A Response to James Britton

From, “Now That You Go to School”
James N. Britton

I think Britton’s big ideas concerns labeling different types of writing or communicating in terms of their purpose. Expressive communication is not rehearsed, is responsive to what others might say or do, and the purpose is to communicate in writing or speech in the present. Poetic writing seems to have the purpose of storytelling. It is one-way communication, and while it may (and should) evoke thought, it is meant for the purpose of sharing the writer’s point of view. Transactional writing seems to serve the purpose of a well-organized, two-way dialogue. The writer is meant to communicate thoughts or ideas to an audience that serve the purpose of evoking thought. The reader is supposed to react to the piece.

In class, we completed an activity that required us to conceptualize Britton’s and Moffett’s ideas visually. I chose to represent them on a continuum, and while Moffett’s ideas seem to lend themselves readily to a continuum, I had to force expressive, poetic and transactional communication to fit. In retrospect, a Venn diagram much more responsively represents these ideas. This is primarily due to the influence expressiveness (in other words emotion, expression, spontaneity) has on the other forms of communication Britton discusses.