Making the mechanics of paraphrasing more explicit through Grammatical Metaphor

Abstract

Abstract Paraphrasing research has often been situated as an issue of academic honesty, ownership of knowledge and discourse appropriation (Abasi, Akvari & Graves, 2006; Currie, 1998; Lyon, 2009; Pecorari, 2003; Pecorari & Shaw, 2012). This paper has a pedagogical focus, outlining how the discrete grammatical processes typical of successful paraphrasing (Keck, 2010) are used to support first year university writing students working in English as an additional language. Drawing on Halliday’s (2009) concept of Grammatical Metaphor and focusing primarily on ideas and their logical relations (known within Systemic Functional Linguistics as the ideational metafunction), shifts in form within and across clause functions are demonstrated conceptually and with explained examples. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how highlighting some functional metalanguage can break the process of paraphrasing into more explicit moves for instructional benefit.