Writer's Voice: The Gateway to Dialogue

Abstract

Writer's voice is a term that is used almost universally in composition instruction. Despite the widespread use of the term, there is no consensus amongst scholars with respect to a standard definition of the term. This paper offers a new conceptualization of voice with a focus on academic literacy and student writers. Through a merging of Vygotsky's theory of Inner Speech and External Thought with Bakhtin's concept of the Utterance a definition of writer's voice is proposed that honors both meaning-making and text production in academic discourse.