"American Tongues"

Questions for Blog:
1.  In your opinion, what is voice in literature?
2.  How does a person create his voice when writing?  Is creating voice an intentional or unintentional act?  Is it both?  Explain.
3.  Many people in Eastern Kentucky talk around a subject.  According to the speaker, why do they do this?  What can we learn about a writer from the way he/she approaches/handles a topic?
4.  Whether it is in fiction of nonfiction, why is voice important in writing?

Answers:
1.  Voice is the way a speaker sounds, or the way a speaker's words come across to others.
2.  A person creates their voice by choosing words or phrases that they would actually say out loud in the position of the main character (or themselves, for essays).  I think it can be intentional, but most of the time it's unintentional.  It's intentional when a person is trying to fix their writing to make it sound different or more accurate.  It's unintentional when we just write as we normally would.
3.  They talk around subjects because it's the way everyone else talks, and they don't know how to talk in any other way.  We can learn whether or not an author directly approaches a subject or not.
4.  Voice is important because an author has to get their purpose across through it.  For example, if one needed to persuade someone of something in writing, he or she would want to sound professional and direct.  As another example, if an author was trying to write from a different time period, he or she would want to use words and phrases from that time period.