Language and Dialogue - Volume 14, Issue 3, 2024

Abstract

This paper endeavours to explain why Weigand’s dialogic theory – the Mixed Game of human competence-in-performance – should be considered in improving Chinese College English language teaching. This paper will review several of Weigand’s key publications and research and analyse current Chinese College English language textbooks and teachers’ attitudes toward teaching English speaking. The results suggest that teachers refuse to be involved in teaching English speaking because they lack adequate training and need a theory to guide them. Therefore, based on Weigand’s theory of human competence-in-performance, the paper proposes several suggestions for improving oral English teaching. This article hopes to contribute to the further study of dialogic pragmatics in Chinese English language-speaking teaching.

Abstract

This study examines the role of disaffiliative reactions, specifically disagreement, in teacher-student interactions. Disagreement is often seen as confrontational and disruptive, but this research investigates whether it is a dispreferred act in these interactions. By analyzing teacher-student interactions and considering students’ final achievement scores, the study explores how teachers respond to students’ arguments. The paper specifically examines the context in which teachers contradict students’ arguments when requesting a reconsideration of their scores. While destructive responses are typically considered face-threatening, the findings suggest that they are the preferred linguistic behavior for teachers in these situations. This is because a constructive or affiliative reaction may potentially undermine the teachers’ fair assessment policy and authoritative power. The study also reveals that the severity of disagreements varies based on the tone of the students’ justifications. When students include compliments in their justifications, teachers tend to respond with mitigated disagreement, whereas openly critical justifications are more likely to elicit aggravated disagreement from teachers. The study illustrates that different cultures may have varying norms and expectations regarding disagreement and confrontational behavior.

Abstract

A completed research-action project on Climate change adaptation at the regional level (Memphremagog, Québec, Canada) is revisited here, which requires first to briefly recall what is the CCA program, and the project’s context, goals, and characteristics. The aim of the paper is to clarify issues of co-construction in dialogue, implementing a way to analytically distinguish phases of co-construction at the level of the research team’s effort along the project, by following important dialogue episodes. Stemming out of this dialogue analysis, another contribution of this work is to propose a better picture of the internal relationship between three important components of the normative dimension of such projects: pursued values, processual values, and the prescriptions that were required to actualize these values.

Abstract

The present study explores how disagreement space is managed in a multiparty argumentative activity of debate talk show that focuses on the political situation in Belarus. The communicative activity under study is viewed as a type of difficult conversation that takes place between two groups that differ in their ideologies (Ellis 2020). In particular, drawing on the polylogical framework of argumentation (Lewiński and Aakhus 2023) and communication design approach (Aakhus 2007), the study investigates the communicative practice of framing that the moderators and the debaters use to shape disagreement space. The analysis shows that the activity is polylogical not just in a sense of positions, participants, and places (Lewiński and Aakhus 2023), but also in how argumentative activity is framed, which has consequences for how the interactivity is constructed and how disagreement space is managed in the course of interaction. It also shows how the interweaving of negative and positive features of communication add to the complexity of difficult interaction.

This article reviews Eye-tracking in Linguistics978-1-3501-1751-8.

This article reviews Self- and Other-Reference in Social Contexts: From global to local discourses978-9-0272-1457-7