ABSTRACT
Traditional approaches to academic writing insist on objectivity. This insistence betrays their roots in the positivist research paradigm. By objectivity in writing, they mean that the author’s hand must remain invisible. We challenge this perspective. We are not the first or only ones to do so. Times are changing. Even many in the hard sciences admit that their research does not proceed according to the procedural tenets of the scientific method, and that storytellers should have a presence, albeit a modest one, in the narratives they spin. The two pivotal concepts in this chapter, voice, and identity, are complex ones, we warn you this at the outset. To help you grasp them, we present definitions and examples from scholars who have written extensively on the subject. Linguistic devices enabling you to ‘add voice’ to your writing are many and varied. These include person choice, sentence length, active voice, and vocabulary choice. A particularly powerful tool is storytelling. Even small vignettes can make your writing memorable. They will help the reader form a view of who you are as a writer. However, they should not be inserted gratuitously, but be relevant to the subject at hand. By the end of the chapter, you should have clarified your understanding of voice and identity and be prepared to experiment with some of the techniques presented in it.
