Towards a metalanguage adequate to linguistic achievement in post-structuralism and English: Reflections on voicing in the writing of secondary students

This paper considers the development of voicing in the writing of secondary English students influenced by post-structuralist approaches to literature. It investigates students’ growing capacity not only to voice their own responses to literature but also to relate these to a range of theoretical discourses. Drawing on systemic functional linguistics, we explore the development of voicing in students’ writing in three key assessment tasks in a Queensland Literature Extension course. We argue that students’ growing capacities to handle the demands of reflexiveness in this course are manifested in their expanding repertoire of choices related to control of stance, orientation to reading, type of address and orders of voicing. By the end of their course in literary theory, students are producing texts that integrate personal and impersonal forms of voicing, exploiting the potential of projection for embedding and for complex iterations of voice and stancing their proposals in authoritative and independent ways. Drawing on extracts from representative student work from this course, we characterize these developments in voicing as a movement towards greater polyphony (or multivoicedness). Our analysis of the expanded repertoire of choices for voicing in students’ texts provides evidence of the power of a well-structured introduction to post-structuralism in senior school English.

Graphical abstractThe paper investigates the development of voicing in students’ writing under the influence of post-structuralist approaches to literature and to reading. The following figures summarize the increasing repertoire of voicing students develop as they produce stanced readings, demonstrate a capacity for theorized reading and, finally, learn to problematize reading in their dialogue with literary theorists. The paper demonstrates the power of a well-structured post-structuralism for opening up the potential for voicing gifted students of reading.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slideResearch highlights► We propose a metalanguage adequate to development of voicing in a post-structuralist literature course. ► Linguistic analysis reveals that students’ capacities for voicing are enhanced in well-scaffolded engagement with theories of reading. ► Systemic functional linguistics is a toolkit for capturing developments over time in students’ voicing. ► A well-structured post-structuralism is good for English and extends students’ literate capacities powerfully.