Lorraine McDonald

Faculty of Education, Australian Catholic University

Exploring a novel through engagement with its grammatical form: perspectives from a classroom

The systemic linguistic study of a children’s literature text offers insights into possible new ways of achieving an understanding of “how texts teach what readers learn” (Meek 1988). Such analysis focuses on the ways in which meanings are negotiated and constructed and also recognises the “distinctive contribution the language of a literary text might make to children’s reading experience” (Williams, 1986). This paper examines aspects of a SFL analysis of an Australian children’s literature novel, in order to offer an exemplar of what is possible to consider with school students when engaging with literary texts. The paper will highlight a range of grammatical features including the novel’s selection for mood in narration and dialogue, patterns of tense and transitivity, the mental projections of protagonist and associated mood choices, and the contribution of lexical strings in constructing characterization. Transcripts from a research study showing moments of classroom talk with a 5th Grade (10 years) will provide examples of how a teacher deployed aspects of this grammatical knowledge to explore the novel. The transcripts will demonstrate i) how talk about language made a critical appraisal possible; and ii) the need for an explicit pedagogy and use of metalanguage to enhance student understanding.