Discursive Construction Of Excellent Teacher’s Identities In Junior English Class

Excellent teacher has always been the focus for researchers home and aboard.Teacher talk plays an essential role in the classroom teaching. In the context ofclassroom teaching, interactions between teachers and students spur scholars’ greatinterest. Many studies intend to research on the linguistic features of teacher’sdiscourse such as questions, feedback, modification, code switching, etc.(Richards,1996; Fu,2008). The social factors in teacher’s talk haven’t been explored until recentten years, in other words, studies on identity in discourse in educational settings arefar beyond adequate attention. Very few identity studies focus on the college Englishteachers and the senior high school teachers. So we chose the teachers of junior highschool as our subject.Excellent teachers from the perspective of identities in the classroom discourseare study based on the theory of critical discourse analysis of Fairclough and theanalysis frame of Highland writhing discourse. Quantity and quality research arecombined to answer the research questions. How is the teacher’s identity as anauthority discursively constructed in junior English class? How is the teacher’sidentity as a friend discursively constructed in junior English class? What is thedistribution of these two identities? Thus, this study is to discuss the discursiveconstruction of teacher’s identity in junior high school English grammar lesson bydisplaying real situation of teacher’s talk in the classroom. Based on Hyland’sanalytical framework, teacher’s discourse from the four grammar lessons of fourteachers of the Eighth Junior High School English Teaching Seminar was held inApril2010in Qingdao is analyzed in detail to illustrate the discursive construction ofteacher’s identity as an authority and as a friend in middle school English classroom.The results of this study reveal that teacher’s identity is discursively constructedand negotiated in specific classroom teaching context. This study is persuasiveenough to illustrate how teacher’s two main sub-identities are constructed andnegotiated with each other through linguistic device. More specifically, on the onehand, teacher’s identity as an authority is realized through the use of Turn-taking, attitude markers, directives, agentive I, display question and simple IRF/IRE. And onthe other hand, teacher’s identity as a friend is realized through such categories ashedges, shared knowledge, polite directives, Inclusive ’we’, inferential question andIRF-RF/IRE... RE structure, this study is supposed to have both theoretical andpractical significance. It will offers some guidance to English teachers in Chinaconcerning their professional identity.