On The The Mesoproterozoic Language Of French Teachers' Classroom Language Functions

Metalanguage was initially studied as an answer to "the liar's paradox" and an language different from the "object language" (Tarski, 1936). Nowadays, researches on metalanguage are no longer limited to the domain of logic but have integrated into many new scientific fields, such as linguistics, literature, pedagogic and cognitive theory. Metalanguage plays a very important role in foreign language teaching classes, which have language teaching as the essential objective. French linguist F. Cicurel (1985 :15) said: what makes language special in language teaching classes is that the former has double roles in this process: teaching object and means. Metalanguage is not only a language but also a tool which can be used in langue studies. That's why metalanguage predominates in language teaching classes.In addition, as place of language teaching and studying, the class has its particular points comparing with other teaching situations. First, language teaching classes are real places where the communication between teacher and students can reflect directly and completely the process of information input and output; second, real as it is, the language teaching classes are composed of all possible teaching phases, interaction between teacher and students can be successful or abortive. For this reason, more and more experts focus their researches on the class and intend to figure out the valuable rules favorable to foreign language teaching and studying.The present research, based on real French classes and aiming at teacher's talk, is to explore the functions of metalanguage activities, under the direction of pragmatics theories and discourse analysis technique, through observing class process, video transcription, discourse classification and pragmatics analysis. A series of work said above lead to a conclusion: metalanguage in teacher's talk has tow kinds of functions: didactical functions and intercommunication functions, which detailedly manifest in new knowledge explication, didactical activities organization, evaluation of students' talk, intercommunication encouragement, confirmation of discourses information, and emphasis of main points. As for foreign languages learners, metalanguage is an inignorable ability and should be put in as other language knowledges.