How Do Students Source? Grammatical and Lexical Choice When Students Enact Disciplinary Literacies in History

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Shifting Perspectives on Identity, Ability, and History

Abstract

Since Wineburg’s (1991) identification of the three heuristics or disciplinary moves in history, sourcing, contextualization and corroboration, the field has largely focussed on supporting students in the acquisition of these core moves. This teacher-research study uses discourse analysis, specifically a systemic functional linguistics (SFL) perspective, to explore an understudied direction in the literature– the linguistic choices or register (Halliday, 1978) that students use when they enact the sourcing heuristic. Through grammatical and lexical analysis this study found that many students struggle to conceive of historical text as something created by human actors, limiting their ability to use sourcing as a tool to advance historical argument.

Author

• Andrew del Calvo, University of Pennsylvania