A Study On Suggestion Speech Act In Office Hour Interaction From The Perspective Of Interactional Competence

Giving suggestions is a common phenomenon in social communication.In academic interaction,it can be a very important linguistic strategy of promoting a successful academic communication.With more and more scholars and students studying overseas or in an International school,researchers around the world have recognized the significance of suggestion speech act in academic field.However,little attention has been paid on this topic among Chinese scholars,especially on the research of oral suggestions.Due to the above facts,this paper tries to investigate on the suggestion speech act during office hour interaction in American universities.The present study is based on Martínez-Flor(2005)’s classification of suggestion speech act from the perspective of interactional competence that is proposed by Young(2011).The study selects 50 associated oral interaction materials from TOFEL Practice Online(TPO)and transforms them into scripts to build up a mini-corpus.It intends to analyze how the suggestion speech act is performed during office hour interaction in authentic situations and attempts to answer to following questions:1.What are the representation traits and distribution patterns of the suggestion speech act in office hour interaction?2.How do the participants successfully perform the suggestion speech act by utilizing identity resources,linguistic resources and interactional resources in office hour interaction?Research findings suggest that there are certain characteristics in suggestion giving during office hour interaction in three dimensions of interactional competence.On the identity resources dimension,the suggestion speech act performed during office hour interaction tends to the second personal deixis “you” as initiators to show concerns of the interlocutors.On the dimension of linguistic resources,on the one hand,giving suggestions during office hour interaction tends to take the conventionalised forms.On the other hand,professors often use discourse markers when give suggestions to maintain and enhance specific interpersonal and textual functions,to mark shared knowledge and to indicate responses and attitude in office hour consultations,thus co-constructing the interaction with the student.On the dimension of interactional resources,in order to maintain an interaction,a professor will take over the talking turns when students are in hesitation or confusion,which is marked by the pauses and suspensions of their words.Another strategy a professor adopt to co-construct the communication with students is the use of repair.Professors sometimes specify their suggestions by means of repairing what they have suggested previously to prevent their suggestions from being ambiguous or difficult to understand.This study is of both theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically speaking,findings of the research provide insights for the future research on speech acts,interactional competence and office hour interaction.It can not only reveal the strategies to make suggestions in an authentic academic context,but also foster the competence of giving suggestions of ESL learners in China.Practically speaking,English learners in China will enhance their interactional awareness and competence in oral academic context through the findings of this study.Meanwhile,it has pedagogical implications for EFL teachers and learners and will benefit study-aboard scholars.