Empowering students' writing through a more useful metalanguage: A language-based approach to high school English language arts

Many systemic functional linguistics (SFL) scholars have shown the usefulness of students' and teachers' abilities to utilize a functional metalanguage for school writing (Berry, 20 09; Coffin, 20 06; Humphrey & Macnaught, 2016; Macken-Horarik & Morgan, 2011; Rose & Martin, 2012). In the U. S., SFL work has primarily focused on teaching English as an additional language (de Oliveira, 2010a; de Oliveira & Dodds, 2010b; Gebhard, Harman, & Seger, 20 07; Schleppegrell, 20 09). Few scholars have explored the implications of this metalanguage for heritage English speakers (e.g., Brown, 20 06, 20 08, 2011) or stigmatized dialects of English like in Appalachia (Angus & Iddings, 2013; Iddings & Angus, 2015). This article presents a qualitative case study and SFL analysis of student writing to discuss the metalanguage used by twelfth grade ELA students and teachers in Appalachian Kentucky. I argue that teachers can empower students to talk about and compose their writing with a more useful metalanguage. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.