系统功能语言学

Interpersonal Function of Teacher Talk in English Class

1. Introduction

Holliday (2000) holds that, language is multifunctional, which performs three broad metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. These three metafunctions are the core of the functional grammar language.

Teacher Talk is the language which is used as a tool for the classroom organization and knowledge acquisition. Teacher Talk not only plays an important role in the language teaching ’s classroom but also is an essential medium for students ’ input. Researchers have defined Teacher Talk in different ways because of different research purposes. Ellis (1985) considered it as the language teachers addressed language learners which varied from the way they addressed other kinds of classroom learners. To improve communication, they made adjustments were called “teacher talk ”. According to G. Cook (1989), teacher talk was the amount of speech supplied by the teacher rather than by students. Later, Richards et al (2000, p.471) put forward that “teacher talk is the variety of language used by teachers when undergoing the teaching ”. Based on the research abroad, some Chinese linguistics have begun to pay attention to teacher talk. Wang Yinquan (1999) focused on the quantity of teacher talk in the class which set teachers as the center. Lu Yanfang (2007) analyzed the classroom talk of English teachers in the hope of instructing the proper usuage of classroom English and improving the effect of English teaching.

Teacher Talk is used to stimulate students to participate in classroom actives and to provide students the chance to improve their interaction skills. The quality and quantity of teacher are the vital factors to the effect of teaching, just like Hakansson (1986) proposed, the amount and quality of TT may influence and even determine the effect of classroom teaching.

This paper is to describe and explicate teacher talk. In the framework of metafunction of functional grammar, it discusses the forms of teacher talk and the realization of interpersonal function.

2. Interpersonal function of Teacher Talk

2.1 Realizations of interpersonal Meaning

The three metafunctions contribute to express the meanings in the clause simultaneously by resorting to the grammatical components corresponding to each metafunction respectively (Thompson, 2000). In functional approaches to grammar, functions are equated with meanings. So, we have ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning. Ideational meaning refers to the fact that we use language to talk about our experience of the world, including the worlds in our own minds, to describe events and states and the entities involved in them. Interpersonal meaning is a strand of meaning running throughout the text that expressed the writer’s attitude towards the subject matters. Textual meaning refers to the way the text is organized as a piece of writing.

It is cleared that to whatever purpose, language is used and is always used to express an attitude and take up a role. Language takes on such an important metafunction as to enable us to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relationships with them, to influence their behavior, to express our own view point on things in the world, and to elicit or change theirs (Thompson, 2000).

Interpersonal meaning is conveyed by the headings of the role of the speakers, mood, modality, evaluation and so on. As we know, people continuously change their roles in the real communication. However, no matter how changeable the role is, there are four basic speech roles: giving information, demanding information, giving goods and services and demanding goods and services.

Mood and modality are the principal components of the interpersonal meaning.

2.2 Communicative Role

The main speech roles in communicative exchange are giving and demanding.

(1).giving (a) His letter to his grammar school principal is the second letter. (b) I ’d like to share this letter with you. (2). demanding (c) Well, after the interview, what can you do? (d) Now let’s move to some listening practice.

(a) gives information, and (b) gives goods and services, that is, the speaker ’s (teacher) purpose is giving information or giving good and services to the listener(students) which is carried out only through language. On the contrary, (c) and

(d) are used to make the listener give information demanded or influence their behavior.

In the four sentences above, (a) and (c) are “statement ” and “question ”. These two language functions which are related to the information are called “proposal ”, while (b) and (d) are “offer ” and “command ”. They which both have relations with the goods and services are called “proposition ”. In general, in functional approaches to grammar, meanings are encoded in clauses. The four speech roles are usually realized by different mood: statements are most naturally expressed by declarative clauses; questions by interrogative clauses; and commands by imperative clauses. From the perspective of the proposal, teacher always gives information in communicative exchange and from the proposition perspective, he gives goods and services and then demands information. Statement is the main speech role in the teacher talk, which is used to illustrate the article. Teacher spent certain amount of the talking time in asking questions. In the classroom, interaction is made between teacher and students. And during the whole process of interaction, questioning is a common way to communicate. The proper use of questions may promote the exchange between teacher and students, and thus receive an excellent teaching effect. Imperative clauses are seldom used because teacher is not a commander but an instructor. He instructs students to express their ideas and to communicate with others.

2.3 Mood

Mood is the core of the exchange. It plays a vital role in carrying out the interpersonal function of the clause. The analysis of the mood can reveal the speakers’ roles and thus provides insight into their relationships. In functional analysis, a clause is said to include two parts: the Mood and the Residue. The Residue consists of everything that is not part of the Mood. The Mood is constituted by the Subject and the Finite.

(1) Have you ever done such kind of discussion before?

(2) You may discuss the value of the gratitude in Chinese culture and also in western cultures.

(3) What can we do with this?

(4) Let ’s move to some listening practice.

Personal pronoun is considered as one of the linguistic devices that help to realize interpersonal meaning (Halliday, 2000). By analyzing the frequency of the subject personal pronouns, we find that the second person pronoun “you ” is used most frequently, while the first person pronoun “I ” is used least. Subject personal pronouns I refers to the teacher himself, we refers to both of the teacher and the learners, and you refers to the learners. The subject pronoun you in this group just help us to identify that the teacher is negotiating meaning with the learners not someone else. Also from this point, it can be concluded that the teachers have abandoned the traditional role as the authority. In the process of instruction they have become negotiators. The analysis of subject personal pronouns in teacher talk to a large degree has proved that the teachers are performing as a negotiator, an assistant and a supervisor during the process of instruction.

2.4 Modality

Modality is also an important concept in interpersonal meaning which is reflected by polarity. It shows the speakers’ judgments about the propositions they put forward, or it shows the fact that the speakers require the audience to take responsibility or the speakers express their own willingness in proposals.

Modality is generally expressed by modal verbs like may, might must, will, can and so on. Different choices of modal expressions lead to different interpretations of the interpersonal meaning and thereby different role-relationships between the speaker and the audience. To proceed from this point, the attitudes taken by the teacher towards the learners can be deduced by the modal expressions in teacher talk. The teacher is inviting the learners to participate in the interaction by exchanging their opinions through asking such a question as “could you paraphrase the sentence?” This kind of modality can be regarded as an effective way to stimulate the learners. Another point worthy of attention is that the teacher would rather employ median or low value expressions to give requirement than use high value expressions or even no modal expressions. This kind of teacher talk can, to some degree, reflect the teachers’ politeness and the equal and harmonious teacher-learner relationship in the teachering

context.

2.5 Quantity and Quality of Teacher Talk in English Class

For most English language learners in China, English spoken by their classroom teachers is the main source of target language input. The quantity and the quality of teacher talk in English is one of the decisive factors contributing to learners ’ development of English. The Quality of Teacher Talk is a vital factor to the effect of teaching. It is mainly because that English is not only the medium of teaching, it is also the target language. It is influenced by many factors. The teacher should make adjustments according to response of the students. Then teacher talk can be easily understood by the students. Therefore, it is beneficial to language learning.

3. Conclusion

In the framework of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper from the perspectives of Communicative Roles, Mood and Modality, investigates the linguistic devices that are employed in teacher talk to realize its interpersonal meaning in EFL classes. In doing so, the interpersonal function of teacher talk is revealed so that the teacher-leaner role relationship in English class can be reflected and evidence can be provided for the improvement of teacher talk. Some suggestions are hoped to be helpful for further improvement of the teacher-learner role relationship and for the building of harmonious classroom atmosphere. The linguistic devices are focus of the investigation, such as the subject personal pronouns in the Mood and the modal expressions in the Modality and the communicative role in English class. On the whole, this paper has provided a new perspective for the studies on teacher talk.

References:

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Systemic Functional Linguistic

Interpersonal Function of Teacher Talk

in English Class

2011级 英语语言文学

201110645

李玥