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.

Abstract

This dissertation presents a critical examination of men's and women's

discourse practices in directive-response speech sequences (DRSS), on the

basis of data obtained from teacher-student interactions during groupwork in

two secondary schools in Kwa-Zulu Natal.

Following West (1990), the broad purpose of this study is to explore the

similarities and the differences in the DRSS between educators of different

gender and their students. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, particularly

the work of Fairclough (1989,1992,1995), this study then critically examines the

social relations of power implicit in these instances of discourse.

The findings of this study indicate that both similarities and differences exist in

male and female educators' linguistic choices for issuing directives. There is

some evidence that female educators made more attempts than male educators

to reduce asymmetrical relations of power in their directive choices. However,

the critical discourse analysis revealed that the linguistic choices of all

educators in my study were mostly informed by the language functions they

wished to perform at a particular stage of their lesson.

I conclude that it is crucial that educators, both male and female, make more

effort to employ discourse practices (especially during groupwork) that are more

democratic rather than those that emphasise asymmetrical relations.