A Study Of Politeness In Chinese Teacher Talk In College Efl Classrooms

Teacher Talk(TT) is the language which teachers use in classroom teaching. It can also be called teachers’ speeches or utterances. For some years, researchers abroad have devoted to the description and analysis of TT and breakthrough has been made in this field. Recently more and more researchers begin to focus on the study of TT in EFL or ESL classroom setting, since language is not only the medium of teaching but also the major source of learners’ target language input(Nunan,1991:189). With the teaching reform and education development, though the traditional teacher-centered classroom teaching method has been questioned and criticized, the study of teacher’s language use hasn’t come to its full play especially in the developing countries. In EFL classrooms in China, the cramming method of English teaching still exists and there are many “mute” English learners who may clearly know the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary but don’t know how to use them in communication even after many years learning of it. To some extent, English teaching has become test-oriented and learners acquire language in a passive way.Though there are many causes to this problem, one factor that can’t be neglected is that teachers are unable to make learners get involved in language learning actively.The present study mainly studies TT in light of politeness from the pragmatic views,aiming at exploring the effects of polite and appropriate TT on classroom interaction in EFL college classroom setting. It is assumed that high-quality language output of teachers has a great significance in initiating and maintaining classroom interaction.Politeness, as a prevalent principle guiding human communication, plays an importantrole in making communication smoothly and successfully achieved. TT, as one party of interaction between students and teachers, should also take politeness into account.Polite and high-quality TT could not only help teachers successfully complete learning tasks but also make students feel relaxed, inspired and willing to get involved in classroom interaction.In the present study, both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted to describe and analyze TT in EFL college classroom setting based on the politeness theory together with speech act theory, Cooperative Principle and conversation analysis. Real and natural language data is collected from the college English classes in Taiyuan University of Technology in Shanxi province. After 3 months of listening,observing and recording of real college English classes, the most representative and distinctive extracts of TT are selected as examples to explain the politeness strategies adopted by college English teachers. And necessary statistics are calculated and presented to describe and analyze the tendency of the politeness phenomenon in TT in college EFL classes.There are altogether 5 chapters in this thesis: chapter 1 gives an introduction to the background, purposes, rationale and structure of the research; chapter 2 is literature review about TT and politeness; Chapter 3 provides the research methodology of the thesis, which includes the theoretical framework of the thesis,data collection and data description. Chapter 4 is the description and analysis of politeness in TT. In this chapter, politeness strategies are explored based on the observed language data in three different speech acts of TT: directives, questions and feedbacks. And then, the author gives micro and macro pragmatic functions fulfilled by polite TT: to shorten T-S distance; to mitigate students’ negative feelings; to enhance classroom communication; to cultivate students’ manner and behavior. The last chapter presents the conclusions, implications and limitations of the research.