Mathematical Proof as Disciplinary Discourse: Verbal-Symbolic Meaning-Making in Graduate Proof Writing

Abstract

This article examines how natural language and mathematical notation organize reasoning in twenty graduate-level proof texts from one university in the southern Philippines. A qualitative corpus-based analysis combines Systemic Functional Linguistics, speech-act perspectives, and content analysis to examine verbal-symbolic coordination, recurrent linguistic features, and their potential contribution to inferential transparency. Language introduced objects and assumptions, marked warrants and consequences, maintained reference, and signaled conclusions. Recurrent resources included discourse markers, conditionals, directives, assertions, impersonal formulations, and technical vocabulary. The study contributes a proof-level functional account linking these resources to the status and progression of mathematical claims in student-produced texts. Close analysis also shows that explicit transitions and fluent explanation can coexist with incomplete or circular justification. Persuasiveness is interpreted as textual support for reconstructing and evaluating reasoning; reader comprehension and persuasion were not measured. The findings are limited to the selected corpus and suggest that proof instruction can use annotation and revision to connect linguistic choices with mathematical justification.