Linguistic Analysis of Classroom Discourse Structures

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Flensburg (Institut für Sprache, Literatur und Medien), course: Linguistics, language: English, abstract: This paper aims to conduct a linguistic analysis of classroom discourse with a focus on discourse structures by applying the Sinclair & Coulthard rank scale. The central question of this paper is: Which discourse structures can be found in a transcript of a tenth-grade English lesson from the FLECC? For this purpose, a transcript from the Flensburg English Classroom Corpus (FLECC), proposed by Jäkel in 2010, will be used as language material. According to McCarthy, discourse analysis holds a crucial position in applied linguistics and enables linguists to analyze and comprehend authentic language data, for example, the interaction between teachers and students in classrooms (2002: 56). Moreover, language teachers and material designers can benefit from such types of analysis 'in terms of how closely they approximate authentic language' (McCarthy 2002: 56-57). Additionally, teachers can determine the necessary modifications when they want to use the texts in the lesson (McCarthy 2002: 56-57). Sinclair & Coulthard assert that there is a structure in lessons at schools; however, the challenge was in determining how much of the structure is pedagogical and how much can be defined as linguistic (2002: 1). By devising the rank scale, the authors created a means to analyze the linguistic part of the discourse structure. Initially, a theoretical section including the structures of classroom discourse, free teaching exchanges, and bound teaching exchanges will serve as the foundation and prepare the reader for the analysis. Afterwards, the corpus and the method will be briefly introduced. Based on the theoretical section, the 38th transcript from the FLECC will be analyzed.