A Study On Teachers’ Verbal Aggression In Classroom Conflicts Between Teachers And Students

Conflictive illocutions are ubiquitous in interpersonal interaction.Verbal aggression is a typical conflictive illocution,which can be considered as a kind of intentional offence,indicating problems in interrelationship(Miao Ning and Du Bingyan,2015:169).In this thesis,verbal aggression is defined as the linguistic behaviour that is intentionally performed by the speaker to threaten or attack the hearer’s face in particular context,finally hurting the hearer psychologically and destructing the interpersonal relationship.This thesis is an empirical study on teachers’ verbal aggression in classroom conflicts between teachers and students in light of Bousfield’s impoliteness model and Spencer-Oatey’s rapport management theory.This thesis applies both qualitative approach and quantitative approach to exploring the 224 extracts concerning teachers’ verbal aggression selected from 71 class recordings in two junior high schools in Hubei province,aiming to dig out the realizations of teachers’ verbal aggression in teacher-student classroom conflicts,its response options and its pragmatic effects.On one hand,the qualitative approach is employed to illustrate the realizations of teachers’ verbal aggression and response options to teachers’ verbal aggression as well as the influence of teachers’ verbal aggression on teacher-student relationship.On the other hand,the quantitative approach is used to analyze the distribution of the realizations of teachers’ verbal aggression and the distribution of the response options to teachers’ verbal aggression.This thesis has drawn three major findings.Firstly,ten strategies identified by Bousfield(2008)occur in data studied,including Challenges(44.53%),Criticisms(16.50%),Threatening/frightening(7.16%),Sarcasm(6.36%),Hindering/blocking(4.37%),Disassociating form the other(1.19%),Being uninterested,unconcerned,unsympathetic(0.99%),Snubbing(0.99%),Using inappropriate identity markers(0.80%)and Using taboo words(0.40%).This thesis also identifies four additional verbal aggression strategies including Negative assessments(6.56%),Complaints(4.97%),Negative comparisons(3.98%)and Exposing one’s privacy(1.19%).Secondly,when confronted with verbal aggression,the recipients have two choices:they can choose either to not verbally respond(84.81%)or verbally respond(15.19%).When adopting the former,they stay silent;when adopting the latter,they counter the verbal aggression or accept it.When countering it,the recipients opt to two defensive strategies including Offering an account-explain and Ignoring the face attack,forming OFF-DEF pairings.Thus,OFF-OFF pairings in Bousfield’s impoliteness model do not occur in data studied.Thirdly,teachers’ verbal aggression in classroom conflicts between teachers and students is the manifestation of teachers’ rapport neglect orientation or rapport challenge orientation in rapport management,threatening the recipients’ face,sociality rights and obligations as well as interactional goals which are three interrelated important components of interpersonal rapport management.Hence,it hampers the harmonious development of teacher-student relationship.Through data analysis,another three findings on the realizations of teachers’verbal aggression in teacher-student classroom conflicts are revealed.First of all,the repetition of an individual verbal aggression strategy or the combination of different verbal aggression strategies can boost the illocutionary force of verbal aggression.Among fourteen verbal aggression strategies identified above,Challenges is most frequently employed with other strategies such as its co-occurrence with Criticisms,Threatening/frightening,Negative assessments,Sarcasm,Hindering/blocking,Using inappropriate identity markers,etc.Secondly,verbal aggression is often followed by physical aggression to boost the illocutionary force of verbal aggression.Thirdly,the spectators’ responses are highly important in interpreting verbal aggression for the reason that they can boost the face damage to the recipients of verbal aggression.This thesis investigates teachers’ verbal aggression in teacher-student classroom conflicts under the framework of Bousfield’s impoliteness model and Spencer-Oatey’s rapport management theory,aiming at making contributions to the existing research on conflictive illocutions and fostering a better understanding of conflictive illocutions.Furthermore,it provides a linguistic perspective for studying teacher-student relationship in the hope of promoting a harmonious teacher-student relationship.