Grace Liska

Mrs. Trace

Dual Enrollment English 12

20/9/18

Pre-Assessment

In Dana Gioia’s “Why Literature Matters” he expressed his concerns about the fact that

the United States (U.S) is leaving reading good, factual literature in the past. He uses srong

persuasive writing tactics to convince his audience of the true atrocity of the possibility that the

U.S. is slipping away from being an informed and well rounded public. Gioia infuses facts and

opinions into his article to create a well rounded argument for why literature is so important to

the social structure of the U.S. and why it is so important that it be preserved.

In his article Gioia mainly plays on the audience's emotion and balances it out by

dropping in facts and reasoning. Gioia plays on emotion by discussing the fact that the young

people in the U.S. are not very well rounded in knowledge about history and politics, and how

this could cause economic and social issues. While that may not seem like a very “emotional”

statement it makes the audience think about how the U.S. could begin to fall, and how that could

affect them personally. He also weaves in facts from studies on students and employees, both

studies pointing in the direction that the public education system in the U.S. is to blame for poor

literature skills in young adults. But he also talks about how young people who are partaking in

literary reading are more likely to volunteer for charity, go to a museum, or attend some kind of

sporting event; he weaves those facts in to show that there is still some kind of hope that younger

people could be interested in preserving literature.

 Gioia deployed a few persuasive tactics, like emotion to scare people and to make them

seriously think about where the U.S. is heading in a knowledgeable sense. But he also used facts

to make people open their eyes to what was going on around them. Gioia used these two

techniques to open people's eyes and make them see the harsh reality he sees, he wants people to

be concerned about where their country is heading so that maybe they will take action to help

stop the trend. Gioia wanted people to be informed and scared about the current situation in the

U.S. so that maybe they would take action and change things.