In academic writing, referencing sources is more than just a strategy for demonstrating scholarship. In thesis writing, for example, it plays an important role in making the writer’s argument persuasive. This investigation is concerned with the different ways in which thesis writers incorporate and evaluate diverse voices through academic referencing. First, it sets out an analytical framework underpinned by systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 2004), particularly developments in appraisal theory (Martin and White, 2005). The framework provides a dialogic perspective on the linguistic options for referencing academic sources. The discussion then shows how the framework was used to conduct a detailed analysis of one doctoral student’s incorporation of academic sources in a successful Film Studies thesis. The analysis concludes with an illustrative list of referencing strategies used in theses and other types of academic writing. By reporting on how the conventions of referencing can be used in rhetorically effective ways, the research aims to make a contribution to the field of academic writing which is of practical as well as academic value.

Historians generally agree that causality is central to historical writing. The fact that many school history students have difficulty handling and expressing causal relations is therefore of concern. That is, whereas historians tend to favor impersonal, abstract structures as providing suitable explanations for historical events and states of affairs, students often focus on human “wants and desires.” The author argues that linguistic analysis can offer powerful insights into how successful students use grammar and vocabulary to build different types of causal explanations as they move through secondary schooling. In particular, the author shows how functionally oriented linguistic analysis makes it possible to discriminate between “narrative” and “analytical” explanations, to distinguish between “enabling” and “determining” types of causality, and to reveal the value of assessing degrees of causal impact.