An Empirical Study On The Strategies Of Performing The Speech Act Of Disagreement In The Domestic Pedagogical Context

The speech act of disagreement, as one of the various types of speech act, is commonly seen in the pedagogical context. This involves the disagreement expressed by the teachers as well as the students. According to Levinson's face theory, the speech act of disagreement is by nature a face threatening act. Thus the proper strategies adopted in performing the speech act of disagreement are of great importance in establishing harmonious teacher-student relations and improving the effect of teaching. With an overview of the previous studies, it is not difficult to find that the studies on the speech act conducted before mainly focus on "threatening", "apologizing", "complaining", etc. As for the speech act of disagreement, especially disagreement within the pedagogical context, there are few researches on it. This generates the present research which studies the speech act of disagreement happening in English classrooms.The present study tries to make comparisons between the teachers' strategies of performing the speech act of disagreement and the students' psychological expectations and at the same time between the students' strategies and the teachers' psychological expectations in the pedagogical contexts with such measures as questionnaires, classroom observations and group interviews. Meanwhile, variables like the gender of the teachers, the gender of the students and the issues involved in the disagreement are observed to see their influence on the choices of strategies of the teachers and the students in performing the speech act of disagreement. The data collected are analyzed by the SPSS. Chi-square tests are conducted to see the differences between the experimental groups.In the study, thirty freshmen from Anhui University and thirty teachers working in various colleges and universities within Anhui Province are selected as the subjects of the present study. They are surveyed and interviewed in order to find out:(1) the characteristics of the strategies chosen by the teachers and by the students in terms of expressing their disagreement; (2) whether the teachers'and students'choices of strategies match the psychological expectations of one another; (3) the influence of the factors on the teachers'choices of strategies such as the gender of the teachers, the gender of the students and the type of issues involved in the disagreement. The major findings of the study are as follows:1. During the tests, both the teachers and the students tend to express disagreement in relatively indirect ways. Although some of the teachers actually adopt fairly direct strategies to convey their disagreement with the purpose of better efficiency in class, most of the teachers surveyed in the study take into consideration the feelings of the students. The students, on the other hand, are deeply influenced by the traditional value of respecting the teachers and the authoritative role that the teachers have been playing at all time. They express their disagreement with indirect strategies in most of the time. Only a few students say that they will show their disagreement in relatively direct ways, which indicates the change of teacher-student relation in modern education.2. The results of the comparisons between the strategies used in expressing disagreement and the psychological expectations show that neither the teachers nor the students do well enough to choose the strategies that satisfy the expectations of one another. This is indicative of the lack of communication between the teachers and the students.3. The thesis also investigates the influence of the teachers'and the students' gender and the type of issues involved in the disagreement on the teachers" choices of strategies. The results show that the gender, as a variable, does not have an impact on the choices of strategies. As far as the issues involved in the disagreement are concerned, while they do not influence the students'choices of strategies, they remarkably influence the teachers'choices. The teachers will adjust their strategies of performing the speech act of disagreement in different situations despite the fact that the strategies they use do not always satisfy the psychological expectations of the students.