A Pragmatic Study Of The EFL Classroom Question-Answer Discourse

EFL teaching comprises many kinds of classroom interactions. In classroom teaching, interaction usually takes place between the teacher and the students through question-answer discourse. The present study approaches the question-answer discourse from two perspectives: a static perspective by using discourse analysis and a dynamic perspective by applying the pragmatic theories, such as speech act theory, pragmatic presupposition, cooperative principle and politeness principle.Pragmatics studies the utterance in context. In the context of EFL classroom teaching, teacher's discourse role is identical to his or her social role in that the teacher keeps the discourse and turn allocation under control. But sometimes, it is different from his or her social role in that the teacher uses more polite and indirect directives than students in language teaching. It is the purpose and the context of EFL teaching that determine the teacher's discourse strategies, and play an important role in the understanding and interpretation of the speech acts of question and answer. In the performance of an indirect directive, the locutionary act (the utterance), the secondary illocutionary act (asking a question), the primary illocutionary act (directive) and the perlocutionary act (the performance of the intended action by the hearer) are fulfilled via a single question. In responding, the speaker performs a locutionary act (the utterance), an illocutionary act, (complying with the teacher's directive) and a perlocutionary act (reading, paraphrasing, or making a sentence, etc.). In his or her speech act of answering, the teacher may flout the quantity maxim by providing more information than required because he or she takes answering questions as a way to increase the student's linguistic input. Sometimes, the students disobey the maxim of quantity, quality, relation or manner because of inadequate knowledge or skills in English. There are some utterances violating the politeness principle yet they are acceptable in the classroom and helpful to the fulfillment of the teaching tasks. After discussing eight forms and five functions of questions and three categories of answers, we hold that students'dispreferred and zero second pair parts have reflective functions to teaching, as the preferred ones do. The classroom question and answer discourse serves the instructive and exploratory functions, in addition to the communicative and interpersonal functions. The present study summarizes six kinds of question-answer structures and examines the moves of initiation, response and feedback. It draws the conclusion that IRF is the skeleton structure and the others (except IR) are its extensions.By combining the major theories of discourse analysis and pragmatics, this study makes an empirical research into the EFL classroom question-answer discourse, on the basis of naturally occurring first-hand data. It touches upon some major issues in actual teaching and reveals some important implications for EFL teaching. The balance between teacher's authority and student's autonomy, the increase of student's talk in quantity and quality, the strategies to strengthen student's motivation in learning English as well as the suggestions for the development of students'pragmatic competence, on the basis of their linguistic, interactional and communicative competences, will all benefit the fulfillment of the ultimate purpose of EFL teaching in China.