Learning the language of school history: the role of linguistics in mapping the writing demands of the secondary school curriculum

as nominalisation emerges as a common feature in the arguing genres. It also shows how reactions to the past become progressively more institutionalised as students move away from expressing personal responses to events and begin to interpret behaviour and processes within an institutionalised framework of ethics and valuation (Coffin 2002, 2003). Recording Genres The Changing Genres Autobiographical Recount Biographical. Recount Historical Recount Historical Account Explaining Genres Arguing Genres Changing participants commonsense field more concrete (e.g. specific, human participants I, my grandmother, Francis Greenway) specialised field more abstract (e.g. nominalisations – collapse, increase) more specialised terms (e.g. pacts, treaties etc.) Changing causal resources Cause as logical connector e.g. they were shot or poisoned because they rebelled. Cause as nominalisation e.g. Execution was the overall result of rebellion Changing temporal resources Events sequenced in time. Time phrases in initial position e.g. after I got married, In 1909, Greenway... Time nominalised e.g. period, era. Evidence and arguments, rather than time, in initial position e.g. Evidence of Germany’s goodwill... Changing patterns of affect, judgement and valuation affect judgement and valuation Figure 3: The changing patterns of genre, grammar and lexis in school history