An Analysis Of Teachers’ Turn-taking Strategies In College English Classes From The Perspective Of Conversational Principles

Language has been used as the tool of communication, which is dominated by aseries of rules such as the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle. Since1970s, researchers such as Sacks, Schegloff and G.Jefferson have put forward a seriesof theories about conversation analysis. Cooperative Principle and the PolitenessPrinciple are two important rules that dominate conversations. The CooperativePrinciple was put forward by Grice who further pointed out four maxims to provide adetailed regulation for conversations. The Politeness Principle proposed by GeofferyLech, who generalized the six maxims and analyzed various conversations with thisprinciple. In the studies about the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle,researchers usually investigate whether speakers have observed the principles, andanalyze the reasons why those maxims are observed or violated.In addition to Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle, another theoreticalbasis of this research is the theory of turn-taking. In general, turn-taking strategies areclassified into three types: turn-yielding strategies, turn-claiming strategies andturn-holding strategies. Proper adoption of those strategies is extremely important forthe participants since it will help them reach their goals in the conversation, especiallyin teacher-student exchanges. The major purpose of this research is to check whetherthe adoption of turn-taking strategies of college English teachers are reasonable and toprovide some constructive suggestions for improving the quality of teaching languagein college English classes.In order to present the situation of college English teachers’ teaching language indetails, the following research questions are investigated:1. What kind of turn-taking strategies are employed in college Englishteachers’ teaching language?2. How many maxims of Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle areobserved or violated when college English teachers adopt the turn-takingstrategies?In this study, the answers to those questions are revealed through a researchfocusing on evaluating the quality of college English teachers’ turn-taking strategies.There are totally4English classes that are analyzed, including one class from normal university, three classes from comprehensive universities. Besides, the majors of thestudents in the classes differ from English major to non-English-major so that theconclusion of this research is comparatively convincing. The conversations betweenthe teachers and their students are written down at first and then the turn-takingstrategies are picked out to analyze whether the speaker observes or violates themaxims of the two conversational principles. The results of the research shows thatthe most frequent turn-taking strategies in those teachers’ speech include askingquestions, assistance, and other strategies such as clarification and agreement arelimited to several times. In most cases, teachers follows the maxims of quantity,quality and relevance; and they also observe the maxim of tact and generosity.However, there are still some defects existing in their application of turn-takingstrategies such as they should pay more attention to their politeness when they employthe turn-holding strategies of assistance. All those suggestions will be introduced indetails in this thesis.