In Chapter 5, I offered a preliminary account of the classroom procedures in the Critical Reading course. Here I take a more fine-tuned look at the classroom text, in particular the manner in which the social and the pedagogic intertwine, as students and teacher share their responses to texts.
The episodes featured in this chapter are from the same lessons as intro-duced in Chapter 5. Following the opening episodes discussed in Chapter 5, the students moved into pairs or groups to conduct closer textual analysis by working with the framework and the task. Subsequent to this close analysis of the texts, where students made notes on the task sheet, came the class feedback session which is presented here. We see the students, led by a spokesperson for each group, sharing their analyses within the wider classroom community. The expectation is that this feedback episode will feature more discursive and extended talk to reflect the fact that students have had the opportunity to gain insights from each other within their groups, as well as the planning time to prepare more considered responses to the texts under scrutiny. Broadly I am focusing on the functions of selected communicative sequences within these three classroom episodes, which I shall refer to, following the key texts we discussed, respectively as Power and Control, The Violent Homecoming and Childminder, all reproduced in Chapter 5.
Just as I used field, tenor and mode to interpret the context of the texts studied in the Critical Reading lessons, I shall draw on these same parameters to interpret the context of the classroom text. Of course it is, in practice, hard to tease out the ideational, interpersonal and textual functions. In use they are necessarily woven together. Nonetheless I have drawn here on tenor and field – to a lesser degree, mode – as a heuristic in the analysis, a way to illuminate some key features of equality and quality in the class-room, or, in terms used by Sarangi (1998) in his analysis of classroom discourse, the manner in which what he calls ‘task talk’ and ‘procedural talk’
work together.
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Tenor, field and mode revisited
Tenor
The key question is, how far is it possible within the constraints of a classroom setting, institutionally ascribed as an unequal encounter, to move some way towards reciprocity in teacher–student exchanges in order to acknowledge the principle of equality of contributor rights in discussion genres? Goffman’s overriding notion of footing can be linked to tenor.
Footing is signalled by a whole range of behaviours, apart from verbal language, such as gesture, stance and eye contact, none of which, in the absence of video, I am able to capture in my analyses. Accompanying these shifts in typical classroom behaviour may be the changing use of modality and mood, in particular the use of questions. It is less interesting to note the mere occurrences of questions than the function they serve in the overall speech event. For instance, the teacher as animator may use questions to steer students towards the anticipated answer, animating not just the syllabus or the textbook, which may prescribe particular answers, but, more widely, reproducing the ideology of classrooms and of language teaching.
Even when substantive, that is, directed at the elicitation of real answers (rather than rhetorical or managerial) the questions may be ideologically charged, as I note in Chapter 4; these are questions of the kind ‘guess what teacher wants you to think’, slightly differently inflected, as noted earlier, to Guess What Teacher Thinks questions. Finally the teacher as author may be interacting in her own voice, still in role as teacher but adopting a ques-tioning style which is exploratory and interactive and which does not guide students to some pre-envisaged response.
Of course, it is not just the teacher who can shift or initiate new footings.
Students too can, through their own adjustments of footing, by certain use of questions or challenges for instance, initiate or contribute to a wider change of tenor within the classroom community, always on condition that the teacher, as overall controller, either acknowledges such openings for realignment or permits any mitigation of power relations. As I argue later, it is only when all participants are acting as authors, that some approximative equality of tenor can be achieved and we might offer some defence of the classroom as a critical community.
Field
The key question is: how is reasoning and reflectiveness made visible in the classroom exchanges through the manner in which teacher and students expand on the points of view expressed and the claims made? In strategic talk the goal is to persuade, through a range of classical rhetorical devices;
in casual conversation we might simply state that X is the case, assert a belief or comment experientially, as in the extract from Morgan, quoted earlier in Chapter 5 where the class teacher asks why his year 10 secondary
school students laughed during the screening of romantic scenes in Romeo and Juliet. The students’ answers stayed close to their own experience.
What I aimed to do in my class was to push students beyond the experiential, in order to examine the way in which argument is developed across rather than within individual student and teacher contributions.
One feature which will accompany constative or discursive talk is the use of modality (one might wonder, for instance, what my own use of will is adding discursively to the previous sentence). Modalisation is important ideationally, as well as interpersonally, in the sense that it contributes not just to the manner of speech but more substantively to the quality of propo-sitional meaning, in its signalling of the commitment of the speaker to the truth and truthfulness of what is said.
As a further kind of evidence of the quality of the discussion, I shall examine conjunctive relations within and across clauses. Motivating this selection of feature is the view, argued above, that adequate argument involves the pre-sentation of reasons for beliefs or points of view, as well as the preparedness to elaborate on and qualify statements offered. In particular, circumstantial expansion (cf. Halliday 1994: 225) allows an argument to be made explicit and therefore more readily either accepted or disputed. Halliday (op. cit.) offers an account of expansion which includes three main types of conjunctive relations: extension, elaboration and enhancement.
Expansion: extension, elaboration and enhancement Extension
In extension, one clause extends the meaning of another by adding some-thing new to it (Halliday 1994: op. cit.). This is the most common type of expansion to be found in the classroom data presented here and is exemplified by statements which introduce a further point or which are adversative. Students may extend their own or others’ contributions. An example is in Episode one, where Carmen offers two successive extensions to the argument around the readership of the text, the first solicited by the teacher, the second spontaneous:
Carmen: Its for men especially (Several lines later she adds)
Carmen: And the language is quite difficult as well I mean
Elaboration
In elaboration, one clause clarifies or rewords what has preceded it. The secondary clause does not introduce a new element into the picture but restates, clarifies or refines (Halliday 1994: 225). Teacher reformulations are
good examples of moves which may aim to sum up, put more clearly what a student has been saying. An example from Episode one is:
CW: so, we’ve got an educated reader, someone with political and economic power and male
But students may also elaborate each other’s contributions, as Carlos does:
Well, we have the same as them – I mean, you know, intellectual, maybe male, we agree with that (Episode one)
Enhancement
Cases of enhancement are evident where one clause qualifies another by reference to time, place, cause or condition (Halliday 1994: 232). Examples would be the use of clauses prefaced by ‘so’, ‘otherwise’ or ‘similarly’. Most relevant in discursive talk are clauses which provide conditions, concessions or which offer reasons for beliefs or states of affairs. An example, taken from Episode two is by Pierre:
Pierre: In most articles . . . Mandela was referred to as the leader because he’s the one who talks as if he was the brain . .
These circumstantial relations may not be made explicit through grammat-ical marking in discursive talk. However, even in the absence of the specific linguistic signal it is possible to observe and comment on the presence of expansion and the role it plays in argument.
One precondition for the investigation of talk which is expanded in this way, is that the talk needs to be sustained. Silverman (2001: 21), writing about therapy discourse, notes that the therapist might consciously or otherwise organise talk for maximum or minimum uptake by the client.
Much the same applies to teachers. How is the talk, largely under their control, organised for maximum uptake by students? There would seem to be both institutional and wider cultural norms. Alexander (2000: 400), in his extensive cross-cultural study of school classrooms, observed the fullness of some of the answers provided by the Russian pupils in his study, in contrast to very limited responses by students observed in other countries.
Certainly in much of the literature on second language classrooms a striking fact of classroom discourse is how short the turns at talk are. In Van Lier’s extensive classroom data, provided in his 1988 book, I could find no instances of student turns beyond two lines. Clearly, single clause or brief utterances offer limited opportunities for expansion, although there may be expansions across turns. However, cross-turn expansion of student utterances is also rare, as most student turns revert to the teacher.
Expansion is more frequent and arguably more varied in particular types of extended discourse, more so say in exploratory, constative talk than in narrative. Constative talk will also make reference to other points of view more readily, consistent with its need to be accountable. To rehearse Mercer’s point once more about exploratory talk: ‘knowledge is made more publicly accountable and reasoning is more visible in the talk’ (1995a: 37).
It is this visibility of reasoning which I am largely concerned with under
‘field of discourse’. Of course reasoning will be present in the absence of its verbalisation and as Adjer and Hoyle (1998) in Cazden (2001: 177) note, it is difficult to tease out the difference between actual developmental progress, whether linguistic or cognitive, and opportunities for its display. Elaboration of syntax in itself does not indicate complexity of thought – it may be empty verbiage. Nonetheless, greater explicitness through verbal expansion, at least allows students to rehearse more complex kinds of talk, at the same time offering fellow classroom participants specific warrants which can be either accepted or challenged.
Also under the broad category of field of discourse is content and knowledge building. What evidence is there that the students are drawing both on the linguistic resources provided by the framework for analysis as well as their existing cultural resources, and developing new ones to gain greater awareness of the manner in which language, both as a phenomenon in the real world and as used within specific texts, reinforces or challenges prevailing ideologies? In other words, what particular tools do students use to articulate awareness at both a macro level, related to awareness of the context of production and reception of texts, as well as at the micro level, related to the ability to offer specific warrant for interpretations?
Mode
I shall not comment specifically on mode within the classroom analysis, on the grounds that the structuring of classroom discourse is largely given.
Mode is here more constraining, because lessons are institutionalised to a greater degree than speech genres such as casual conversation, with assigned roles to teacher and learners as participants. However, adjustments of tenor and field, even within fairly circumscribed events such as lessons, may ultimately reshape mode, challenging dominant orders of discourse which continue to privilege certain ways of doing things in classrooms. Bakhtin talks of the plasticity of genres, the possibility to ‘reaccentuate’ even famil-iar and structured genres (1986: 79). Under what kind of circumstances might orthodox patterning of classroom interaction be reaccentuated?
What space is there for learners as well as teachers to reshape the lesson genre in more or less fundamental ways?
A note of caution
One needs to be careful in making claims that the infringement of normal rules of discourse, in this case classroom interaction, necessarily signals some kind of qualitative advance in classroom-based critical language awareness.
Lapses in usual turntaking procedure might signal not enhanced reciprocity or dialogicity but that the teacher has simply lost control of the proceedings!
Nonetheless, atypical occurrences, marked shifts in footing, can be revealing in that they signal the potential for change in positive ways – change in the way both interpersonal and ideational meanings unfold in classroom discourse. A key question therefore is one which, as argued earlier, is central to critical analysis and critical pedagogy: how could things be different?
The challenge is to taken-for-grantedness; about both what we say and how we say it; what spaces can be opened up to facilitate critical enquiry around texts in the classroom?
In short it can be of interest to note occasions which go against the grain of typical classroom discourse, which, for instance, infringe the general rule that student turns will be specifically solicited by the teacher and that some kind of Initiation, Response, Feedback structure will prevail. As Young (1992:
76) puts it: ‘The optional components (of genres) . . . may be crucial in analysing the critical potential of them.’
A further note of caution relates to the danger of getting lost in the micro analysis. Just as with the texts studied in class, so with the analysis of lessons themselves, in looking at the detail, it is easy to miss the wider picture. How do the course participants relate discourses within the texts we survey to wider discourses in society (one of the criteria given earlier of a CLA per-spective)? In my summaries to each episode, I try to open out the discussion to bring in some of these broader implications.
Selection of segments
I have selected key exchanges, called segments, from within the three feed-back episodes, on the grounds that they demonstrate both typical classroom interaction, but also occasional departures from established patterns, thrown into relief when set against conventional discourse. Seeming infringements may be realised either in unusual patterns of turntaking or atypical footing or a greater degree of expansion on the students’ part.
Notes on the extracts
1. The turns are numbered for ease of reference. The literature on turntaking notes the difficulty of establishing what constitutes a turn, as opposed to a supportive interjection. Here I have not counted as turns those occasions where a speaker ‘talks across’ another contribution – especially where it forms a minimal response – and does not specifically acknowledge it.
2. With no video recording I was unable to capture wider semiotic features.
However, I have occasionally noted one or two which are of special significance, such as laughter.
3. I have simplified transcription conventions for purposes of readability and clarity. This means that while the transcription aims for a faithful record of what was said, minor hesitations and overlaps are omitted.
Because classroom interaction frequently involves turns which are assigned by the teacher, with relatively little spontaneous interruption, I have noted occasions which go counter to this, that is, where students intervene rapidly either in interacting with each other or the teacher.
These rapidly succeeding turns are indicated by a series of three dots at turn end. Prolonged pauses, on the other hand, are signalled by (. . .) to indicate the number of seconds of silence. In the segments under closer scrutiny I have indicated the following features:
• Overlaps: [
• pauses over one second: (.), the number of dots indicating the number of seconds
• rapidly succeeding speech: . . . at turn end
• Emphasis: –
4. The episodes are each about 15–20 minutes in length and were selected from weeks four, nine and fourteen respectively of the fifteen-week course.
In these episodes the students are reporting back from their group or pair work analyses. The talk is therefore relatively planned, and they are referring to notes they have made and the completed tasks, which featured in Chapter 5. The episodes were recorded with students speaking into the microphone.
Week four Power and Control – readerships
Students in this episode are: Hanna from Germany; Carmen, from Spain;
Carlos, from Spain; Victoria, from Spain; and Yuko, from Japan. (We join the episode at the point when Hanna has been arguing that the text Power and Control constructs a reader who is educated, has some political knowledge, and is probably fairly well off.)
1 CW: Anything else you want to add? That’s good so far.
2 Carmen: Well, its for men especially, because its like men are in politics, they know more about the war, what’s going on, I mean its . . . . 3 H: They’re supposed to know more.
4 C: Yeah, well, they’re supposed (general laughter) 5 CW: Yes. You always . . yes . . .
6 C: and the language is quite difficult as well I mean . . .
7 CW: and men can understand more difficult language, you think?
8 C: (laughs) No, I don’t think so but they may think so 9 CW: Yes, this came up I think in [that . . in]
10 [C: especially compared with this one]
11 CW: Yes, when you look at the other one (another advertisement) – that makes the contrast doesn’t it? I think some of you had the chance to look at this one, which is, you can see, clearly for women – the heart shape and so on. So, we’ve got an educated reader, someone with political and economic power and male. Let’s move on and see if we can. Thank you very much. That’s good.
Comment
Tenor
I open and close this segment as principal, in charge of turns at talk and tak-ing on the classic teacher role, as I reformulate, at the end of the segment, Hanna’s contribution preparatory to handing the floor to the next group.
Questions are managerial rather than substantive. They tend to function as polite directives as ‘Anything else you want to add?’ or are broadly phatic as in the tag question ‘that makes the contrast, doesn’t it?’ – where I offer no opportunity for students to respond. Evaluations do not refer substantively to the quality of the student’s argument, so much as impose closure on an exchange, as in ‘Thank you very much’ and ‘That’s good’. It is Hanna who triggers a shift of footing. Her unsolicited turn in ‘they’re supposed to know more’, with the second syllable of ‘supposed’ heavily emphasised, produces the kind of sequence which Kramsch (1993) calls a ‘sideplay’ in classroom interaction. The turns which follow her intervention do not move the interaction forward, but in the way they echo what has just been
Questions are managerial rather than substantive. They tend to function as polite directives as ‘Anything else you want to add?’ or are broadly phatic as in the tag question ‘that makes the contrast, doesn’t it?’ – where I offer no opportunity for students to respond. Evaluations do not refer substantively to the quality of the student’s argument, so much as impose closure on an exchange, as in ‘Thank you very much’ and ‘That’s good’. It is Hanna who triggers a shift of footing. Her unsolicited turn in ‘they’re supposed to know more’, with the second syllable of ‘supposed’ heavily emphasised, produces the kind of sequence which Kramsch (1993) calls a ‘sideplay’ in classroom interaction. The turns which follow her intervention do not move the interaction forward, but in the way they echo what has just been