Bjørghild Kjelsvik
Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian
Studies, Faculty of Humanities
University of Oslo
Schemas of emergent speech genres in teaching and learning interaction
The theoretical background
Production: Department of Linguistics, University of Oslo. Photos: Bjørghild Kjelsvik © Design: Alv Reidar Dale. Print: Allkopi, 07/2008
In my PhD-project I have analysed speech genres used in teaching and learning interaction, in
two settings in Cameroon. The theoretical frameworks used are Cognitive linguistics (CL) and
Communities of Practice theory (Wenger 1998). The main analytical concept of speech genre is
taken from (Bakhtin 1986 [1979]).
Bakhtin postulated a rigid distinction between language as a formal system and speech communication as always growing chains of communication. Speech genres are the typical forms
utterances are cast in, but not part of the language system. From the CL point of view, however, the language system is usage-based and emergent (Langacker 1987) (Hopper 1998)). CL
thus alleviates the dichotomy of language and speech communication. The category of speech
genres can in CL be seen as schematic linguistic units alongside other such units, all shaped by
language usage (Langacker 2001). The advantage of introducing speech genres as a category of
linguistic units is the opportunity this offers for handling interaction in a principled way within
a CL framework.
Analysing teaching interaction in Cameroon – data and research question
I videotaped teaching interaction in Cameroonian villages and classrooms in order to look
for the speech genres of these communication situations. Speech genres would be “recurrent
commonalities of discourse”, schemas creating discourse expectations as interaction proceeds.
My main question was: How are speech genres used as social and cognitive resources by the
particpants in teaching and learning interaction? It is mainly the school interaction which is
presented in this poster.
Applying the CDS construct to teaching and learning interaction
A teacher is normally more knowledgeable
than a learner, and both parties are aware
of this. The CDS will thus contain the
Teacher’s additional knowledge besides the
shared knowledge, and the utterances will
focus on T’s knowledge in his turns of the
interaction, striving to make this knowledge
available to the Learner, see Fig. 4 for a
depiction of this discourse situation.
Working on actual discourse data:
The CDS construct
Importantly, in CL all linguistic units are
seen as abstracted from usage events. Linguistic units are schematized patterns of action
imminent in their usage events. This view
makes the study of actual utterances imperative.
Langacker (2001) introduces the notion
of the Current Discourse Space (CDS) to
show discourse as a continuous flow of
Fig. 1: Usage event captured in a CDS, grounded by
language use through time, each CDS upa Speaker and a Hearer, with shared knowledge.
dating the discourse. Fig. 1 thus captures a
given moment of an unfolding discourse as a
bounded utterance or usage event. The CDS is grounded in its participants (minimally Speaker
and Hearer) and their location and circumstances. The utterance may focus on any aspect of
the world; it indexes the Ground by using pronouns and deictics, and other linguistic devices
relating to the actual situation, together with intonation, gaze, gestures and body positions.
Through the usage event the participants pay joint attention to some aspect of
the world, as if looking through a viewing
frame. This viewing frame contains both
conceptualisation and vocalisation channels, see Fig. 2. Any aspect of a usage event
can in principle be abstracted as a linguistic
unit, emerging by way of being a recurrent
commonality over many usage events. This
applies to both verbal and nonverbal means
of communication. The CDS schema shown
in figs. 1 and 2 is a way of depicting the elements taking part in the process.
Fig. 2: An utterance creates a frame for joint attention to some aspects of the world.
Fig. 3:
A classroom
teaching
situation in
Cameroon:
A boy stands
to answer
the teacher’s
question in
class.
Fig. 4: CDS schema showing a sequence of utterances in the interaction of a Teacher and a Learner,
the current utterance being the T’s utterance appearing in the middle frame.
Sentence completion and complete sentences in classroom interaction
A much used speech genre in the classes I observed was to start a sentence or word and let it
hang unfinished to get the class to supply the rest in a choral response. Another common characteristic of school talk in Cameroon is the emphasis on using complete sentences.
In the following transcript from a lesson on the qualities of drinking water, the preference
for complete sentences meshes with the sentence completion genre in an unfortunate way for
Oumarou (8–9 years old) as he strives to understand what the teacher is after. He first answers
the teacher’s question of How is the water of the stream? without standing up, then must repeat three times, saying the correct answer Dirty four times before our excerpt. But the teacher
is still not satisfied, he wants his complete sentence repeated by Oumarou in a model-and-imitation sequence (translated from French):
the other hand, the school rule for
students to stand up straight while
answering questions in class goes
against the normal Nizaa body
posture in similar situations outside school, where they will crouch
in a respectful stance to adults. In
some cases this translates into the
hybrid stance seen in Fig. 5. Such
nonverbal practices are part of the
speech genres of the class.
Fig. 5: Standing up and bowing
forward – showing respect in two
different ways simultaneously.
A speech genre of negative comparison
Below is an example of a speech genre schema with two different conceptualisations from the
same lesson on drinking water. Lessons use to have a little text formulated by the teacher to be
learned by heart by the students. At the end of the lesson they are supposed to be able to quote
this target text back when asked.
In this session, the teacher several times used negative comparisons. He explained that
drinking water was uncoloured and tasteless by way of comparing it to maize gruel and sugar
with a sentence frame of “<y> is not like <x>”. These explanations were not meant as target
text to be learned, but as side text enlarging the students’ notion of the topic. However, some
of the students were not able to tell side texts from target texts and gave “<y> is not like <x>”
answers back when asked about what clean water is like. This situation is schematically shown
in Fig. 6 and 7 below. The only difference between the two schemas are in the conceptualisation channel of Information structure.
Transcript 1: Practical Hygiene, Mipom Public School 23rd Feb 2006, turns (27)–(34)
(27) Teacher
Teacher:
(28) Oumarou:
(29) Teacher:
(30) Somebody:
(31) Oumarou:
(32) Teacher:
(33) Oumarou:
(34) Issa:
02.48.6 Repeat! [1.4] The water of the stream is– [0.3]
02.51.4 (standing, looks forward, glances at camera)
Dirty. [0.2]
02.52.4 (stronger, with handbeat) Repeat, (overlapping low talk in class)
The water of the stream is– =
02.54.3 (not very loud) = The water of the strea–
02.55.5 The water of the stream is– [0.7]
02.57.9 –is how then? [0.1]
02.58.7 (looks around)
Dirty. (glances at teacher)
03.02.9 (stands up besides Oumarou) The water of the stream is dirty. [0.2]
In turn (27) the teacher tells Oumarou to repeat, and starts off the the sentence he wants him
to say. However, he lets it hang incompleted, and Oumarou takes his cue from this rather than
the repeat order, thus mixing the speech genres of sentence completion and student imitation of
modeled language. Other students pick up what the teacher wants, and finally another boy submits the correct answer. The sequence illustrates how differing conceptualisations of the speech
genres can lead to misunderstanding and frustration for both teacher and students.
The transcript also gives glimpses of nonverbal communication: Oumarou’s avoids gazing directly at the teacher to show respect, as strongly emphasized by his ethnic group, the Nizaa. On
References:
- Bakhtin, M. (1986 [1979]). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin, University of Texas Press.
- Hopper, P. J. (1998). Emergent Grammar. The new psychololgy of language. Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure. M. Tomasello. Mahwah, New Jersey/London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: 155–176.
- Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 1, Theoretical prerequisites, Stanford University Press.
- Langacker, R. W. (2001). “Discourse in Cognitive Grammar.” Cognitive Linguistics 12(2): 143–188.
- Wenger, Etienne (1998). Communities of practice. Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press.
Fig. 6: The teacher uses the sentence frame of
”<Y> is not like <X>” to broaden the students’
notion of the main theme. It is conceptualised as
a side text, extra information.
Fig. 7: The students understand the information
to be central new information about the topic
and part of the main text to be learned.
The target text and side text are clear to the teacher, but not to his students. In time, most of the
class will probably come to learn this distinction. In the meanwhile they struggle along as the
schemas slowly emerge from the repetitions in the unfolding discourse.
My research results
The microanalyses of interaction in schoolclasses show that speech genres are important orientational frameworks in interaction. They are emergent and become entrenched over many usage
events, just as other linguistic units. Groups and individuals with different experiences will
have differing conceptualisations of such frameworks for interaction. The Current Discourse
Space concept can be used to capture schemas of these units, retaining both their base in actual
discourse and their schematic quality.