A Study On Conversation Identity Construction In Second Language Classrooms

In recent years,more and more scholars begin to pay attention to the relationship between conversation and identity.It is commonly believed that identities are"constructed in conversational turns step by step".Conversation identity is the language resource that the conversation participants invoke in different levels,and the online identity which is constructed dynamically in the interaction with other conversation participants.The pragmatic phenomenon in which conversation participants make use of different identities to communicate with the other participants is called the conversation identity construction.Based on the upsurge of the research in conversation identity and the need of classroom conversation study,this dissertation takes the conversations in second language classroom as the data sources and explores the forms of conversation identity construction and the discourse performances of it.Through specific genre of discourse,this paper aims to analyze how the concrete contexts affect the classroom conversation identity construction,the influences of the classroom conversation construction to the second language acquisition,the pragmatic relationship between second language conversation and maintaining the rapport of relational identity in second language classroom and the study of the practice of second language teaching of the construction of classroom conversation identity.Combining the conversation analysis of the data,the main findings are as follows:Firstly,the conversation identity consists of discourse identity,situated identity and transportable identity.Discourse identity refers to the identity of the discourse function mapped to the "reply structure" in the instant conversation.The situated identity is of an institutional nature.In the classroom conversation,it mainly refers to the relational identity as "classroom knowledge imparter"-"classroom knowledge recipient".Transportable identity refers to other socio-cultural orientations or self-consciousness outside of the situated identity embodied in the conversation.The relationship of the conversation identity is as follows:the discourse identity is the base,the situated identity is the stable main body,and the transportable identity is the dynamic supplement and assimilates into the situated identity.The conversation identity relationship is dynamically presented with the "focus-background" continual conversion.Secondly,the three forms of classroom conversation transportable identity are:teachers guide students to construct the transportable identity;teachers construct transportable identity initiatively;students construct the transportable identity initiatively.The situated identity mainly occurs in the repair sequences in the data and its construction forms are divided into the following two cases:first,the teacher is invited to repair the conversation;second,the teacher initiatively steps into to repair.To be specific,there are three situations in the former circumstance as follows:the teacher completes the repair independently,the teacher is invited to cooperate to repair,the teacher refuses to repair.There are two situations in the latter circumstance as follows:the teacher steps into delayed repair;the teacher steps into repair in time.Thirdly,there are some influences of the three forms of transportable identity construction in the second language classroom:when the teachers guide the students to construct the transportable identities,students’ rich sense,memory are mobilized and it can help students to learn interactively and consolidate the classroom knowledge with their own experiences;when teachers construct the transportable identities initiatively,it is conducive to classroom contextualization,so as to narrow the distance between teachers and students and increase the intimacy of teachers;when students construct the transportable identity initiatively,it can promote students to mobilize classroom knowledge to participate in classroom practice with their own experiences.The reasonable construction of the teacher’s situated identity is conducive to solving the understanding problems of the conversation participants,facilitating the completion of the classroom task and improving the acquisition of second language and social knowledge.Fourthly,the discourse performances of the transportable identity and situated identity can be summarized in two aspects as propositional content and speech form.The propositional content of transportable identity in classroom conversation is mainly embodied in the private discourse;the speech form of it is mainly embodied in the occupation title,professional content sign,empathy indication and referential question.The propositional content of situated identity in classroom conversation is mainly embodied in the analysis of difficult language points,correction and communication;the speech form of it includes title,reinforcing language,interrogative sentence,imperative sentence and declarative sentence.Fifthly,in the repair sequence of related data,the conversational strategies to maintain the rapport in relational identities are not the same:in the situated relational identity,the teacher other-initiates with mitigation and the student self-repairs;in the English native speaker-non-native speaker relational identity,the non-native speaker self-initiates and the native speaker other repairs with mitigation;in the friends’relational identity,interrupted repair and other initiated-other repair strategy with direct negation are adopted.It is based on the result of the common influence of social rights,face and communicative needs that the different repair strategies are adopted by conversation participants.Sixthly,this article gives some concrete suggestions on the general second language teaching practice from the following three aspects:the discourse identity,the situated identity and the transportable identity.Specifically speaking,as for discourse identity,the identities of questioner and respondent should be paid to attention.In the process of the construction of teachers’ situated identity,we should focus on the following two aspects:the regulation of classroom rhythm and the students’ autonomy.Regarding to the construction of the transportable identity of the classroom conversation,the teacher can initiate the referential questions from factual and reasoning aspects.Regarding to the Chinese as a second language classroom,we suggest that based on the difference of Chinese values and general values,teachers should not only help students to understand the unique Chinese cultural behavior,but also pay attention to construct the reasonable conversation identities for the coordination of the conversational conflicts in classroom caused by different values.Including introduction and conclusion,the dissertation consists of eight parts.Introduction:This chapter comprehensively introduces the overall situation of this research,including the introduction of the research background,definition of the object of the study,the formulation of the research objectives,the significance of the study,and the description of the research design.In the part of the research design,the paper puts forward the research questions,introduces the research methods and gives a detailed description of the procedures and the composition of the data collection.Chapter one:Literature review.This dissertation reviews the literature from five aspects which are identity,language identity,conversation identity,classroom conversation identity and identity in second language classroom conversation repair.The theory and its related research have important inspiration to this article,and also leave the space for further study.Chapter two:Basic theoretical framework.This chapter focuses on the theoretical framework of this study.First of all,the conversation analysis is introduced from three aspects:conversational implicature,conversational politeness and conversational structure,and the concept of conversation repair is discussed in detail.Then,this chapter discusses Zimmerman’s conversation identity theory and expands the related research.At last,this chapter introduces Spencer-Oatey’s rapport management model,and provides a solid theoretical basis for the subsequent analysis.Chapter three:The construction of the transportable identities in classroom conversation.In this chapter,we mainly describe the distribution of the transportable identities in the data,analyze the influence from the transportable identity construction form to the second language acquisition,and explore the discourse performances of the transportable identity in the classroom conversation.We begin with a quantitative study of the identity categories and their ratio in short passage reading,grammar,reading and speech classes.On this basis,we explored the construction form of the transportable identities in the classroom conversation and found three kinds of construction forms including the teacher guides students to construct identity,the teacher constructs the transportable identities initiatively and students construct transportable identities initiatively.The influence of each form of the identity construction for second language classroom was analyzed as well.Finally,from the aspects of the propositional content and speech form,we analyze the discourse performances of transportable identity in the classroom conversation.Chapter four:The construction of the situated identities in classroom conversation.First of all,this chapter makes a quantitative study on the distribution of the situated identity in the corpus.Next,we explored its construction forms and found two construction ’forms as follows:the teacher is invited to repair and construct the situated identity and the teacher initiatively steps in to repair and construct the situated identity.The chapter also described the specific context of every kind of construction form.Based on this,we analyzed the impact of the construction of situated identity on the second language classroom in each context.Finally,from the aspects of the proposition content and speech form,we analyze the discourse performances of situated identity in the classroom conversation.Chapter five:The rapport management of relational identity in repair sequence.Firstly this chapter analyzed the identity types and distribution in the data.Next,on the basis of the context of the construction of each kind of relational identity,the chapter explored the conversation repair strategies for participants to maintain the rapport of relational identities.The motivations for participants to take various conversation strategies in different contexts were analyzed combining with Spencer-Oatey’s rapport management model.Chapter six:The construction of classroom conversation identity and the practice of teaching Chinese as a second language.Based on the previous research results,this chapter put forward some suggestions on the practice of second language teaching of both general and Chinese classrooms in three aspects:discourse identity construction,situated identity construction and transportable identity construction.Taking an example of Chinese class,this paper analyzes the construction of conversation identitity with those suggestions discussed above.Combined with the values,the paper makes some suggestions of teaching Chinese as a second language.Chapter seven:Conclusion.This chapter summarizes the research methods and main findings of this study.At the same time,the chapter pointed out the deficiencies of this study and looks forward to the follow-up study.