7.4.3 Tenor:Negotiating Speech Roles
This section explores the representation of disciplinary identities in the negotiation of classroom discourse.Discussion on results will focus on the SFG analysis of interactional and linguistic features realising the interpersonal meanings in tenor in the four texts and the descriptive interpretation of the six individual Chinese students’ reflection on the seminars.It specifically examines the speech function choices in classroom interpersonal interaction and the students’ identification of the context through classroom participation.The degree of classroom participation is represented through the variation of speech function choice.
The subsection below will demonstrate a both quantitative and qualitative analysis of data:1) synoptically, how negotiation is unfolded in and measured by the number of turns, moves and clauses in the student discourse; 2) dynamically, how far the categories of speech function variation represent speech roles in individual Chinese students’ discourse.
7.4.3.1 Overview of Speech Function Choices
Table 7.19 summarises the total number of turns, speech function moves and clauses in the four texts, including the teachers and the students’ classroom discourse.Year 1 and Year 2 Chinese students produce higher numbers of turns, moves and clauses than those who in the other two years.There are 277 turns, 106 moves and 124 clauses in Year 1, and 222 turns, 127 moves and 123 clauses in Year 2.But if we consider the number of the Chinese student speakers in each classroom and the subsequent average number in individual student use, Year 3 and Year 4 get more than the previous two.The same results reflect in the mean of Chinese students’ moves in turns and verbal clauses in moves.The increase in the ascending order of moves in turns is 1.71 (Year 4), 1.5 (Year 3), 1.25 (Year 2) and 1.22 (Year 1), whereas that of verbal clauses in moves is 1.65 (Year 4), 1.45 (Year 3), 1.17 (Year 1), 0.97 (Year 2).
The above synoptic results show that senior year Chinese students are more efficient in producing speech function choices than junior year students.The increased participation in discursive negotiation reinforces the analytical results from the previous section on the construing of field that senior year students are more competent in tackling disciplinary knowledge in the classroom than the junior year peers.The reasons are mostly likely to be that these students develop a larger reservoir of disciplinary knowledge, English speaking skill, and familiarity with the conversational convention in the class.This is particularly revealed from their use of verbal clauses.In the column of ‘total CS verbal clauses’, Year 1 and Year 2 are found to produce higher numbers of elliptical clauses and minor clauses, respectively with 43 and 5 in the former and 30 and 23 in the latter.In contrast, the numbers of elliptical clauses and minor clauses used in Year 3 and Year 4 are 3 and 5, and 9 and 4.
Table 7.19 Total number of turns, speech function moves and clauses in the four texts and Chinese students’ classroom discourse
Notes:non-verbal moves = action of pause or keeping silence.
7.4.3.2 Opening Speech Roles
Opening moves are least produced in the four texts.The result confirms the findings in Section 7.4.2.1 that all four classrooms are teacher-dominant.It also validates the discussion in Section 7.2 that there is a hierarchical power relation between the teacher and students in the classroom.The most interesting finding in Table 7.20 is that there is no opening move in two senior classrooms, Year 3 and Year 4, whereas there is 1 move in Year 1 and 3 moves in Year 2.It is exhausting to interpret whether this is caused by the moment-to-moment activity organisation or the participants’ behavioural or mental factors, yet it would be interesting to see what meaning potential of speech functions is realised in the opening moves.
Table 7.20 Numbers and percentages of Opening:Initiating moves in Chinese students’ classroom discourse
All opening moves used in Chinese students’ discourse are opinions to provide ‘attitudinal or evaluative information’ (Eggins & Slade 2004, p.194).Extract 7.5 from Year 1 is produced by CS13 in turn 232/a.Before the turn, CS13 was arguing with the only one foreign student about what was the focused theme conveyed in the video with a female model, when the teacher was trying to step in and summarise the two students’ differentiated points of view, CS13 interrupted and tried to extend the previous opinion by opening up a statement.
Extract 7.5 Opening:Initiating move in Year 1
Notes:O:I = Opening:Initiating
Extract 7.6 displays three initiating moves by CS3 and CS2 in Year 4.When the teacher was interpreting a theoretical concept with the examples from the video, CS3 in turn 116/a interrupted and initiated new information that had not been covered yet.While for CS2, the closed question turns 156 and 180 were initiated to get confirmed information from the teacher.
Extract 7.6 Opening:Initiating moves in Year 4
These results demonstrate that the opening moves are initiated by the students themselves in order to give or seek information, but not to fulfil the other participants’ expectation.This to some extent validates the research hypothesis in Chapter 1 that Chinese students in the current context would actively participate in disciplinary activity.On the other hand, the lack of speech roles such as statement:fact implies that these junior year students tend to have no sufficient discipline-related knowledge to use in the classroom.
7.4.3.3 Continuing Speech Roles
It has been reviewed in Section 7.3.2.2.2 that the discourse purposes of three continuing structures are checking (monitor), offering, restating, contrasting, clarifying, exemplifying or qualifying information in response to the previous move after the intervention by another speaker (append) and, offering, clarifying, exemplifying, restating information by the same speaker (prolong).In the categories of append and prolong, the relationships of elaborating, extending and enhancing are followed.Table 7.21 summarised a synoptic overview of the numbers and percentages of the continuing moves used in Chinese students’ classroom discourse.The findings are illustrated as follows.
Table 7.21 Numbers and percentages of continuing moves in Chinese students’ classroom discourse
First, in the four texts, almost all types of continuing roles are adopted.There is an increased occurrence of the use of the moves from Year 1 to Year 4, with the total percentages in an ascending order of 22.64%, 23.15%, 37.93% and 51.35% respectively.Comparing the quantitative use of the moves in the four texts from a synoptic perspective, the Chinese students in the four texts tend not to check whether the other participants engage in interaction or not.That is, except for 1 monitor role adopted in Year 2, the other three texts have none of the use.
Second, the four texts adopt less appending moves to sustain the continuing roles after the intervention by the other participants.For example, all appending moves in the four texts account for lower than six percentages of the total continuing moves.Comparatively, Year 1 adopts more appending roles than the other three years, with 6 append:elaborate moves, 4 append:extend moves, and 1 append:enhance moves.The Chinese students in Year 1 carry out more interventions than those who are in the other three years.Although it seems that the Chinese students in Year 1 more actively participate in the classroom interaction by sustaining their moves, the whole text analytical results show that more than half of these interventions happen after the teacher’s attempt of scaffolding the students’ interpretation of the focused themes.This somehow suggests that these Chinese students lack discipline-related knowledge or English ability; otherwise they might understand the teacher’s speech purpose at this point and search for more information.
Third, prolong moves are adopted with the highest occurrence in the four texts.Overall, there is an increased occurrence of prolong moves in the four texts.Year 2 uses them slight more frequently than Year 1, with three types of prolong moves, i.e., elaboration, extend, enhance, accounting for 4.63%, 6.48%, 7.41% respectively, as compared with 4.72%, 4.72%, 2.83% in Year 1.Relatively, there is a remarkable increase of percentage in Year 3 and Year 4.If we just compare the occurrence in number, it is found that Year 3 produces similar number of prolong moves as the previous two years.However, when examining the average number of the moves in each year, all three types of prolong moves in Year 3 occur twice as much as the previous two years, with the percentage of 10.34%, 13.79% and 10.34% respectively.These increase further moves into Year 4.It sees the highest percentages of 10.81%, 20.27% and 16.22% in the four texts.
The increased use of appending and prolong sustaining moves from the junior year to the senior years resonates with the results in the previous section that the latter gain more ability to produce complex linguistic structures as well as the ability to mobilise disciplinary knowledge in the development of language.Most likely, this is the result leading from their routinised and familiarised participation in classroom interaction.
Another finding is that these continuing moves are dynamically constructed with Mood in Year 4.Eggins and Slade (2004) suggest that ‘sustaining moves remain “with” the Mood structure set up in an initiation’ (p.195) and thus negotiate the same proposition.This point of view is reinforced in the current classroom discourse finding as well.Table 7.22 presents the overall meaning potential of the continuing moves with Mood used in the four texts.The labels such as 1, 2 or 3 are used in this table, in order to match with the name of each move in Table 7.21. In the four texts, almost all continuing moves are realised by full declarative clauses, occasionally with elliptical declarative, interrogative and wh-interrogative ones in Year 1 and Year 2.
Table 7.22 Continuing moves with Mood in the four texts
7.4.3.4 Reacting Speech Roles
Reacting speech roles are the highest adopted ones in the process of interactive negotiation in the four texts.Reacting moves will be used when a speaker sustains reaction to a move produced by another speaker.Two types of reacting moves are focused on in the current study—response and rejoinder, which either support or confront the moves to examine the validity of the meaning contribution (Eggins & Slade, 2004).It is not surprising to see that reacting roles are highly used to sustain discussion in a situation, but it would be interesting to see how the negotiation is realised by them.To do so, the numbers and percentages of reacting moves used in Chinese students’ classroom discourse are summarised in Table 7.23.
Table 7.23 Numbers and percentages of reacting moves in Chinese students’ classroom discourse
The most striking result in the table is that there is a decreased use of reacting moves down from Year 1 to Year 4, with the total percentages of 77.36%, 74.07%, 62.07% and 45.95% respectively.Most of these moves occur in responding reactions.We can see in Table 7.23 that the total numbers and percentages of Reacting:respond moves in each text are much higher than those of reacting:rejoinder moves.Another interesting result is found in rejoinder reactions.Year 1 adopts the highest number of 27 rejoinder moves to probe, resolve, repair, detach and refute the contribution from the previous speaker.It is followed by Year 2 with 18 moves.While in Year 3 and Year 4, there are only 1 and 7 response:resolve moves respectively used.
However, the above synoptic results do not mean that the Chinese students in Year 1 and Year 2 are more capable than those in the other two years to negotiate with the other participants in the classrooms by adopting more diverse reacting roles.If we refer to the results from Table 7.21, Year 3 and Year 4 adopt continuing moves more frequently to sustain the negotiation in their own turns, with the percentages of 37.93% and 51.35% respectively.Although there is a lack of reacting moves in these two texts, the high occurrence of sustaining moves in the students’ own turns implies that these students need less of the teachers’ scaffolding to carry on their re-construction of disciplinary knowledge.
But it is also true that the Chinese students in Year 1 and Year 2 conduct a bit more interactional modification (reference) in negotiation than the other two years.For example, in the four texts, only Year 1 and Year 2 adopt respond:confronting moves to disagree and contradict with the teachers’ and the peer students’ prior information.Meanwhile, they use rejoinder:tracking moves to either check or probe what is mentioned in the previous move.Also, in the use of reacting:rejoinder moves, Year 1 adopts the repairing, detaching and refuting roles.These results verify what has been argued in Chapter 1, that contemporary Chinese students may increase their awareness of active participation in a given disciplinary context.However, I have no intention to claim and generalise that they know how to appropriately perform and negotiate their roles in the context.Rather, the current study aims to manifest the probability of the phenomenon.This can be more explicitly manifested in dynamic meaning unfolding of negotiation.The following paragraphs will present the most salient results in the above table with specific examples.
In responding reaction, Year 1 adopts 23 support:develop:extend moves, which is the highest number in the four texts.Responding moves are contributions for either completing the exchange or opening up the successive new discussion.In Year 1 text, in fact, almost all Chinese students adopt one extending move reacting to the teacher’s initial question, which tends to be realised with elliptical or simple declarative clauses.For example, in Extract 7.7, when the teacher initiates an open question ‘What kind of protagonists attracts you?’ in T/M 39/b, each of CS4, CS5 and CS6 in respective T/M (i.e., turn of move) 42, T/M 44 and T/M 46 uses one elliptical clause with one word to extend the answer ‘Elegant’ given by the foreign student FS1.
Extract 7.7 R:respond:support:develop:extend moves in Year 1 text
A similar phenomenon is found in Year 2 text, where 6 out of 7 extending moves in the turns 20, 30, 44, 57, 75 and 144 are realised with either one or two words to respond to the teachers’ move.In the four texts, the extending move is the second most frequently used in Year 3 text, with 5 moves accounting for 17.24% in its total Chinese student moves.
In rejoinder reaction, support:response:resolve roles are most highly adopted in Year 1 text, Year 2 text and Year 4 text, but least in Year 3 text.The decreased numbers in a descending order are:20, 16, 7 and 1.But if we consider the linguistic realisation of these moves with Mood structure, Table 7.24 shows that Year 1 and Year 2 use more than half elliptical declarative clauses and minor clauses.In contrast, in Year 4 text, there is only one elliptical declarative clause used, and the remaining six moves are either full declarative clauses or full declarative clauses with modalisation and modulation.
Table 7.24 Distribution of resolving moves in the four texts
Continued
7.4.3.5 Enacting Speech Roles Through Mood Choices
A synoptic account of Mood choices in individual Chinese students’ clauses is shown in Table 7.25.In the table, the symbol * followed by a number represents how many times the choice is chosen in an individual clause.This table also validates the above-mentioned results that Year 1 and Year 2 Chinese students select more elliptical declarative clauses and minor clauses than Year 3 and Year 4 students.It also can be seen in the table that, in almost all individual Year 4 Chinese students’ classroom discourse, more than half of the lexicogrammatical choices are realised through modalisation (i.e., frequency and probability) and modulation (i.e., obligation, inclination, capability).
According to Halliday, different types of mood are the elements of interactive negotiation.They represent different interpersonal functions and thus carry possible arguments forward.Year 4 Chinese students use more mood elements than the other three years.This indeed indicates that they tend to be more sophisticated than the other years in mitigating the exchanged information through modalisation and modulation such as ‘I think’, ‘possibly’, ‘may’, ‘can’, ‘will’, ‘seem’.But meanwhile, it is noted as well that most of the moves realised through Mood choices in the four texts are declarative types.In this sense, these Chinese students in the seminar interaction largely produce the statement resources for giving information.If we recall the curriculum design and the teachers’ teaching goals for the seminars in Chapter 4 and Section 7.4.1, for example, the Year 4 teacher mentioned that the students were expected to argue with him, this thus implies that the Chinese students from the four years tend to be less involved in critical argument on the focused themes.
