Double-voicing and the scholarly ‘I’: On incorporating the words of others in academic discourse

Abstract

In this article I argue that, for student writers, learning how to write academic essays is not simply a technical matter of learning to deploy the grammar of quotation and reference to the work of others. It involves learning how to take up a writing position (the scholarly 'I' of the title). One important aspect of the assumption of this writing position is the incorporation of the words of (authoritative) others into text. In doing so the student academic writer must also learn how to take up an authoritative position with regard to the quoted other. This double requirement of the academic writing position is captured by Bakhtin's concept of double-voicing. In this article I examine the ways that student writers take up authoritative writing positions in relation to the sources they quote and argue that in doing so they are writing themselves into disciplinary positions. This is made more complex by the fact that disciplines themselves are not tidy, homogeneous discourse communities, but are, in important ways, constituted through difference. Student writers are therefore learning to take up writing positions in disciplinary spaces that are heterogeneous and potentially conflictual. I illustrate the discussion with data from a study of students writing in a discipline area relatively new to the university: nursing.