Abstract: This article presents a discourse analysis study of classroom interactions focusing on local power taken as a feature of discourse. The main purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the discursive resources through which the teacher exercises power in the classroom are also available to students who may appropriate and use them to defend versions alternative to those proposed by the teacher, even within the Initiation-Response-Evaluation structure. The specialized tools of conversational analysis within an ethnographic perspective are applied to teacher-student interaction in science classes in the elementary school of a shanty town around Mexico City. This discourse analysis shows students managing to contradict the teacher's orientations and even evaluating peers and teacher's assertions. Through these interventions, the children can reverse the interactional roles within the InitiationResponse-Evaluation structure, change the situational power asymmetry, and wield power to control locally the discursive interaction. The analysis displays discourse dynamics as being modified by students in the local negotiation in conflicting situations when the topic being discussed is meaningful for them. These student modifications show the dependence of the classroom social structure on academic content. Furthermore it is revealed that the structure of discourse (IRE in this case) does not define who is in control of classroom interaction. The study shows that the students, even in this marginal environment, construct themselves as subjects who discursively establish their role as knowledgeable and competent communicators who are able to influence social interaction.
Publication Year: 1998
Publication Date: 1998-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 122
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