The Discursive Construction Of Teachers’ Immediacy In Foreign Language Classrooms

Teachers’Immediacy Discourse is an important part of teachers’discourse. Research in immediacy began in1960s. However, interest in teachers’ immediacy began as late as the1980s. Early researches in teachers’ immediacy owed much to the research findings and methodology of general interpersonal communication, and likewise were limited to nonverbal immediacy. The traditional focus was on the relationship between teachers’nonverbal immediacy and various factors of the teaching process, and on designing and testing Immediacy scales. Over the past three decades, teachers’immediacy has been a major concern of teaching and teacher training, and interest has spread from the traditional classroom to online teacher-student communication, and from western-culture-centered to cross-cultural differences. While various researches have reached clear conclusions about the effect of teachers’immediacy, there have been limitations in research perspectives and methodologies. Specifically, verbal immediacy has received scant attention; research has been mainly quantitative, and data are collected mostly from interviews, recalls and questionnaires, and approaches adopted are simplistic and mostly intuitive, showing little effort at theoretical construction. Based on empirical research, this dissertation focuses on the verbal immediacy of foreign language (FL) teachers, with an attempt to construct a framework which has theoretical and practical implications for the research of teachers’overall immediacy.The main sources of data of this research are videos of foreign language classes. Guided by Grounded Theory, we approached the data without preconceptions, but rather built up our theory from data analysis, categorization of concepts and sampling before we set up a theoretical framework of discourse analysis.Questions addressed in this study include:(1) In which part(s) of pedagogic discourse is FL teachers’ immediacy instantiated? What are the characteristics of teachers’discursive immediacy in the different parts?(2) What are the effects of teachers’ discursive immediacy on classroom teaching?(3) What kind of ideology influences teachers’immediacy discourse?When discussing pedagogic discourse, we firstly follow Bernstein’s functional classification of regulative and instructional discourse. However, this classification fails to cover the interactive discourse between the teacher and students, which can be found in most of our data. In view of this, therefore, this study proposes a three-part anatomy of pedagogic discourse--regulative, instructional and interactive in order to focus on the structural analysis of pedagogic discourse.This research takes as its theoretical basis the theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics (e.g. language as social semiotic and meaning potential) and the Appraisal System. Conversation Analysis serves as the tool for analyzing the structure of teacher-student conversations. The main features of FL teachers’immediacy gradually emerge when observed from these perspectives. Finally, a critical discourse analysis of the teachers’ideology in terms of identity and knowledge examines the macro, or the fundamental factors which impact teachers’ immediacy, ultimately impacting pedagogic discourse and teacher-student relationships. Based on the above analysis, a theoretical framework for analyzing FL teachers’discursive immediacy is constructed.Analyses of data under the proposed framework show that FL teachers’ immediacy is instantiated in all the three parts of pedagogic discourse. As far as regulative discourse is concerned, whether rules and procedures are negotiable, whether there is investment in interpersonal meaning and whether there is positive orientation to the instructional goals of the teacher-student community are symbols of teachers’immediacy. Naturalization and non-negotiability of discourse construct a strong form of regulation and negatively affect teachers’ immediacy. The analysis of instructional discourse comprises three parts:the recontextualization of knowledge, the authority of knowledge and the attitude towards knowledge. Immediate instructional discourse places great emphasis on the cognitive needs and background knowledge of the students. The recontextualization of knowledge, and clear and logical explanations help build a good structure of knowledge. Another important aspect of immediate instructional discourse is the teachers’attitudinal engagement in knowledge. Active engagement of positive attitudes orients to the value and meaning of subject knowledge, cultivating the students’emotional identification with it. On the other hand, separation of cognition and emotion, construction of knowledge as isolated, decontextualized and enjoying a status of authority would harm teachers’ immediacy. In interactive discourse, immediacy is weakened by the constraints of institutional discourse, but strengthened by features of casual conversation, like taking an equal footing and providing emotional support for students. When providing cognitive feedback, teachers’choices in interpersonal meaning and evaluation resrouces should reduce students’worry over meta-tasks and protect their self-identity so that their cognitive energy is invested into learning tasks. Positive feedback may employ all the resources of Attitude, while negative feedback should avoid Affect and Judgment, or adopt other strategies which lessen the negative impact.The analysis of regulative, instructional and interactive discourse leads to the conclusion that immediacy is accumulative in nature. It seems that FL teachers’ discursive immediacy is spread across pedagogic discourse, and the ultimate level is the result of the integration of the immediacy in the entire pedagogic discourse, rather than typically manifested in one part.Teachers’epistemology of identity, teacher-student relationship and knowledge are the dominant factors impacting teachers’discursive immediacy. Strict conformity with the institutional identity of a teacher constitutes a strong form of identity, while taking up equal discursive roles may weaken their institutional identity. The strong and weak forms of identity result from the active choices of identity resources, ultimately impacting pedagogic discourse.This study explores classroom discourse and attempts to construct the core features and formative causes of FL teachers’ discursive immediacy. Its significance lies in the following aspects:(1) It proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of FL teachers’discursive immediacy.(2) It develops Bernstein’s two-part dichotomy of pedagogic discourse, and adds interactive discourse to regulative and instructional discourse so that more of FL classroom discourse, a typical example of interactive classroom discourse can be covered in the analysis.(3) It proposes that immediacy is accumulative.(4) It combines teachers’ discursive immediacy with their ideology, so that the relationship between the macro factors (social-structural) and micro factors (discursive) is revealed. The macro perspective explores the underlying causes of teachers’immediacy as instantiated in micro discourse, and micro analysis examines the discursive representation of teachers’ epistemology of identity and knowledge. The combination of the two perspectives provides theoretical and practical guidance for teachers’ immediacy discourse.