A Contrastive Study Of Discourse Markers By Native And Non-Native English Teachers From Multimodal Perspective

In the age of multimedia,the media and modes for communication have changed greatly and there is an increasing awareness that meaning is rarely made with the language mode alone.People conduct communication with many kinds of modes simultaneously,such as space,gestures,gaze,posture,intonation,pictures,and so on.In many cases,language and other semiotic resources realize meaning simultaneously.The classroom discourse is a typical type of dynamic multimodal discourse since it has the modes of language,the auditory mode and the visual mode.It is clear that the discourse markers(DMs)used by teachers inevitably impact students’ comprehension of classroom discourse and students’ cognition of DMs.What’s more,DMs as a kind of language mode also contribute to completing the discourse construction together with other modes.In light of this background,with the instruction of Zhang Delu’s(2009)synthetic theoretical framework of multimodal discourse analysis,this study conducts a comparative study of DMs used by both native and Chinese English teachers based on self-built corpus from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis(MDA).This study,as a combination,is theoretically informed and empirically grounded.Eight videos of English teaching by four native English teachers and four Chinese ones respectively are chosen as the corpus resource,and the subject of these videos is about British and American Literature.By transcribing conversations and clipping the audios and pictures,corpora are built in order to study DMs specifically from the perspective of language,intonation and gesture.Data analysis yields findings that there exist both differences and similarities between the two groups of teachers in the usage of DMs in their language teaching.Chi-square Test has been made on the DMs,and the result indicates that significant differences exist between the two groups of teachers.On the other hand,it can be shown by observation that there are some other differences and similarities in other modes,that is,the intonation and the gesture,between the two groups of teachers.This research attempts to carry out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the semiotic resources in the discourses of both native and Chinese English teachers,having the theoretical and practical importance.Theoretically,it enriches the studies on the synergy of modalities in classroom teaching.Practically,it provides some implications for domestic professors to make a better use of multimodalities.This thesis ends with the limitations of the present study,and presents the implications and suggestions for future research,especially in respect of teacher development in terms of discourse markers application.