Classroom Discourse Analysis On Gestural And Symbolic Usage Of Deixis From A Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Research on teachers'talk in EFL classroom teaching has been conducted by a lot of linguists (Chaudron, 1998; Duff & Polio, 1990 and Harbord, 1992). They claim that the quality of target language (TL) produced by teachers is crucial for learners'successful learning. Among these researchers, who have discussed teachers'talk from different perspectives, the studies from the cognitive perspective have caused more and more attention, especially with the influence of Relevance Theory (RT). But few studies have explored the use of deixis on the basis of RT. Deixis has the context-dependent feature, which is in line with RT.This qualitative study examines the EFL teachers'deictic expressions in a language teaching class, particularly the gestural usage of deixis (this and they studied in this paper) and symbolic usage of deixis (you studied in this paper) in different circumstances. The gestural usage of deixis depends more on physical context, especially teachers'body language, while symbolic usage of deixis depends more on linguistic context and cognitive context. As a result, the interpretation of the former one requires fewer efforts than the latter one.The data consist of two fragments of EFL teachers'talk transcribed from the tape recording in an English course at undergraduate level. Results showed that teachers are encouraged to increase gestural usage of deixis as well as decrease symbolic usage of deixis in classroom, because learners could gain teachers'intended interpretation with the less processing efforts in the former situation than the latter one.