A critical examination of men's and women's discourse practices in directive-response speech sequences (DRSS) : evidence from teacher- student interactions during groupwork in two secondary schools in KwaZulu-Natal.
Year: 2003
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation presents a critical examination of men's and women's \n \ndiscourse practices in directive-response speech sequences (DRSS), on the \n \nbasis of data obtained from teacher-student interactions during groupwork in \n \ntwo secondary schools in Kwa-Zulu Natal. \n \nFollowing West (1990), the broad purpose of this study is to explore the \n \nsimilarities and the differences in the DRSS between educators of different \n \ngender and their students. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, particularly \n \nthe work of Fairclough (1989,1992,1995), this study then critically examines the \n \nsocial relations of power implicit in these instances of discourse. \n \nThe findings of this study indicate that both similarities and differences exist in \n \nmale and female educators' linguistic choices for issuing directives. There is \n \nsome evidence that female educators made more attempts than male educators \n \nto reduce asymmetrical relations of power in their directive choices. However, \n \nthe critical discourse analysis revealed that the linguistic choices of all \n \neducators in my study were mostly informed by the language functions they \n \nwished to perform at a particular stage of their lesson. \n \nI conclude that it is crucial that educators, both male and female, make more \n \neffort to employ discourse practices (especially during groupwork) that are more \n \ndemocratic rather than those that emphasise asymmetrical relations.
Author: Zodwa Muriel. Mkhize
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1001551219