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Abstract

Guiding historically minoritized students in their textual voice construction entails navigating the tensions between these white-dominant monolingual voices and the diverse voices they bring to the classroom. This conceptual paper presents an ecological voice-construction process model that sheds light on how writers negotiate external and internal expectations in their writing. These expectations are derived from the political, sociocultural, dialogic, and personal contexts in which voice construction is situated. The model establishes four interrelated processes for negotiating textual voice corresponding to each context: negotiating power relations and ideologies, entering the conversation, engaging the reader, and connecting with the self. This model contributes as a reflection tool aiding writing instructors and researchers in identifying the voice-construction processes that they privilege in their instruction and considering how to address the tensions between socializing students in the academic genres and creating opportunities for innovation that center students’ cultural and linguistic knowledge. Ultimately, this model provides a framework for designing integrated content and writing instruction that stimulates historically minoritized students to leverage all their cultural, linguistic, and experiential resources to construct authentic and authoritative textual voices that respond to and talk back to the expectations and conventions of the genre.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5422/jmer/2022-2023.v12.39-56

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