically, question content, and communicate these layers of ideas. And considering the performative nature of writing, I believe that the exposure of student writers to more informal educational mechanisms like storytelling and the experienced performers conducting them would work to demonstrate the practical value of effective critical communication, as well as the insights provided by the contribution of individual and community voices, including their own, to benefit all disciplines.