The Power In Teacher Talk

This paper discusses the teacher power which is embedded in the teacher talk from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. This study, which uses Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis model as reference, analyzes teacher talk that happens between teachers and students in the classroom. Fairclough first put the "text","interaction" and "context" as the three dimensions of critical analysis. He regards the three dimensions as a unity. Text as a result of interaction is at the lowest hierarchy. The process of production and the process of interpretation use the context as social condition. It means that discourse is constrained by social structures, and at the same time, it has the function of construction to the social structures.Based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis model, this paper analyzes the teacher talk in six classes from six teachers. From his three-dimension stages-description, interpretation, and explanation-it tries to explore the teacher power which is embedded in the teacher talk. The findings are as follows:(1) At the description stage, we find that the teacher is the power holder. We can find the evidence from the analysis of teacher talk such as the use of coercive verbs and modal verbs, the use of imperative sentences and rhetoric sentences, the use of the Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) structure, and the high amount of teacher talk, etc.(2) In investigating the identity of five forms of teacher power proposed by French&Raven (1968), we find that both teachers and students are more acceptable to the reference power and expert power.(3) At the explanatory stage, the paper tries to conclude the constraint factors of teacher power. That is Chinese society, educational system and knowledge.In addition, the author discusses the influences of the features mentioned above on the students’ acquisition of language and puts forward some suggestions on the optimization of the teacher power.