'I rest my case': Linguistic resources used by successful young writers of persuasive texts

This paper investigates persuasive strategies used by 15 Tasmanian year 5 students who scored highly on the written component of the 2011 NAPLAN test. The texts were analysed with two frameworks, the first drawn from APPRAISAL theory and the second from classical rhetoric. Initially, the ENGAGEMENT system (see White, 2003; Martin & White, 2005) was used to examine linguistic resources deployed by these students to adopt stances toward the views of others and to include their readers as discourse participants. Secondly, the analysis sought to uncover figures of speech from STYLE, the third canon of classical rhetoric (see Aristotle, trans. 2004), deployed by the students to achieve a number of persuasive effects. Lastly, the analysis was used to outline how resources from each tradition were sometimes deployed in pairs or clusters by the students. This paper presents work-in-progress for the development of a systematic picture of students’ rhetorical capabilities across years 3, 5, 7 and 9.