A Comparative Analysis On Conversational Structure In Classroom And In Casual Settings

Conversation analysis is a newly developed area and now it has been thriving, in which, many scholars show their interest and their concern. Conversation is an important tool for people transforming information and expressing thought. Theoretical significances of conversation analysis lies in that it combines language with human and society, and it discusses the function of language from the view of communicative pragmatics. Through conversation analysis, we can not only reveal the pragmatic rules in communication, but also can expound the relationship between language and human, language and society.Conversation can be analyzed in different ways. Some linguists take the content of the speech the speaker makes at each time as the unit to be analyzed. And some make further analyses of the content of the speech, breaking the content into even small units, which usually form adjacency pairs with those of another's speech.Based on the analysis of conversational structure in classroom and in casual settings, this thesis aims at finding out the characteristics of classroom conversation and conversation occurred in casual settings. Through comparison, we can find a way to improve the quality of classroom conversation, facilitating the active interaction between teachers and students and activating the atmosphere of classroom teaching. What's more, observation on language use and textual phenomena in daily conversation will help teachers to design, evaluate and choose teaching materials and organize students to practice language more efficiently.On the other hand, through the microanalysis on conversation structure, we can see that conversation is not merely a matter of language usage, it is a social activity and it is inevitably influenced by various social elements. The personalities of conversation participants, their role-relationship, such as status, power, and solidarity all influence the structure of conversation and construction of conversation tremendously. This thesis offers the readers a picture of how these elements influence language performance of participants. Generally speaking, if we want to ensure the smooth development of conversation, anyone participating in conversation should try to take an active role and be aware of various elements that work in the process of conversation and observe the rules. Therefore through the analysis, we aim at enhancing people's sensitivity and efficiency in daily language using, and improving cooperation and inter-understanding between people. This thesis consists of six parts.Part one is an introduction of conversation analysis. In this part, the characteristics of conversation as a social activity and the origination and development of conversation analysis are introduced, which prepare the readers the theoretical foundation of this thesis.Part two talks about the methodological issues in conversation analysis and the corpus the author used in this thesis. In this part, the reasons of why the author chose the materials from classroom, from English original films, and from listening materials as her study objects arerevealed to the readers.Part three is a comparative analysis on conversational structure in classroom and in casual settings. The main focus is on turn-taking rules, organization of repair and back channel item in classroom and in casual settings. The differences and similarities in structure between these two kinds of conversation can help us to seek for a better way in improving classroom conversation.Part four discusses the influences of various social factors on conversational structure and the micro construction of conversation. This part focuses on analyzing how the relationship between participants, their mutual power, solidarity role relationship and their personalities influence the conversation. The analysis can improve the sensitivity of people's language using.Part five talks about the implication and application of my study. In this part, some suggestions are given to the teachers, English learners and the ordinary language users in daily life. The author hopes her study can be beneficial to the teachers and students in classroom and the ordinary people and will help to improve the efficiency of both the classroom conversation and the conversation in casual settings.The last part is a conclusion. The comparative analysis on conversation structure is a new trial for the author to set foot in. And it is proved a significant task. Of course, there are some limitations in this thesis. The insufficiencies of the study calls for more scholars to show concern in this field and promote the development of conversation analysis.