An Analysis Of Senior High School English Teachers' Classroom Discourse Based On Politeness Principles

Classroom discourse is an important means for teachers to implement classroom teaching.English teachers' appropriate and subtle classroom discourse carries the functions of transferring knowledge,answering questions,communicating and interacting.Politeness,as a necessary quality of interpersonal communication,needs to follow certain standards and norms,which are the principles of politeness.In crosscultural communication,the moral,intellectual and humanistic qualities shown in discourse communication all reflect the importance of politeness,which is in line with the requirement of strengthening students' core competence about the cultivation of language ability and the formation of cultural character in basic foreign language teaching.Furthermore,this will be a beneficial “lubricant” for the harmonious relationships between teachers and students and the concordant classroom atmosphere,so as to improve the efficiency of classroom teaching.Through referring to relevant research literature on English teachers' classroom politeness discourse,the author finds that most of the research focuses on college teachers,while the application of politeness principles in classroom discourse among high school English teachers is relatively less.High school students are in adolescence,compared with primary school and junior high school,students in this stage of learningpressure is greater.Moreover,high school students have stronger self-esteem and psychological conditions tend to be more complex.When they encounter the attack,they are prone to be anxious,autistic and even extremely be weary of learning.At the same time,due to the lack of a corresponding language environment,English teachers' classroom discourse is more likely than other subjects to make students have a certain psychological distance.Therefore,high school English teachers should grasp the scale of classroom language and pay attention to the proper use of politeness principles.In addition,the author also finds that when high school English teachers use polite discourse in classroom teaching,there are still problems such as unbalanced use of polite principles and differentiated use of polite principles by teachers of different genders.As a result,it is particularly important to explore the principles of polite discourse in high school English teachers' classrooms.On the basis of Leech's politeness principles,the author starts from 15 March of2019 to conduct a one-month survey of 6 teachers in the second semester of Meishan High School in 12 classes through observation,recording,discourse transcription,teacher interview,student questionnaire,and analyzed the data with Excel 2016.Therefore,this thesis attempts to explore the following three questions:(1)How do senior high school English teachers apply politeness principles to classroom discourse?(2)What's the similarities and differences of senior high school male and female English teachers' use of politeness principles in classroom discourse?(3)What's the influences of senior high school English teachers on classroom teaching by using politeness principles in classroom discourse?Through analysis and comparison of the data and results,the researcher finds three features of Meishan high school English teachers' polite classroom discourse.Firstly,senior high school English teachers mainly use the tact maxim,generosity maxim,agreement maxim,approbation maxim,modesty maxim,and sympathy maxim of Leech's politeness principles in their classroom discourse.Among these maxims,the tact maxim is the most frequently applied in the polite discourse of English teachers in class.Within each maxim,there are specific politeness situations,and the proportion of each politeness situation varies.Secondly,both male and female teachers pay attentionto the use of politeness principles in classroom discourse,but due to the impact of the innate personality differences between male and female teachers,they differ in the way and emphasis of the use of politeness principles.Male teachers are more likely to use generosity maxim and approbation maxim.On the other hand,female teachers pay more attention to the use of tact maxim,agreement maxim,modesty maxim and sympathy maxim.Thirdly,teachers' reasonable use of politeness principle can promote effective classroom teaching and communication,students' learning motivation,harmonious teacher-student relationship,warm classroom atmosphere and students' politeness awareness cultivation.However,sometimes excessive or improper use of politeness principles by teachers may also have a negative impact on the accuracy of language teaching and the image of teachers in the minds of students.Overall,taking Meishan High school as an example,this thesis based on Leech politeness principles to analyze and discuss the high school English teachers' classroom discourse,which hopes to provide some suggestions for the general high school English teachers: English teachers should improve the reasonable application of the politeness principle and give full play to the role of the politeness principle as a “lubricant” to create a harmonious relationship between teachers and students and classroom atmosphere,so as to achieve the aim of improving the quality and efficiency of classroom teaching;At the same time,English teachers should also pay attention to absorb the reasonable and effective politeness principle mainly used by the opposite gender,so that the politeness principles can be comprehensively,actively and effectively applied in the classroom teaching.However,the limitations of this study include the limited scope of teachers and students as well as limited types of classes need to be improved in future research.