2.3 Synthesizing Diverse Voices: Building Credibility Through Polyvocality

As the notion of linguistic justice highlights, different groups will have different takes on any given issue, and those different perspectives are grounded in their lived experiences, inevitably reflecting their own identities and positionality. In representing an issue, then, it is valuable to consider the range of relevant voices and perspectives that might be brought to bear, and to represent those voices and perspectives fairly.

At the end of this module, you will be asked to use synthesis to represent the various perspectives on linguistic justice that we have reviewed in this module. Each person in this class will synthesize in a different way, highlighting a different theme based on their own unique positionality. Look ahead to that assignment now to review the description and make a plan for your research and synthesis project.

The practices of annotation and summary we’ve been practicing throughout this text can help you to develop your own understanding of complex issues and sources. Once you have developed an overall understanding of each individual source or perspective, synthesis brings those disparate voices together. Together, these strategies will help you be confident about your own topic; they’ll also help you build credibility with your audience by showing your research and expertise.

In synthesizing sources (see “Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Avoiding Plagiarism” [Website]), it is important to recognize that you are not the first person talking about this topic, but are joining an ongoing conversation that others have already been engaging with. In order to make a contribution to that conversation, you will need to inform yourself and your audience about the context of the conversation and its participants. You’ll also need to recognize your own role in this conversation—the value of your own perspectives, experiences, and stories in contributing to a collective understanding or guiding action around a given issue. That is, synthesis does not mean just summarizing other people’s arguments in their own terms, but instead means bringing other people’s arguments together in a polyvocal (incorporating multiple voices or perspectives) weave along with your own perspectives to reveal how they connect to and differ from one another in a broader conversation, and what you are adding to this conversation through your writing.

When considering synthesis, it’s also important to move beyond simply thinking about counterarguments. The incorporation of counterarguments in academic writing relies on a tradition of binary, agonistic (hostile or competitive, rather than collaborative) modes of discourse. By emphasizing intersectionality and positionality, we hope to convey the value of diverse voices as part of our collective understanding of complex topics. By purposefully bringing different perspectives together, we generate a more complete and accurate representation of a given topic.

Says Who? Quoting and Paraphrasing

The next step is to bring those different sources and ideas together into your own work, transforming them into a new piece that responds to your own rhetorical context and purposes. At this point, you should think about quotation and paraphrasing as strategies for capturing unique voices and perspectives relevant to your analysis.

Writers quote and paraphrase in order to support their points and demonstrate that they are contributing to a broader conversation about a given topic. A quote or a paraphrase from a relevant, credible source answers the reader’s question, “says who?”

Linguistic justice draws attention to the importance of original phrasing, as opposed to paraphrasing and summarizing. When you incorporate other voices into your writing, you are bringing in authority. This is what rhetoricians call ethos—you are establishing your own positionality in relation to this conversation. The decision of what voices to bring in involves decisions about who has power and who you want to empower in a given rhetorical situation.

Consideration of authority and power is especially relevant in academic writing, since scholarly readers are most persuaded by effective research and evidence. For example, readers of an article about a new cancer medication published in a medical journal will be most interested in the research and statistics that demonstrate the effectiveness of the treatment. Conversely, they will not be as persuaded by emotional stories from individual patients about how a new cancer medication improved the quality of their lives. While this appeal to emotion can be effective and is common in popular sources, these individual anecdotes do not carry the same sort of scholarly or scientific value as well-reasoned research and evidence. The rhetorical situation matters.

This kind of academic and scholarly expertise is one kind of authority, and not the only one. Lived experience and community knowledge are other sources of authority. In CTWII, you’ll discuss this in terms of institutional, experiential, cultural, and spiritual knowledge [Chapter 6]. For now, suffice it to say that a good synthesis of perspectives should account for and value a range of perspectives and knowledge that brings different kinds of authority to bear on a topic.

Visit Research Justice [Website]

Of course, your instructor is not expecting you to be an expert on the topic of your research paper. Similarly, you are not expected to understand the nuances of someone else’s lived experience and intentions as a writer. This is why we consider how our own perspectives shape our interpretations. Doing so also gives us the opportunity to consider the benefits of summary, paraphrase, or quoting when engaging with the voices of others.

A quote is a direct restatement of the exact words from the original source. The general rule of thumb is that any time you use three or more words as they appear in the original source, you should treat them as a quote. A paraphrase, on the other hand, is a restatement of information or opinions from another source in your own words.

While quotes and paraphrases are different and should be used in different ways in your writing, they do have a number of things in common. Both quotes and paraphrases should:

• be “introduced” to the reader, particularly the first time you mention a source;
• include an explanation of the evidence and why it’s important; and
• include a proper citation of the original source.

The method you should follow to properly quote or paraphrase depends on the style guide you are following in your academic writing. The two most common style guides used in academic writing are curated by the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Psychological Association (APA). When working with community voices and less traditionally academic sources, or when writing for public audiences online or elsewhere, these style guides may be less relevant. In any case, it is crucial to give credit to the voices you are in conversation with. Ask your instructor about citation expectations if you have questions about their requirements for your particular course.

When to Quote and When to Paraphrase

The real “art” of research writing is using quotes and paraphrases from evidence effectively in order to support your point. There are certain “rules” dictated by the style you’re following, such as MLA or APA. There are also general guidelines and suggestions, like those given in the previous section, as well as the ones you will learn from your teachers and colleagues.

But when all is said and done, the question of when to quote and when to paraphrase depends a great deal on the specific context of the writing, the effect you are trying to achieve, and the relationship you have to the discourse you are representing. Honoring the diversity of your own language resources and those of others is a key learning outcome of this text.

In general, it is best to use a quote when:

• The exact words of your source are important for the point you are trying to make. This is especially true if you are quoting particularly powerful or personal phrasing, technical language, terms, or very specific word choices.
• You want to highlight your agreement or affinity with the author’s words. If you agree with the point the author makes and you like their exact words, a quote is appropriate.
• You want to highlight your disagreement with or difference from the author’s words. In other words, you may sometimes want to use a direct quote to indicate exactly what it is you disagree with.

In general, it is best to paraphrase when:

• There is no good reason to use an exact quote to refer to your evidence. If the author’s exact words are not especially important or necessary to the point you are trying to make, you are usually better off paraphrasing. This allows you to put your own personal spin on the paraphrased text, to represent it as you see it.
• You are trying to explain a particular perspective in order to explain or interpret it in more detail. This might be particularly true in writing projects like critiques.
• You need to balance a direct quote in your writing. You need to be careful about directly quoting others too much because it can sometimes make for awkward and difficult-to-read prose. One of the reasons to paraphrase instead of quoting is to create balance within your writing.

Resources

• SCU’s HUB has resource pages on linguistic justice for students (“Implications for Students” [Website]) and faculty (“Implications for Faculty” [Website]).
• Communicating Across the Curriculum: Resources for High-Impact Teaching with Writing at UW-Madison [Website] edited by Emily Hall and Abby Letak
• Black Language Syllabus [Website]
• Polyphony: Reader and  Explorations for First-Year Writing [Website] gathers texts and activities for the first-year writing classroom to facilitate critical conversations about multilingualism, the politics of language, and linguistic justice.
• Equity Literacy Project [Website]