Writing to Persuade The first half of Expository Writing II is an introduction to what James L. Kinneavy calls persuasive writing, writing which emphasizes the reader, in which the writer adapts her or his evidence, organization, and tone to the demands of a specific context in order to make the reader consider the writer's point of view or do something in response to the writing. Students should write a number of essays which support a claim of fact, value, or policy, appeal to the needs and values of specific audiences, and demonstrate the writer's ethical and emotional appeals. In Kinneavy's scheme literary writing emphasizes the forms of language, the poetic and rhetorical resources of language, rather than what language refers to or what it can make its readers believe or do. Of course all language that is purposeful and carefully crafted is literary to some extent, so in this unit we will emphasize other aspects of what we usually call literature.
Many people also define literature by contrasting it with referential and scientific writing.
Literature seems to emphasize the emotional and connotative side of language rather than the purely denotative side used in science. During the course of this unit we should make our students aware of each of these aspects of literature. Most students in Expository Writing II are not English majors and may never again confront the kind of writing we will introduce them to in this unit, although they may read and appreciate popular novels and magazine fiction. Our job, then, is not to train them to master the jargon of 'lit crit' or to produce interpretations unique in the history of criticism. Rather our job is to teach our students how to experience and value literature and to write about their experience of literature intelligently.