ABSTRACT
This chapter is the first of two that report on genres used within and beyond schooling to persuade audiences. Genres from this family of ‘opinion and recommendation’ are used extensively to demonstrate learning curriculum goals in a range of disciplines and are also crucial to addressing cross curriculum concerns related to issues such as environmental sustainability and civics. To organise the analysis of the persuasive genres, I draw on SFL understandings of cultural domains (Humphrey, 2010; Macken-Horarik, 1996b), whereby the rhetorical patterns can be broadly characterised according to whether they serve social, academic, civic and promotional functions. This chapter focuses on analytical persuasive genres, which were explicitly taught in English and in the social sciences to address specialised curriculum goals and to prepare students for the National High-Stakes Assessment of Writing, NAPLAN. In Chapter 8, I focus on the work of English teachers in supporting students to access and deconstruct persuasive genres in the civic and promotional domains.
