Interpersonal Meaning Of Teacher Talk In College English Classes

Teacher talk, known as TT, serves as both classroom language input and a tool for teaching, and thus, the study of interpersonal meaning of TT helps establish an equal teacher-student relationship and a harmonious learning environment in English as Foreign Language (EFL) classes. Within the theoretical framework of interpersonal function proposed by Halliday, the thesis concentrates on the language devices with which the interpersonal meaning is conveyed in TT of an EFL class. Through the analysis of mood and modality of the discourses of10prize-winners in the2nd National College English Teaching Contest hosted by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press (SFLEP), the research has found that the subject personal pronouns and mood structures connote different interpersonal meanings in the TT utterances; the modality, which is realized either in modalization (probability or usuality) or in modulation (obligation or inclination), is often measured in terms of different modal values and orientations. Combining the two dimensions together, we can have different types of modal expressions implying different interpersonal meaning as well.Two findings are attained from the analysis of the mood system. Through the study of subject personal pronouns, we see that the second-person "you" is the most popularly applied in the TT utterances, which is followed by "we", and "I". This result indicates that the teachers, as the organizers, center the learning activities around the students and lower their social position so as to shorten the distance between the students and themselves. It also reflects the teachers’ pursuit of an equal role relationship with the students. In the selection of mood structures, the declarative, the dominant mood structure, is used most often in. the TT, followed by the interrogatives and the imperatives. This phenomenon indicates that, as the initiators of language teaching, the teachers usually take a leading position in teaching process, while as the negotiators, they use the interrogatives to draw the students’ attention and encourage them to participate in verbal interactions.Similarly, the major results of the study on modality can be summarized into two aspects. In terms of the modal values of TT utterances, the median value modal expressions (e.g. will, would, shall, should, often, probably, maybe, etc.) are most favored by the teachers, and the ones in low value (e.g. may, might, can, could, seldom, possibly, etc) also frequently occur in the given TT samples, while the high-value devices (e.g. must, ought to, always, etc.) are prudently adopted by the teachers. The choices of value reveal that the teachers prefer to adopt sincere attitudes towards students and see them as their friends. They like to communicate with their students in a friendly way instead of a demanding and authoritative one. In terms of orientations of modality, the teachers tend to choose implicit subjective and implicit objective types of utterances as a practical expression to make their opinions and feelings more objective and acceptable, which may effectively help keep a strong bond with the students.These findings have not only proved that the study of TT can help interpret the teacher-student role relationship in EFL classes, but also testified the effectiveness of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in exploring the interpersonal meaning of discourse. The research also clarifies that teacher talk selection is not at random but closely relates to "the selection by the speaker of a particular role in the speech situation, and his determination of the choice for the addressee and the expression of his judgments and prediction"(Halliday,1973:41), and the interpersonal meaning implied in it has a decisive impact on the teacher-student relationship and the effects of the EFL teaching.Through the study, the author hopes that the thesis can offer objective evidence for improving teacher-student relationships and teacher talk in EFL classes, and that it can provide a new perspective for the study of the interpersonal meaning of TT. She also hopes that it serves as a reference for other studies on interpersonal meaning in different types of discourses.