ABSTRACT

This book is a response to conventional, interpretive, and critical conceptions of voice in qualitative inquiry. We, along with the contributing authors, have become well aware of how voice has frequently been privileged because it has been assumed that voice can speak the truth of consciousness and experience. In these paradigms, voice lingers close to the true and the real, and because of this proximity, has become seen almost as a mirror of the soul, the essence of the self. Qualitative researchers have been trained to privilege this voice, to ‘free’ the authentic voice from whatever restrains it from coming into being, from relating the truth about the self. This drive to make voices heard and understood, bringing meaning and self to consciousness and creating transcendental, universal truths, gestures toward the primacy of voice in conventional qualitative research.