Exploring Conflict Talk Among English Teachers In The WeChat Discussion

Research on teacher discourse is of vital importance to teacher development.Although researchers have conducted a large number of research on teacher discourse in classrooms,there is a dearth of reliable studies on teacher discourse outside classrooms.This thesis takes conflict talk,which is a common phenomenon in interaction as the lens,to conduct a research on language teacher discourse which happens outside classrooms.Triggered by the noticing of conflict talk in the"Discussion Panel" column,an online discussion happens in a WeChat group of the English Language Learning(ELL)magazine,this thesis conducts a study of conflict talk occurring among language teachers,researchers and other language education professionals in the magazine column.Qualitative data analysis methodology has been adopted and two causes of conflict talk are investigated,including language teachers' different conceptual presupposition and different contextual presupposition.Detailed analysis of these two causes has been performed and the mediating role of conflict talk caused by different factors has been compared and summarized.Conflict talk caused by differences in contextual presupposition is easier to be negotiated and resolved while that caused by different conceptual presupposition is difficult to mediate interaction,what is more,conflict talk caused by both these two factors makes the mediation more complex.Findings of this research will on one hand enrich the research on language teacher discourse outside classrooms,and provide enlightenment for teacher development,to make it specific,teachers can identity and make use of conflict talk occurring in interaction to enhance their communication of ideas with others,at the same time seek opportunity to learn and attain development,on the other hand contribute theoretically to the method of conflict talk analysis and enrich the research on the positive effect of this seemingly negative phenomenon in communication.