Defining linguistic reasoning

Until recently, throughout the world, linguistic theory was virtually absent in secondary education, mostly limited to grammar teaching still based on 19th century linguistic theory. There is a growing call, however, for enriching grammar teaching with modern linguistic insights, integrating higher order critical thinking skills, like reasoning. This study tries to lay the groundwork for a model of linguistic reasoning in particular. Based on a well-established model for historical reasoning (Van Boxtel & Van Drie, 2018), a linguistic model is developed in two steps. First, the components of the historical model are theoretically analysed and transposed to the linguistic domain, and second, the model is applied in qualitative analysis of linguistic experts’ reasoning. It is found that the model fits linguistic reasoning fairy well: all central components can be observed, and are evenly distributed over different experts. It is concluded that the linguistic reasoning model can be used in the development of a new grammar pedagogy.