Research On Power Relations In Teacher Talk From The Perspective Of CDA

The research on teacher talk is primarily from the perspective of linguistics. Inrecent years the research has gradually switched to its social aspect, which hasobviously reflected social relations. However, in China the majority of previousresearch is restricted to the micro level, mainly on language study. Research on teachertalk from the macro level, such as power relations between teachers and students, isrelatively less.Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) aims to build the relationship betweendiscourse and power, and to reveal the power relations hidden in the language andideology. Thus it can be seen that Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is very suitable forthe analysis of power relations in teacher talk. However, the research objects of CriticalDiscourse Analysis (CDA) are mainly the written texts, including media report, politicaltexts and official documents. Teacher talk, as spoken text, is less studied from theperspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Therefore, the present research isdesigned to investigate English teacher talk, to unmask the asymmetrical powerrelations between teachers and students from the perspective of Critical DiscourseAnalysis (CDA).With classroom observation, interviews, recordings and questionnaires employed,this research was carried out in ESP courses (English for Specific Purpose) for threeclasses. During the three months of research, the author observed twelve lesson periods,and recorded all the sessions.176questionnaires for students were collected, and threeEnglish teachers of the three classes as well as some other English teachers wereinterviewed. The recordings, questionnaires and interviews were transcribed into textmaterials as the original data.Based on the theoretical framework of Fairclough’s three-dimensional CDA, thethesis investigates the features of English teacher talk at the levels of phonology, lexis,syntax and conversation, reveals asymmetrical power relations hidden in Englishteacher talk, and analyzes the factors contributing to such asymmetrical power relationsin English teacher talk.The findings are as follows: Firstly, in terms of phonology, English teachers tend touse falling tones rather than rising tones in teachers’ intonation. Secondly, in terms oflexis, the amount of medium and low value modals is slightly higher than high valuemodals， but some teachers still tend to use high value expressions in the teaching process. Thirdly, in terms of syntax, the proportion of display questions far exceeds theproportion of referential questions. Fourthly, in terms of conversation, the amount ofteacher talk far exceeds that of students’. All of these definitely reflect teachers’absolute power over students, and reveal asymmetrical power relations betweenteachers and students. Finally, in the macro-social context, asymmetrical powerrelations in teacher talk are obviously connected with the historical, cultural, social andrealistic factors in China.