A Question of Audience, a Matter of Address

This paper draws attention to certain linguistic features present in notes posted to a common computer data base (Knowledge Forum) by grade four, five and six students in two schools working on a set of mathematical generalising tasks. The notes exhibit some elements present in various sorts of student mathematical writing familiar from other contexts (for instance, accounts of classroom-based mathematical problem solving). One particular feature that this setting might plausibly seem to accentuate is that of the addressivity of the writing, namely the ‘turning toward’ the other, a feature that is singularly absent from more formal mathematical prose. Nevertheless, despite the relatively young age of these students, their writing also exhibits instances of more ‘sophisticated’, apparently unaddressed writing.