On Identity Construction Of High School English Teachers Based On Teacher Discourse

Teacher discourse plays a very important role in language teaching, foreignlanguage in classroom teaching is not only the objective but also the medium ofteaching. Teacher discourse can help us to understand the function of the speech andhave the significance in analyzing the classroom interaction behavior, which alsopromote the development of students· language.However, most of the previous studymainly focused on he language features of teacher discourse at abroad and home: suchas the quantity of teacher discourse; the adjustment of teacher discourse, teachers·classroom questioning and feedback. All of these ignored the social attributes ofteachers. That is to say, the analysis of the current teacher discourse and identityconstruction is rare.Identity is an abstract, complex and dynamic concept. Essentialism proposed thatidentity is a permanent unchanging "personality", determining the benchmark of therights and ability of individual, once people obtain certain status from the society, hewill win the rights to adapt to this kind of identity. This point embodies the essence ofthe whole body, stability, core identity, and sense of belonging and the homogeneity ofthe view. Constructivism views that "identity" is the social construction, the individualform his own character in the process of participating in activities in the socialenvironment (Tsui,2007). Identity is not only a process of construction, but also thecontinuous dynamic process of changes (Hall,2008). This paper adopts constructivistperspective; the construction of teacher·s identity is to be discussed in the present realsituation of teaching classroom discourse. This paper aims to answer the followingquestions: how teachers· professional identity and relational identity are constructed inthe actual discourse and how the two identities affect its teaching performances. Basedon the analysis model of Hyland and Fairclough, this study analyzed the natura lclassroom discourse by means of observation and recording,five teachers· classroomdiscourse were selected as the primary source of data in the first middle school inxinshao county. This paper developed the teachers· discourse from perspectives ofagentive pronouns I and inclusive we in self mention, attitude markers, directives, hedges, turn taking, topic control, IRF structure, shared knowledge, revealing howthese discursive devices are employed by teacher to construct their professional andrelational identity.Research shows that: teacher identity is the process of construction and theinterweaving of multiple identities in the English classroom. The professional identityis constructed through the agentive pronouns I, attitude markers, directives, turn taking,topic control, as well as the IRF exchange, which performs the authority The relationalidentity is constructed through the hedges, inclusive we, shared knowledge and politedirectives, which embodies the friendship. The two identities incoordinate in theconstruction of teachers.The theoretical and methodological implications of the present study are primaryexploration into the middle school teacher·s professional and relational identity fromdiscursive perspective in English classroom teaching, which gives us a holistic view ofteacher identity. For present multiplicity of teachers· identities, this study proposes thatthe integration of teacher identity will effectively promote teaching.In view of thelimitation of the study and the potentiality of the research perspective; suggestions aremade for the improvement in future studies.