A Study Of Interpersonal Meaning Of Teacher Talk In College English Classes For English Majors

In the research of classroom teaching, teacher talk has been an important domain studied by linguists and researchers both in China and abroad. As an important component of teachers'behavior, teacher talk is not only the medium for teachers to implement their teaching plan, but also a valuable source of input for language learners. Therefore, it is of crucial importance for the organization of the classroom and the process of language acquisition. A large number of scholars and linguists contribute to the study of teacher talk from various perspectives, such as pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition, etc. They have discussed the amount and type of teacher talk, effects of teacher talk, teacher questions, teacher feedback, error treatment, etc. However, few people have made research on interpersonal meaning of teacher talk from the systemic-functional perspective.This thesis adopts the systemic-functional approach to analyze the interpersonal meaning of teacher talk and two pragmatic theories, the indirect speech act theory and the politeness theory are borrowed to help the analysis of the data, which realizes an organic combination of systemic-functional linguistics and pragmatics. It provides a new perspective and enriches the study of teacher talk. Besides, an analysis of the interpersonal meaning of teacher talk will contribute to a better understanding of the current states of teacher talk and to some extent can reflect the roles of teachers, the interaction and role relationship between teachers and students in the classroom. And some suggestions are given to help teachers constantly enhance their personal quality, improve the quality of teacher talk, and promote the construction of a relaxed, lively, equal, and harmonious classroom environment, which will facilitate a better mutual understanding and communication between teachers and students, and achieve better teaching results.This thesis selects the teacher talk in intensive reading classes for college English majors as the analytical material. Within the framework of Halliday's systemic-functional grammar, a combination of the quantitative and the qualitative method is adopted to discuss the interpersonal meaning of teacher talk in college English classes for English majors. Detailed analysis is carried out in terms of mood, modality and the person system in teacher talk to reveal how the interpersonal meaning of teacher talk is realized through various lexical and grammatical patterns. And in this process, the roles teachers play in the English classroom and the current teacher-student role relationship are explored.This thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter 1 provides a brief introduction to the present study, including a general statement, the motivation, the significance, aims, and the organization of the thesis. In Chapter 2, a general review of previous studies is presented on teacher talk and interpersonal meaning both in China and abroad. Chapter 3 focuses on the theoretical framework of the thesis. Halliday's conceptual framework and main aspects of interpersonal meaning are illustrated. In Chapter 4, the author introduces the research questions and research methodology. The subjects, instruments, data collection and analysis procedures of the research are presented. Chapter 5 makes an analysis of the collected teacher talk in terms of mood, modality and the person system and offers a detailed description and discussion of the statistical results and findings of the three research questions. Chapter 6 is the conclusion part of the thesis, in which the author summarizes the major findings of the present study and points out some implications and limitations of the research. And some recommendations are given for future research in this area.