With the vocabularies of their own disciplines, students majoring in technical subjects can access fresh insights into how writers write. For example, the symbols of computer flowcharts may bring insights when used to monitor rhetoric. Charts of organizational hierarchies, such as those that many corporate executives use, may illuminate equally well the shifting hierarchies of the characters in a work of fiction. Graphs and charts of syntactic and lexical networks may reveal the hidden structures of a narrative. An engineering major needs to see how a writer engineers words, a business major to see how a writer establishes hierarchies, a computer science major to see how a writer devises the flow of rhetoric. If we encourage students to explain literature with the professional vocabularies of their own disciplines, we can train them as lively apprentices, not as drudges. If we English teachers heed our students' special vocabularies, we may expect students to examine our own jargon more thoughtfully, such as the vocabulary by which we chart subordination and punctuation. Literature is everyone's heritage. No discipline monopolizes the critical insight or the vocabulary with which to articulate it.

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