The forbidden first word: Discourse functions and rhetorical patterns of and-prefacing in student essays

Abstract

AbstractThis article investigatesand-prefacing and its environments in student essays. Specifically, the focus is on those instances when a writer uses the Finnishja‘and’ as an opening element (“preface”) to the sentence. Whileand-prefacing is most commonly a single-usage feature employed by a small minority of writers in the essay genre analyzed here, the detailed functional-rhetorical analysis reveals a rich picture of these usages and the respective discourse norm that emerges and evolves in practice. This paper identifies eight micro-level discourse functions forand-prefacing in the essays: (i)rhetorical, accumulative listing; (ii)emphasizing continuity of argument; (iii)dialogical aligning; (iv)unconventional intertextual linking; (v)evaluating a narrative turn; (vi)resolution; (vii)fantasy as coda; and (viii)plain cohesive linking. Significantly,and-prefacing is not limited to the failed essays, nor to the low-graded essays more generally. The differences found in high- and low-graded (failed) essays may, however, suggest that some discourse functions and rhetorical patterns are associated with a higher institutional value than others. Methodologically, this study highlights the benefits of Rich Feature Analysis and dialogically oriented linguistic discourse analysis for exploring a relatively infrequent and yet distinctive rhetorical resource that has a complex form-function relationship in student essays.