Department of English

Bachelor Degree Project

English Linguistics

Autumn 2020

Supervisor: Kathrin Kaufhold

Establishing and preserving social relations in classroom discourse A study of a teacher’s redress to FTAs that

enhance and maintain teacher-student rapport

Julia Rudolfsson

Establishing and preserving social relations in classroom discourse A study of a teacher’s redress to FTAs that enhance and maintain teacher-student rapport

Julia Rudolfsson

Abstract This study examines how a Swedish upper secondary school EFL teacher avoids performing Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) in instances of reprimanding and giving oral feedback to students. The results and discussion show that the teacher evades potential FTAs caused by statements and demands by using indirectness in the form of questions and requests. Moreover, the feedback was delivered in an emphatic manner, primarily consisting of positive reinforcement regarding the students having performed a task, and secondarily on content and students’ skills. The act of causing face impediments was also mitigated in the delivery of performance feedback with the use of hedges to corrections and with the use of plural ‘you’ rather than focusing on individual student’s errors. These findings suggest that teachers can enhance and maintain rapport with their students in instances that are inherently face-threatening, thereby providing further insight into how teachers can strengthen social relations through the choice of appropriate speech acts.

Keywords

Rapport, FTAs, Speech Acts, Politeness Strategies, face, classroom discourse

Contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................... 1

1.2 Research aim and research questions ................................................ 2

2. Literature review ............................................................................ 3

2.1 Speech Acts ................................................................................... 3

2.2 Face, Positive face and negative face ................................................. 4

2.3 Politeness: Positive politeness and Negative politeness ........................ 5

2.4 On and off-record Politeness: direct and indirect speech acts ................ 6

2.5 Interpersonal rapport ...................................................................... 7

3. Previous research ........................................................................... 8

4. Methodology ................................................................................ 10

4.1 The research site and participants .................................................... 10

4.2 Data collection ............................................................................... 11

4.3 Analytical framework ...................................................................... 12

5. Results and Discussion .................................................................. 13

5.1 Establishing a behavioral frame with requests and questions ................ 14

5.2 Using in-group makers and tag-questions to maintain a behavioral frame ........................................................................................................ 16

5.3 Feedback formulations .................................................................... 19

6. Conclusion ................................................................................... 22

6.1 Suggested further research ............................................................. 23

References ...................................................................................... 25

Appendix A ...................................................................................... 27

Appendix B ...................................................................................... 32

Appendix C ...................................................................................... 33

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1. Introduction

Within contemporary educational settings, different goals and interests are negotiated

and challenged through communicative actions and means. The different interests

present in classrooms are diverse and differ between individual students as well as

between the students and their teacher (Fägersten, 2012). The teacher is assumed to

have the power through his or her role as an educator; meanwhile, the students are

capable of impairing the teacher’s role and goals if their interests contradict. At such

occasions, minor linguistic aggressions, both verbal and non-verbal, can be observed in

the language used by the participants whose interests diverge. In situations where

conflicts arise, a type of communicative disharmony erupts, which causes discomfort

and potential embarrassment for the interactional participants. In a classroom

environment, communicative disharmony also risks producing an environment not

conducive to learning (Lundahl, 2019; Ädel, 2011). Conversely, certain speech patterns

can be identified in interactions where the participants try to mitigate the consequences

of conflict by recognizing and considering differing interests of the interactional

participants. Such communicative strategies are important for building relationships and

trust, ultimately creating a classroom environment with a positive learning experience.

A person who is able to juggle his or her as well as different interlocutors’ goals

while maintaining a harmonious conversation is said to have good rapport. Rapport, as

defined by Helen Spencer-Oatey (2008), refers to people’s “subjective perceptions of

(dis)harmony or smoothness-turbulence in interpersonal relations” (p. 335). Situations

in which conflicts arise in classrooms are often due to bad rapport, whereas the opposite

can be said when teachers knowingly or unknowingly utilize communicative strategies

in their classroom discourse that enhance and maintain the teacher-student relationship.

By analyzing classroom discourse - the language used by teachers and students

in the classroom - researchers, teachers, and others affiliated with the realm of education

have been able to improve classroom practices. Classroom discourse includes both

verbal and nonverbal exchanges and has traditionally been a focal point for educational

researchers and linguists due to learning experiences often involving speech. Classroom

discourse has been studied and analyzed to understand different knowledge paradigms,

and also how knowledge is constructed and conveyed to students (see Nuthall, 1997;

Jocuns, 2012; McComas, 2014; Klattenberg, 2020). In other words, researchers have

mainly been interested in the language used in the transfer of information and

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knowledge from teacher to student (Ädel, 2011). However, a supportive classroom

climate is an equally important factor for students’ knowledge development as the

transfer of subject matter content (Ädel 2011; McComas, 2014). Exactly how teachers

create supportive, comfortable classroom environments with rapport-oriented

communicative strategies is however a much less researched area.

Language teaching, being that it is constituted by continual interaction between

teachers and students, enables an arena for the study of rapport-enhancement and

rapport-management; this study therefore examines how a teacher integrates rapport-

oriented communication in classroom discourse. More specifically, the study will

investigate a teacher’s speech acts that are inherently face-threatening and which may

disrupt the communicative harmony, such as reprimands of students’ behaviors and

giving feedback to students’ performances. By analyzing verbal and non-verbal speech

acts in classroom discourse, this paper aims to broaden the understanding of how

teachers can establish and maintain rapport with upper secondary school students in

Swedish EFL-classrooms despite performing face-threatening acts, such as

reprimanding students’ behaviors and giving feedback.

1.2 Research aim and research questions

The purpose of this paper is to investigate rapport-enhancing and rapport-maintaining

speech acts used by a teacher in a Swedish upper secondary school where EFL is taught.

The research question to be answered is:

• How is the teacher able to enhance and maintain rapport with her students in

instances of reprimanding students’ behaviors and in instances of giving

feedback to students’ performances?

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2. Literature review

In order to untangle the multifaceted concept of rapport and its relevance for classroom

practices and learning, the field of pragmatics provides sophisticated theories that “take

discourses as units of study” (Allan & Jaszczolt, 2012, p. 1). Pragmatics is the linguistic

discipline that engages with speakers’ utterances and the hearers’ interpretations of said

utterance, or “the study of linguistic acts and the contexts in which they are performed”

(Stalnaker, 1972 in Huang, 2007, p. 2). The ‘pragmatic turn’ in philosophy and

linguistics awakened linguists’ interest in how sentences are used in communication,

how meaning is altered by context, and how human agents participate, form, and are

formed by social practices (Allan & Jaszczolt, 2012; Motsch, 1980). In this section,

relevant theories for the present study will be presented, as they highlight the pragmatic

inferences in communication and its relevance for building rapport.

2.1 Speech Acts

The theory of Speech Acts sheds some light on the issue of context in communication.

Speech Act theory was originally developed by J. L Austin during the mid-twentieth

century, and later on developed by John R. Searle (Huang, 2007). The foundational

concept of speech acts is that the minimal unit of human communication starts with the

performance of certain kinds of acts (Searle et al., 1980). A central assumption is that

the utterance of a sentence is, or is part of, an action that depends on social institutions

and conventions (Huang, 2007); for example, there are performative utterances that are

both descriptive and inherently constitute part of an action, such as pronouncing

someone husband and wife or apologizing for being late (Huang, 2007). These types of

performative utterances are, as described by both Austin and Searle, part of

illocutionary acts; when we say something, we usually do it with some goal or purpose

in mind (Huang, 2007). The speaker’s utterance fills a function, or it is as a step in the

course of accomplishing the speaker’s goals. Some examples of illocutionary speech

acts are making statements, asking questions, accusing, apologizing, blaming, giving

permission, joking, nagging, promising, ordering, refusing, swearing, or thanking

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(Huang, 2007), and these acts can have different levels of directness or indirectness (see

Spencer-Oatey, 2008).

According to Huang (2007), the illocutionary act is “the action intended to be

performed by a speaker in uttering a linguistic expression, by virtue of the conventional

force associated with it” (p. 102). Often, the illocutionary speech act’s literal meaning is

not the same as its intended pragmatic inference; statements are often camouflaged as

questions, and questions sometimes function as indirect demands. In these cases, in

which the propositional content is encoded into an illocutionary act, it is relevant to

speak of the illocutionary force assigned to an utterance, i.e., what the illocutionary act

actually entails (Kissine, 2012). Pragmatics as a linguistic discipline therefore sets out

to investigate how language is used, its effects, and its consequences in different

contexts and settings.

2.2 Face, Positive face and negative face

According to Helen Spencer-Oatey (2008), all languages have a dual function: the

transfer of information, and the management of social relations. The scholarly interest

regarding the “constitution and manipulation of social relationships through language”

(Terkourafi, 2012, p. 617) focuses on how certain speech acts affect, alter and challenge

social relations. Speech acts might either enhance, maintain, or strain a relationship

depending on how it affects a hearer’s face. Face, as described by Helen Spencer-Oatey

(2008), is a “concept that is intuitively meaningful to people, but it is difficult to define

precisely” (p. 14). Face concerns people’s sense of worth, dignity, respect, honor, status,

reputation, and competence, i.e. a person’s sense of identity and self-image – the

concept of self that a person wants people to recognize. Face plays into the perception

and evaluation of one’s identity as an individual, as part of a group, and how one

defines oneself in their relationship with others (Spencer-Oatey, 2008). The people

involved in any type of social relation typically have a fundamental desire to have

others evaluate them positively, to be treated fairly, to be entitled to personal

consideration, and not to be ordered, exploited, or taken advantage of (Spencer-Oatey,

2008). In addition, Brown and Levinson (1987) make the assumption that every adult

member in society has a certain rational capacity that allows them to interact

purposefully, i.e., performing speech acts that lead to achieving their goals. They also

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emphasize that people tend to cooperate and assume each other’s cooperation as means

to establish harmonious interaction that upholds the individuals’ separate faces, and in

doing so avoid participants losing face – causing them to feel embarrassed or humiliated

due to the lack of recognition or ignorance of participants’ face wants (Brown &

Levinson, 1987).

The speaker can attend to the hearer’s face wants by either acknowledging their

positive face or their negative face. The former refers to positive constituents of self-

image – the desire to have positive aspects of one’s personality being noticed,

appreciated, and approved of by interactants, whereas the latter refers to “the basic

claim to territories, personal preserves … i.e. to freedom of action and freedom from

imposition” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 60). Ultimately, if our face is challenged, it

causes us to feel embarrassment, anger, irritation, and frustration. Failure of

attentiveness towards the face of the interlocutor might give rise to conflicts, but there

are communicative strategies that milden the effect of inherently face-threatening

speech acts, such as demands and reprimands (Spencer-Oatey, 2008). Face Threatening

Acts (FTAs), the use of language that causes offense (Terkourafi, 2012) are detrimental

to social relations and rapport unless they are followed up by felicitous facework

strategies that repair and restore our faces (Redmond, 2015).

2.3 Politeness: Positive politeness and Negative politeness

Linguists’ notion and interest in face stem from Brown and Levinson’s (1987) studies of

linguistic politeness. Politeness strategies operate as a remedial effect on the speech acts

that are inherently threatening to face, and thereby work as a type of diplomatic protocol

that “presupposes that potential for aggression as it seeks to disarm it, and makes

possible communication between potentially aggressive parties” (Brown & Levinson,

1987, p. 1). Brown and Levinson’s theorization of politeness builds upon Goffman’s

previous recognition of ‘virtual offense’ that occurs if an action by A potentially

infringes on B’s interests; however, semiotic adjustments of the potential offense – the

addition of polite expressions as redress to FTAs – might soften the impediment

because agent A displays consideration of the wants of agent B. In other words,

politeness can pave the way for more successful communication by fulfilling the wants

of the interactional participants, thus enabling an influential form of social control

which alleviates conflict (Brown & Levinson, 1987). A full list of different politeness

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strategies, detailed explanations, and examples that have relevance for this paper can be

found in Appendix A.

Expressions of politeness are further subcategorized depending on form,

speaker’s intention, and the relationship between the interlocutors. Positive politeness is

recognized as expressions of solidarity: expressions that satisfy and adhere to the

hearer’s positive face. If the speaker performs an FTA, s/he can compensate for the

potential face intrusion by claiming ‘common ground’ – the speaker expresses the same

wants, approval, empathy, or interest for him/herself – by attending to the hearer’s

interests, wants, needs, by trying to seek agreement or avoid disagreement, joke, and

use in-group identity markers (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Similarly, the speaker can

also attend to the hearer’s positive face through a cooperation mechanism in which the

speaker displays knowledge and concern for the hearer’s wants and takes them into

account by making offers or promises as compensation for face intrusions (Brown &

Levinson, 1987).

Just as positive politeness addresses the hearer’s positive face, negative

politeness is a redressive action concerned with the hearer’s negative face (Brown &

Levinson, 1987; Terkourafi, 2016). In order to avoid conflict, speakers perform speech

acts that minimize the imposition consequently produced by a particular FTA. Such

speech acts may include hedges and downgraders as FTA redress, and thereby enable an

abstract sense of ‘social distance’ which preserves the hearer’s perception of agency.

Brown and Levinson (1987) argue that “negative politeness is the most elaborate and

the most conventionalized set of linguistic strategies for FTA redress” (p. 130) because,

as argued by Terkourafi (2012), it is safer to assume that the hearer prefers autonomy

and self-determination over “expressions of regard” (p. 621). However, as mentioned by

both Brown and Levinson (1987) and Spencer-Oatey (2008), negative politeness is most

common in Western cultures, and the concept of face and politeness differs between

societies.

2.4 On and off-record Politeness: direct and indirect speech acts

In order to make communication as efficient as possible, we should initially assume that

the message being forwarded to the hearer is clear and unambiguous – the goal of the

speaker is explicit and coded into the message, and the illocutionary force matches the

propositional content. Brown and Levinson (1987) define this type of utterance as bald-

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on-record, and a clear motive for people to employ directness is the want to perform an

FTA more than the want to satisfy the face of the hearer, or if the speaker does not fear

retaliation from the hearer. In some cases, speech acts without non-minimization of the

face threat are also used within task-oriented communication such as instructions, or in

cases where the speaker is concerned with the hearer’s positive face and makes on-bald-

record statements with sympathetic advice (Brown & Levinson, 1987).

Contrary to bald-on-record politeness, off-record politeness is a communicative

strategy in which the meaning is related to a specific context. They are labeled as ‘off-

record’ utterances because of their ambiguous nature in which the intention of the

message, the illocutionary force, requires interpretation (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and

potential FTAs performed by the speaker are mitigated due to the indirect use of

language. Demands, for example, are inherently threatening to one’s negative face, but

the illocutionary force can be disguised with indirectness, such as a question or a

request, and the indirect phrasing functions as redress to the FTA (Brown & Levinson,

1987).

2.5 Interpersonal rapport

As previously mentioned, politeness strategies can function as a diplomatic protocol

that enables possible communication between potentially aggressive parties (Brown &

Levinson, 1987). By showing care and consideration for other parties’ face wants,

politeness strategies also enable a type of social control. The speaker can change the

course of the relationship’s development with different speech acts, and if the speaker’s

goal is to strengthen the relationship and to build rapport, s/he typically resort to polite

utterances as a resource for harmonious communication.

Interpersonal rapport, as suggested by the term, revolves around the relations

between people and the employment of linguistic expressions related to the relational

goal of the speaker. Spencer-Oatey (2008), in her discussion of interpersonal rapport,

includes two types of positive rapport-orientations (p. 32):

1. Rapport enhancement: a desire to strengthen or enhance harmonious

relations between the interlocutors

2. Rapport maintenance: a desire to maintain or protect harmonious relations

between the interlocutors

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Within the first orientation, rapport enhancement, the face that a person assumes for

oneself and others has greater importance in that it establishes the relational

fundaments, whereas rapport maintenance seeks to preserve the current relation, which

relates to a greater concern for the rapport-threatening behavior and acts that minimize

FTAs (Spencer-Oatey, 2008). Both orientations involve three interconnected

components: the concern for participant’s face and awareness of the cultural notions of

face in a given context, the participants showing concern for treating each other fairly

and in accord with social roles, expectancies, behavioral norms and appropriateness, and

lastly, management of interactional goals – being able to attend to the goals of all

participants including one’s own (Spencer-Oatey, 2008).

3. Previous research

The purpose of the current study is to investigate how a teacher enhances and maintains

rapport with her students while also having to perform FTAs in her role as an instructor.

These two tasks are not isolated islands – they are often simultaneously performed in

the speech acts that teachers utter. This section will therefore illustrate previous

researchers’ conclusions regarding the benefits of rapport in a learning environment, as

well as to explicate rapport strategies that illuminate the notion of teachers’ dual roles as

instructors and relationship-builders. Furthermore, the present study is also concerned

with the integration of rapport in feedback because evaluations of performance might

intrude on the students’ want to be perceived as competent.

Overall, there has been little research on the matter of communicative rapport-

strategies used by teachers – especially in non-English language classrooms (Yung

Park, 2016). Ädel’s (2011) contribution to the subject is useful in terms of

understanding how people in acquaintance-like relationships build relationships. For

rapport-enhancement Ädel’s (2011) study suggests that phatic talk – ‘small talk’ or off-

task conversations - is imperative for building rapport due to the speaker’s attempt to

enter the interlocutor’s “realm of the personal” (Placencia, 2004, p. 223). These findings

suggest that teacher-student relationships benefit from moving between on-task

instructional and off-task interpersonal communication, and a similar conclusion was

made by Mi Yung Park (2016) in her study of classroom discourse within a Korean as a

Foreign Language class in which the teacher integrated rapport-enhancement and

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rapport-maintenance into language instruction. The telling and sharing of personal

information, Coupland (2000) says, is at the “center of pursuit and confirmation of

rapport and intimacy in relationships” (p. 16). Also, feedback in the form of corrections

was recognized as being initially focused on the positive aspects of students’

contributions, and implicit feedback in the form of recasts downgrade the correction’s

seriousness; thereby, corrections serve as a resource for the teacher to express affiliation

instead of bluntly addressing students’ interactional troubles (Yung Park, 2016, p. 119).

Aside from verbal speech acts, non-verbal acts are also effective resources for

managing and softening FTAs produced by complaints and corrections. The teacher

observed in Looney and He’s (2020) study often used smiles as resources to express

both affiliation and disaffiliation related to class disturbances. The scholars found that

laughter and smiles are widely understood as face-saving acts in that they redress FTAs

associated with the positive values of face, ultimately making teachers able to control

the communicative courses in the classroom, such as redirecting off-task talk to on-task

talk. Looney & He (2020) found that teachers and students often resort to laughter when

a student provides a delayed or disaligning response; to show affiliation, students

produce standalone laughter that alludes to “the non-serious nature of disaligning turns”

(Looney & He, 2020, p. 1), and teachers often respond with laughter and smiles as to

recognize the disaligning interaction and as an attempt to redirect the nature of the

interaction back to being on-task.

Ädel’s (2016) and Allen et al’s (2003) studies imply that giving feedback can

provide teachers with an opportunity to enhance rapport with their students. Contrary to

rapport-building, Ädel (2016) noticed that teachers’ written feedback to students’ texts

rarely considered students’ face sensitivities. Most teachers gave their feedback in bald-

on-record form in which the students’ performance was at center for critique “for

having done X and not having done Y” (p. 60). However, some teachers had adopted a

feedback strategy that was more rapport-oriented in that it did not explicitly or

implicitly critique the students’ writing skills, but rather separating the text from the

students’ performances, e.g. by saying that the text is missing something rather than

saying that the student has failed to do something. Ädel (2016) concludes that feedback

focusing on the text itself “seem[s] quite useful in that they help the students project an

image of themselves as (typically more accomplished) writers in the future” (p. 65).

Even though Ädel (2016) does not include the notion of rapport in her paper, her

findings suggest that feedback formulations have imperative effects for rapport-

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enhancement and rapport-maintenance in the sense that it can adhere to students’

positive face – their want to be perceived as competent and approved of by interactants -

and can serve as a useful tool in accommodating a relationship built on trust and respect

between interactants. Furthermore, Allen et al (2003) noticed that students who received

feedback on their self-assessment made more positive evaluations of their examiner, the

class sessions, and showed greater self-esteem, self-competence, and self-understanding

compared to the study participants who did not receive assessment feedback. Drawing

from previous studies, Allen et al (2003) conclude that teacher feedback in the early

stages of a teacher-student relationship indeed correlates with rapport and relationship-

building, especially if it is delivered in an emphatic manner, and that these strategies

contribute to a collaborative working relationship.

4. Methodology

The current study comprises data gathered from audio-recorded classroom interactions

and an audio-recorded interview with the teacher; the data therefore represents an etic

and an emic perspective. The analysis is inspired by Conversation Analysis (CA) and is

performed in a deductive manner as relevant concepts from speech act theory,

politeness theory, and previous research are applied in the analysis of the transcript

extracts.

4.1 The research site and participants

The present study examines teacher-student interactions in two EFL classrooms in a

Swedish upper secondary school with mostly vocational profiles. The school is located

in Östergötland county and it offers three levels of English language courses: English 5

(E5) and the elective, non-mandatory English 6 (E6) and English 7 (E7). The

curriculum for secondary school English on all three levels focuses largely on

improving students’ communicative skills, which consequently requires continuous

interaction between the teacher and the students. The classes in which data was

collected were chosen with the sole criterion being that they should be interaction

focused, which language subject classes usually are, and they therefore provide an

opportunity for studying authentic teacher-student interactions.

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The two observed classes are one E6 class and one E7 class, both taught by the

same teacher. The classes range from 25-35 students with different educational profiles:

vocational (E6) and engineering (E7), and many of the students are not previously

acquainted with each other. In addition, the classes include students whom the teacher

has not been instructing in the past. The study’s primary participant is a female English,

Swedish, and history teacher who has been teaching since 2014.

On the day of observations, the E6 students had to present group projects which

they had prepared in previous classes. Each group consisted of 3-4 students; they

presented their group projects in front of two other groups and the teacher in a separate

classroom while the other students worked individually on a reading log in their main

classroom. The E7 students, on the other hand, were working on individual essays, and

the teacher instructed and monitored their writing progress. The different class setups

provided an opportunity to study the teacher in two separate contexts. In the E6 class,

the teacher gave the students feedback orally after their presentation, whereas E7

contains more teacher instruction and teacher-student on-task and off-task interaction.

Prior to the class observations, the teacher and the students were informed about

the purpose of the study, how data would be collected, the handling of the data

collected, their rights to remain anonymous, and to obtain data material upon which the

participants gave their consent.

4.2 Data collection

The data collected for this qualitative study is comprised of recordings from non-

participating observations in the E6 and E7 classes, each being 165 minutes long. The

classes are split up into two sessions with a 20-minute break between the sessions. To

make the students and the teacher feel more comfortable and use authentic language, the

classes were only audio recorded; non-verbal acts, such as smiles, shrugs, head shakes,

etc., were noted in writing.

As the study and analysis are dominantly teacher-utterance focused, the

recording was paused while the E6 students were presenting their group projects and

picked up again for the duration of the time that the teacher was giving the different

student groups immediate post-presentation feedback. During E7, there were no

interruptions in the recording. For the audio recording devices to gather as much

material as possible, one recording device was placed at the back of the classroom and

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one device in the front. However, despite setting up several recording devices, it is

difficult to discern the teacher speaking in instances of one-on-one interactions with the

students because of the peer-to-peer conversations surrounding the teacher.

After the data had been collected in the two different classes, a 20-minute-long

interview was conducted with the teacher to understand her perspective, wants, needs,

and goals that motivate certain speech acts. The interview was semi-structured, and the

teacher was asked to describe different student characteristics within E6 and E7, how

she caters to different face sensitivities, and situations where conflicts could occur.

4.3 Analytical framework

The foundational concept on which this study is based is that teachers in their role as

educators have a dual mission: to instruct and to build social relations with their

students. Occasionally, teachers have to perform FTAs as a means of classroom

management and in their role as instructors; the purpose is therefore to investigate how

a teacher can enhance and maintain rapport with her students in instances of

reprimanding students’ behaviors and in instances of giving feedback to students’

performances as both of these scenarios involve potential face-threats.

The method of analysis draws on institutional Conversation Analysis (CA).

According to Kimura et al (2018), institutional CA is concerned with the interactions

taking place in institutional settings, such as classrooms in which for example turn-by-

turn methods are carried out and expected by participants. CA’s overall approach,

whether institutional or not, is to identify participants’ goal orientations and how they

are carried out in their actions, which requires attention to the overall structural

organization “beyond what is immediately observable within a single turn or sequence”

(Kimura et al, 2018, p. 192). CA is therefore compatible with the application of speech

act and politeness theory because it recognizes that face-threatening messages often are

encoded into less face-threatening propositions.

To review rapport-enhancement and rapport-maintenance, relevant sections

including reprimands and feedback were identified and selected for transcription. The

transcript was then coded with symbols that mark features of intonation, emphasis,

prolongation, overlaps, interjections, unintelligible talk, pauses, non-verbal acts, etc.

The coding in itself is not relevant for the analysis of rapport but rather functions as a

tool to demonstrate authentic language use. Furthermore, the students’ names are

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irrelevant for the study; therefore, student utterances are mostly labeled with Student.

However, there are instances in which a student’s name is relevant in the preceding and

proceeding communicative exchanges. In such instances, the students’ names have been

replaced with pseudonyms. A full list of transcript symbols can be found in Appendix

B. Due to the length constraints, only eight transcript extracts have been selected for

analysis. The whole transcript can be found in full in Appendix C.

After having identified several segments where politeness and use of indirect

speech acts functioned as redress to an FTA, it was possible to create more narrow and

precise analytical categories regarding classroom management and rapport: (i) Setting a

behavioral frame with requests and questions, and (ii) Using in-group markers and tag

questions to maintain a behavioral frame. Furthermore, as the E6 class included

numerous instances where the teacher gave the students feedback, the category (iii)

Feedback formulations was also established and designated towards analyzing how the

teacher structured her feedback, and what speech acts and politeness elements were

most commonly used.

The interview with the teacher is an attempt to explain the speech acts “from the

inside” (Groom & Littlemore, 2011, p. 82) – the teacher’s perspective provides a better

understanding of why certain speech acts are more appropriate than others in a given

situation. Looking at the content within the three analytical categories from an

outsider’s and an insider’s perspective will better represent and encapsulate ways in

which this teacher can enhance and maintain rapport with her students, as well as how

she avoids performing FTAs.

5. Results and Discussion

The analysis and discussion of the data present relevant transcript extracts categorized

into three analytical categories with two different rapport-orientations. The first two

categories are primarily concerned with maintaining rapport in that the teacher

utterances do not challenge the relational harmony in the interactions while also setting

a frame for student behavior, while the last category – feedback formulations – is more

concerned with rapport-enhancement (Spencer-Oatey, 2008). The results and discussion

comprise audio recording transcripts as well as data gathered from an interview with the

teacher, where she expressed her knowledge of student sensitivities as background for

her choice of speech acts.

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5.1 Establishing a behavioral frame with requests and questions

In the two extracts presented below, the teacher is making on- and off-record demands,

requests, and statements that are possible face-threats. However, with the use of

indirectness, the teacher is able to avoid face impositions.

In extract 1, the teacher is instructing the E6 students of what they are expected to

do as preparation before giving their presentations:

Extract 1

Teacher: So that’s number one. Number two is looking

through your presentation, making sure that you

all know – ERIK? Eyes here please –(0.5)I know

that you missed each other over the weekend but

please leave each other alone for now ((class

laughs)). (2.0)

Teacher: We will do [the group presentations] in the order

that is on Canvas(.)You all know what group number

you have.

Students: No.

Teacher: No? So you might want to go to Canvas and look at

tha:t?

Erik: [indistinct off-task conversations]

Teacher: And(.)am I missing something? Is there a

conversation going on that xxx?(1.0)you will be

allowed to speak very shortly, so please just

listen?

Erik: Okay, sorry

Teacher: Thanks(.) If you go to Canvas, you’ll see what

group you’re in, what group number you have –

Erik, do you want to come sit here with me? –

Erik: Yeah ((raises from his seat and sits down on a

chair closer to the teacher))

Teacher: Yeah, thanks [((students laugh))

According to the teacher, one way for her to keep the “classroom at an acceptable

level” is to joke and to act non-confrontational, but still firm and clear, which can

be seen in this extract. In this exchange, the student, Erik, is having a hard time

focusing on the teacher’s instructions. First, the teacher is conventionally indirect

15

(Brown & Levinson, 1987): she makes an off-record, indirect demand by

suggesting that Erik should be more attentive to what she is saying. The utterance

“eyes here please” is followed by a humoristic acknowledgment of their unwanted

behavior, (“I know that you missed each other”), which in turn is followed by the

illocutionary force of a demand masked as a request initiated by please (“leave

each other alone for now”). However, Erik proceeds to talk to his peer, which is

recognized by the teacher. The teacher diverts from the on-task instructions with a

question meant to further address the disturbance caused by Erik, and bargains

with him (“you will be allowed to speak shortly”) with a request (“so please just

listen?”). As suggested by Brown and Levinson (1987), the negative politeness

strategy of ‘redress other wants of hearer’ is a partial compensation of the FTA in

that it recognizes the hearer’s desire for autonomy and agency. When this strategy

is deemed unsuccessful, the teacher makes a demand in the form of a suggestion

(“do you want to come sit here with me?”) as a means to stop the interruptions

caused by Erik’s behavior. Erik accepts her request, and the teacher rewards him

(“thanks”). Because of the humoristic tone and the choice of on- and off-record

illocutions, the seriousness of the interaction is downplayed, and Erik is more

willing to put his own will aside and abide with the teacher.

In extract 2, the teacher is enquiring the students in E7 about their essay

progress:

Extract 2

Teacher: Last class, you started preparing work for the

essay […] do you remember this?

Student: Yes

Teacher: Okay good(.)how far did you get with all of this?

Student: Don’t know

Teacher: Don’t know(.)do you want to check?

[The teacher reminds the students about the topic that

they are going to write about. The students have watched

a film about the topic]

Teacher: Did any of you take notes when watching?

Student: No

16

Teacher: Do you maybe realize that it would have been good

to take notes to be able to answer these

questions?

Student: Yeah

Johan: ((shakes his head))

Teacher: Ye:ah(.)Johan don’t be stubborn, you

know I’m right [((smiles))

Initially, the teacher asks the students about their essay progression. When a student says

he is unsure, the teacher repeats the student’s response (“don’t know”) and makes an on-

record request (“do you want to check?”) that instructs the student to investigate his

progress. In the interview, the teacher mentions that it is common for some of the E7

students to not take the class very seriously despite it being the most difficult English

class in upper secondary school. Instead of calling out the students for their ‘naïve

attitude’, she poses questions as encouragement to engage in the class activities. This is

further seen in the interaction with Johan where the teacher initially asks a rhetorical

question instead of making a statement regarding the importance of engaging in the class

activities (“do you maybe realize that it would have been good to take notes…?”). When

Johan makes a non-verbal act of disagreement by shaking his head, the teacher is

jokingly making a dissenting on-record statement (“you know I’m right [about taking

notes]”) followed by a smile as a downgrader to her remarks. This method is in line with

the findings in Looney and He’s (2020) study in which the teacher used smiles to show

affiliation and disaffiliation; in this example, the teacher’s smile could be interpreted as

doing both. The smile both functions as a softener to the intrusion on Johan’s want of

not taking notes, but also as a disaffiliation technique in that it is preceded by a remark

of Johan’s lack of concern for the class task.

5.2 Using in-group makers and tag-questions to maintain a behavioral frame

In order to claim common ground with the students and in-group identity, the teacher

often addresses the students as a group and involves herself as well. For example, in the

following sequence, the teacher is setting up a behavioral framework for the E6 students

who are about to give their presentations:

17

Extract 3

Teacher: Okay guys, and what do we do when someone else is

having their presentation?

Student1: Laughing

Teacher: No(.) that’s what we don’t do, right?

Student 1: Okay

Teacher: So what do we do?

Student2: We be quiet

Teacher: [We’ll be quiet(.)Yeah! No phones, no computer, no

laughing

The teacher establishes a behavioral frame based on common ground-knowledge for

how to act when other groups are giving their presentations by claiming that “we” as a

group assume and expect a certain behavior. In this instance, the teacher expresses the

FTA (impinging on the students’ autonomy) as a general rule, which dissociates the

speaker and the hearer from the face imposition (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Even

though there is no overwhelming risk of the teacher behaving in an unsupportive

manner, she includes herself in the description of how to behave when other students

give presentations. Using an inclusive “we” instead of “you” reduce the risk of face

impediments in that it does not ‘call out’ the student – i.e., it reduces culpability. In

addition, tag questions such as “right?” implies that cooperation is taken for granted – a

strategy defined as being optimistic (Brown & Levinson, 1987) where the teacher makes

a statement and assumes that the students want to accommodate her, i.e., that her want

is also their want.

As noted by Yung Park (2016), shifting between instructional to an interpersonal

communication style benefits teacher-student rapport because it grounds the teacher and

the students as more equal conversational partners. In the next sequence, the teacher

finds one student in E7 using his cellphone:

Extract 4

Teacher: Carl, what are you doing? Carl: I need to text [the class coach]

Teacher: That’s not an excuse

Rasmus: It kinda is, but it’s a shitty excuse

Joel: He was bitten!

Teacher: Bitten?

Rasmus: Yeah, at a soccer game.

18

Teacher: Did you actually get bitten?

Carl: Yes

Teacher: By what?

Carl: A human.

Teacher: A human? Really? That’s gross! Did you get a tetanus shot?

First, the teacher shows her disapproval of Carl using his cellphone by asking what he is

doing rather than making a blunt on-record statement. When Carl explains why he is

using his phone and it is still not accepted by the teacher, another student, Rasmus, steps

in (“it kinda is, but it’s a shitty excuse”), and a third student, Joel explains Carl’s reason

to text the class coach. Here, the teacher shifts to an interpersonal, off-task

communication style, showing interest in what happened to Carl by repeating Joel’s

statement (“bitten?”), and the stress on “actually” further exaggerates her interest in

what had happened to Carl.

In-group identity markers, such as the inclusive “we”, and address forms that

convey in-group membership (guys, using first names) are often used when the speaker

implicitly or explicitly wants to claim common ground with the hearer/s. These

expressions are associated with positive politeness, and also involve the use of jargon or

slang (Brown & Levinson, 1987). In extract 5, the teacher notices that two students are

conversating about off-task topics, and she addresses them to proceed with the on-task

activity: Extract 5

Students: [off-task talk]

Teacher: are you actually working on your essays?

Students: Hm?

Teacher: Guys, if you still can’t focus, separate

yourselves from each other […] please just try and

focus for five minutes(.)please, I know you can do

it.

The teacher is setting a behavioral frame in which the students are directed to focus on

the on-task activity rather than interrupting each other. First, the teacher asks them a

question that is meant to redirect the students’ attention to the on-task activity (“are you

actually working on your essays?”). The teacher then claims common ground with the

students with the in-group marker “guys”, and the direct demand (“separate yourselves

from each other”) is softened by the preceding indirect statement of the conditions (“if

19

you still can’t focus”). Lastly, the teacher is transforming the whole sequence into a

request by saying “please just try…” and address the students’ positive face in saying “I

know you can do it”, which conveys a sense of believing in the students’ competence.

5.3 Feedback formulations

One key motivator for the teacher’s formulation of feedback stems from her awareness

of the students’ face sensitivities. During the interview, the teacher mentioned that

many of her students feel anxious about their performances. As non-native speakers,

many students feel anxious about having to speak English (Xie, 2020), and the teacher

claims that her general impression is that students today are very sensitive and regard

their abilities in mostly negative terms. Giving feedback is therefore an endeavor that

requires attention to formulations and content in order to avoid face threats. The ways in

which the teacher approach the task of giving feedback, which can be seen in the

extracts and in her reflections, is to exaggerate the positive aspects, to focus on the

product rather than the person (especially in feedback to written student work), and

mainly to encourage students with positive reinforcement for having accomplished a

task that feels uncomfortable for them. In the following extracts, the teacher is giving

the students immediate post-group presentation feedback. A noticeable pattern in all of

the teacher’s feedback is the initial inquiry regarding the students’ sentiments and

evaluation of their presentation. The students assess their performance and the teacher

gives them assessment-feedback, which, according to Allen et al (2003), enables

rapport-enhancement, especially at an early stage of building teacher-student

relationships.

In extract 6, the teacher is attempting to enhance rapport with her students by

asking them about their sentiments and their self-assessment after having performed

their group presentations: Extract 6

Teacher: Alright guys(.) how did you feel?

Student1: Nervous and.(.)

Student 2: [inte så bra

[Not great

Teacher: Not good?

Student 1: Nä:

No:

20

Teacher: Stay with the English please.(.)

Student 1: Not so good.

Teacher: Not so good(.)Okay! And you felt nervous? How did

you feel, Erik?

Erik: Nervous and(.)eh(.)I am angry at myself.

Teacher: Why are you angry with yourself?

Erik: Because I was reading eh(.)[from]the computer when

I (1.0)

Teacher: when you should have been speaking freely?

Erik: Yeah.

The teacher repeats some of the remarks made by the student (“not so good … you felt

nervous? … why are you angry with yourself?”). Repetition, as expressed by Brown

and Levinson (1987), often stresses emotional agreement with the hearer’s message. In

this case, the teacher conveys empathetic support to the students. The student, Erik,

makes an indirect claim that he should have been speaking more freely rather than

supporting himself with notes. The teacher responds to this issue with a question

(“when you should have been speaking freely?”), which has the illocutionary force of a

statement. However, this strategy conveys a supportive affiliation with the students, and

it allows the teacher to share performance-feedback without making an FTA.

As mentioned by Spencer-Oatey (2008), rapport-enhancement strategies include

speech acts that mostly adhere to a hearer’s positive face. These strategies are

commonly used when a speaker has a desire to strengthen or enhance harmonious

relations between him/her and the hearer/s. Due to two circumstances, it is

understandable why the teacher includes positive politeness strategies in her feedback:

firstly, because of students’ antagonistic feelings toward their performance, and

secondly, it could be due to the fact that the teacher is at the beginning of forming

relationships with the students in E6, and therefore emphasizes her care and empathy for

the students to establish trust. In extract 7, one student, Samantha, is being critical

towards her performance, and the teacher makes an effort to reassure her and the rest of

the class:

Extract 7 Teacher: You did good, Samantha(.)you did good

Samantha: ((shakes head))

Teacher: Why are you so hard on yourselves?

21

Samantha: Because we get grades and it’s hard to just say

‘Oh I’m good at this!’

Teacher: Well, I think that is just the exact attitude you

guys need(.)you need to be like(0.5)‘I’m a:wesome’

Samantha: ((laughs)) [no

Teacher: ((laughs)) Yes! You’re way too hard on yourselves

(2.0)

Teacher: How did you feel, Bella?

Bella: (2.0) Nervous

Teacher: Nervous, yeah(.)and still you talked without any

help, no cards no nothing(.)that is very

impressive(.)especially if you feel nervous

Teacher: Uhm(.)honestly, all of you, like this entire

class, you’re too hard on yourselves (0.5) like

it’s insane! You have to learn how to go ‘I’m

pretty good at this, I know my stuff’, right?

(0.5) You are better at this than you give

yourselves credit for (1.0) You’re all clear, it

is structured, I can hear every word you say.

Yes(.)there are always things we can improve upon,

but sometimes you have to stop and go ‘I did this,

I’m good(.)I never thought I’d have the courage to

speak English in front of someone, but you do it

and you nail it(.)Am I ever gonna get you to be

kind to yourselves?

Student: No ((shakes head))

Teacher: I think you did great(.)at least I’m happy.

The whole extract revolves around the emotional state of the students, and the teacher

feedback is generally focusing on enhancing interpersonal rapport. She emphasizes the

fact that they have performed a ‘scary’ task, which in itself is an achievement, and her

use of laughter and smiles enhance her message regarding the students’ great effort. In

extract 7, there are students who are particularly negative about themselves, and the

teacher therefore does not include any explicit information about improvements.

Furthermore, extract 7 includes two instances where ‘like’ serves as a hedge (“all of

you, like this entire class … like it’s insane”) in the teachers’ utterances. Even though

the content is well-intended, the teacher makes a negative remark about the students’

attitude, but the hedge makes her opinion vaguer, and therefore less serious in nature

(Brown & Levinson, 1987). Also, it is worth noticing that the proclaimed ‘insanity’ is

22

not aimed to dismiss the students, but rather meant to assert the students that they do not

have anything to worry about regarding their performances.

Even though the majority of the time spent on giving feedback revolves around

the students’ attitude and feelings, the teacher makes a statement regarding

pronunciation which a majority of the students had issues with:

Extract 8 Teacher: All of you though – legislative – its le[ʤ]e-

slative – not le[g]e-slative(.)le[ʤ]eslative. […]

pat yourselves on the back and go ((breathes

out)). You’re done!

The feedback is aimed at the students as a group rather than as individuals. Similar

feedback was given to all of the groups after their presentations rather than being

interjected mid-presentation, and the plural ‘you’ softens the correction and makes it

less face-threatening (Brown & Levinson, 1987).

6. Conclusion

This study has investigated rapport-orientation strategies utilized by one teacher in two

different EFL classes. The purpose of the study has been to identify speech acts that

either enhance or maintain the teacher’s rapport with her students in situations where

FTAs are difficult to avoid; teachers as instructors occasionally need to reprimand

students’ behaviors and give feedback to students, all of which constitutes situations

that could harm teacher-student rapport because the acts are inherently face-threatening.

As we have seen, the teacher is able to establish behavioral frames for the students

through her choice of speech acts. The speech acts often have the illocutionary force of

a statement or a demand; however, the message is conveyed in an indirect manner in the

form of a question or a request. These strategies function as redress to FTAs related to

reprimands and reduce the risk of confrontation, thereby making the teacher able to

maintain rapport with her student. Furthermore, with the use of tag-questions and in-

group identity markers, the teacher continues to establish a behavioral frame without

impeding on the students’ face. In addition, the teacher shows flexibility in shifting

from formal to informal, off-task interaction. In doing so, the teacher also involves

interpersonal rapport, which is an important factor involved in expanding the

relationship beyond its institutional setting. These strategies display a clear rapport-

23

orientated communication style held and carried out by the teacher – even though she

occasionally has to perform FTAs, the students are not offended, and communicative

harmony is sustained.

The clear objective of the teacher’s oral feedback is to acknowledge the

students’ antagonistic feelings about speaking in front of groups, as well as their

negative feelings regarding themselves. Since this is a common issue within educational

institutions today, the teacher emphasizes positive aspects of students’ performances

and exaggerates positive reinforcement. Primarily, the teacher provided empathetic

feedback to the students’ self-assessment, an efficient strategy for enhancing rapport

when giving performance feedback. Not only does the teacher show that she cares about

the students’ sentiments, but also attempts to encourage the students to believe in their

self-competence. Feedback on the content of the performances is mentioned secondarily

because too much focus on issues/improvements might at this point in time do more

harm than good. The content feedback provided by the teacher is therefore aimed at the

group of students as a whole rather than individual student’s errors; hence, the FTA of

giving feedback is softened through the use of a plural ‘you’. However, these strategies

are not universal because people as individuals have different face sensitives, and

teachers need to be aware of them if they want to avoid FTAs. Regardless, the study

suggests that proper handling of speech acts, as well as the use of positive and negative

politeness strategies, are beneficial in enhancing rapport with students despite having to

perform FTAs.

6.1 Suggested further research

Because of the student compositions, the classes provide an opportunity to investigate

how teachers enhance and maintain rapport with ‘new’ and ‘old’ students. However,

this study does not make any distinctions between students with whom the teacher

already has established a relationship, or relationships that are at their starting points. As

a suggestion for further research, it might be worthwhile to investigate the length of

teacher-student relationships; most likely, the choice and outcome of speech acts are

due to how well the interactional participants know one another and their awareness of

each other’s face sensitivities. Furthermore, this study does not consider the student

perspective. The consequences of certain speech acts and the students’ general attitude

24

towards different communicative styles would also be important for a more holistic

understanding of rapport-oriented communication.

25

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Appendix A

The following material has been collected from Brown and Levinson (1987). Examples of Positive Politeness 1. Notice, attend to hearer (his/her interests, wants, needs, goods)

Speaker should take notice of aspects of hearer’s condition, such as noticeable changes and noteworthy possessions: anything that would give an indication as though the hearer would want the speaker to notice and approve of it. Examples used as FTA redress from Brown and Levinson (1987, p. 103):

a) Goodness, you cut your hair! (…) By the way, I came to borrow some flour. b) You mut be hungry, it’s a long time since breakfast. c) What a beautiful vase this is! Where did it come from?

1.1. Exaggerate (interest, approval, sympathy with hearer)

Often performed with exaggerated intonation, stress, and other prosodic features, as well as using intensifying modifiers (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 104):

a) What a fantástic gárden you have!

b) Oh my god, that is absolutely

c) This top looks really good on you! 2. Use in-group identity markers Speaker implicitly or explicitly claims common ground with hearer/s accordingly with the definition of the group: in-group usages of address forms, jargon or slang, and of ellipsis.

2.1. Address forms that convey in-group membership:

a) Guys! Please, be quiet when I’m talking. b) Come on, buddy. Cheer up! c) Joe, will you help me carry these bags?

2.2. Use of jargon or slang

incrédible fantástic hórrible dévastating

28

In-group terminologies – referring to an object with a slang term – allow the speaker to evoke the shared associations and attitudes that s/he and the hearer/s both have toward that object, and may then be used as FTA redress:

a) Chill for a little bit while I get dressed. b) You were slayin’ on the dance floor last night. c) Give me my twenty bucks, will you?

a)

3. Repetition

Conveying agreement by repeating all of or part of what the preceding speaker has said – not only is the hearer demonstrating that s/he has heard what the preceding speaker has said (satisfying output; related to 1. Notice, attend to hearer), repeating is also used to stress emotional agreement with the message:

a) A: Rachel is going to the University of Michigan next year. B: Oh, the University of Michigan!

4. Hedging opinions Speaker may choose to be vague about his own opinions. The positive politeness strategy of exaggeration is often manifested by choice of words at the extremes end of the spectrum. If the speaker is uncertain of the viewpoints of the hearers, hedging is a safer bet due to them making one’s own opinion vaguer and therefore safer. Note: normally, hedges are a feature of negative politeness, but some hedges have a positive politeness function as well; for example, sort of, kind of, like, in a way, etc. The hedge marks the word it is modifying. Redress of FTA come from common-ground notion of leaving it up the hearer to interpret the message – the assessment made by the speaker that there is a shared, common knowledge of how to interpret the message.

a) I really sort of

5. Expressions that convey cooperation speaker’s cooperation with hearer/s

Speaker and hearer share goals in some domain and therefore agree to speech acts that assumes cooperation. Expressions of cooperation can serve as FTA redress-strategies of hearer’s positive-face want. The cooperation strategy may be stressed by the speaker indicating some knowledge of and sympathy toward hearer/s’ wants.

5.1. Speaker asserts or presupposes knowledge of and concern for hearer’s wants

think hope

wonder

. . .

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This strategy highlights that A and B are cooperators, and puts pressure on B, the hearer, to cooperate with A, the speaker. A asserts or implies knowledge of B’s wants and A’s willingness to comply with B:

a) Look, I know you want the car back by 5 pm, so should I go to town now? (request)

b) I know you hate scary movies, but this one isn’t that bad. Please, watch it with me! (request/offer)

c) I don’t want to stress you out, but you need to take the dog for a walk before your meeting. (request/demand)

6. Be optimistic A assumes that B wants to accommodate to A’s wants and will help obtaining them. A assume B’s cooperation to obtain A’s wants, and might hide their wants and perform a tacit act:

a) A: Wait a minute, you haven’t brushed your hair/teeth! (as a child, B, walks out the door)

In this case, the mother or father wants the child to brush his/her hair/teeth before going out in public. By performing a statement-type speech act in this manner and under these circumstances, A assumes that B wants it too and urges him/her to cooperate with A’s wants. Furthermore, optimistic or presumptuous expressions of FTAs consequently follow these types of statements and typically minimize the size of the threat by implying that it is nothing to ask or offer, or that cooperation is taken for granted:

b) You haven’t forgotten to turn in that college application,

c) You will lend me your car, right? d) You won’t object if I ask Kate out, will you?

7. Include both speaker and hearer in the activity This is similar to point 3.1 – Address forms that convey in-group memberships but is restricted to the use of ‘we’ rather than ‘me’ or ‘you’. Brown and Levinson (1987) notes that let’s in English is in itself an inclusive ‘we’ form. Some examples are:

a) Let’s have a cookie then. (i.e. me) b) Let’s pick up a broom and clean this up, eh? (i.e. you) c) Let’s stop at the next gas station for a bathroom break. (i.e. I need to go to the

bathroom, so let’s stop) d) A little fussy today, are we? (i.e., you)

I hope. haven’t you.

30

Examples of Negative Politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987) 8. Be Direct Messages that are more direct and unambiguous can be deemed as polite since they minimize the imposition by not taking up too much of the hearer’s time. However, the direct strategy requires a weighted evaluation regarding redress of negative face in order to evade the risk of performing an FTA of the hearer’s face wants. 9. Be conventionally indirect Indirect speech acts are performed when the speaker is faced with opposing tensions and desires. One desire or want is to give the hearer an opt out in order to increase the hearer’s feeling of autonomy and limit the risk of face imposition, and the other desire is to go on record, which is more face threatening if not followed up by a facework strategy. Conventional indirectness is a compromise of the two desires: the use of ambiguity that requires contextual interpretation. The speaker can therefore convey a desire to have gone off record, i.e. to have conveyed the same thing indirectly. The speech act of making requests are often uttered in its more indirect forms because they appear more polite. They are often syntactically marked as questions, but due to the context the hearer understands the propositional content:

a) Can you pass the salt? (on-record indirect request with FTA redress) vs. Pass the salt! (request/demand without FTA redress)

Requests can also be conventionalized in the illocutionary device of making statements:

b) I need a comb. (indirect request) c) You did not clean the kitchen. (indirect request)

10. Pluralization of the ‘you’ and ‘I’ in pronouns Different languages, such as Swedish, French, Tamil, and more, have specific pronouns for plural ‘you’ that are considered more polite in different situations—honorifics. However, this is not the type of pluralization that I would like to highlight for the purpose of this study. Despite English having the same form of plural and singular ‘you’, it still serves an important politeness function. Similar to the function of conventionalized indirectness, it gives the hearer/s an ‘out’ since it does not literally single out whoever is being addressed, and is therefore threatening to the hearer/s positive and negative face:

a) You need to practice some pronunciation. (when talking to a group of students) Furthermore, there is a widespread use of ‘we’ as replacement of ‘I’. ‘We’ reduces culpability, as in:

b) We regret to inform you …

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Also, the inclusive ‘we’ I used similar to ‘you’ in terms of grouping people together and highlighting a ‘mutual benefit’ which reduces the imposition on the hearer/s’ negative face:

c) We need to clean up in here before we leave. d) We need to work on our manners.

11. State the FTA as a general rule One way of dissociating the speaker and the hearer from the face imposition in the FTA is to state the FTA as some general social rule, regulation, or obligation.

a) Passengers will please refrain from smoking onboard the aircraft. b) Students taking the test will show up 30 minutes before the set test time. c) We don’t laugh when someone is presenting their project.

12. Redress other wants of hearer The speaker offers partial compensation for the face threat in the FTA by redressing some particular other wants of the hearer. However, it cannot be any want because negative politeness is concerned with a very “narrow band of [the hearer’s wants, a very narrow facet of his person” (Brown & Levinson, 1987, p. 209) – namely, the hearer’s desire for autonomy, territorial integrity, and agency:

a) If you cook tonight, I will do your laundry and cook tomorrow.

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Appendix B

Transcript symbols Inspired by Mi Yung Park (2016) [ A single bracket on the left indicates the point of

overlap onset

[ ] A description enclosed in square brackets indicates

that a part in the current sequence has been replaced

for reasons of anonymity, or with a less ambiguous

description.

[…] Dots within square brackets indicates that a part of a

speech sequence has been omitted

xxx Unintelligible talk

? Rising intonation at the end of an utterance

! Rising intonation at the end of an utterance

- - A description enclosed between two hyphens indicates

an interjection

. Single punctuation indicates falling intonation

, A comma indicates continuing intonation

(.) A dot in parentheses indicates a small gap within or

between utterances

: A colon indicates prolongation of the immediately

prior sound.

(0.0) Numbers in parentheses indicate duration of silence

word Bold lowercase indicates stress or speaker emphasis

WORD Bold uppercase indicates fragments relatively louder

than the surrounding talk

WORD Italics indicate that something is said in Swedish;

English translation follows

(( )) A description enclosed in double parentheses indicates

non-verbal activity

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Appendix C

Transcript Teacher greets the students individually as they walk inside the classroom Teacher: Hi Rebecca

E6 – Classroom instructions before students work on their own before group presentations: Teacher: So that’s number one. Number two is looking through

your presentation, making sure that you all know –

ERIK? Eyes here please(.) – I know that you missed

each other over the weekend but leave each other alone

for now ((class laughs)).

Teacher: We will do [the group presentations] in the order that

is on Canvas(.) You all know what group number you

have.

Students: No.

Teacher: No? So you might want to go to Canvas and look at

tha:t?

Students: [indistinct off-task conversations]

Teacher: And (.) Am I missing something? Is there a

conversation going on that xxx(.) You will be allowed

to speak very shortly, so please just listen

Erik: Okay, sorry

Teacher: Thanks(.) If you go to Canvas, you’ll see what group

you’re in, what group number you have – Erik, do you

want to come sit here with me? –

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Erik: Yeah

Teacher: Yeah, thanks [((students laugh))

Continuation of class instructions:

Teacher: When the other are doing their presentations, what

will the rest of you do? Sit here and just chill?

Student: Yeah

Teacher: [No:, no it doesn’t work like that((smiles)). When

you’re not doing your presentations, you’re reading

Divergent!(.)I have published two chapters. I’m not

saying you have to read both, you don’t have to, uhm,

do that, but I know many of you are fast readers! So

that’s why I have published two. You will have time to

look through your reading logs a:nd work with the

vocabulary you have written down(.) Now you’ll have

time to translate words and learn(.)

Teacher: Share your documents with me. You should have created

a document in OneDrive called like Divergent […]

everyone needs to share their document with me.

Student interacts with teacher:

Student: [teacher’s name], vet du hur svå:rt det var att hitta

information?

Do you know how difficult it was to find information?

Teacher: No: I don’t because I actually think we need to do a

class on how to search for information, because there

is a lo:t of information about this out there

Student: Jag vill att det ska stå exakt hur de gör

I want it to say exactly how they do it

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Teacher: That is kind of the point of finding information(.)

you might have to search for and choose multiple

sources to get the big picture(.) Not everything is

just handed to you on a plate, so we might have to

work on that a bit.

Student: Jag önskar att det hade varit det

I wish it would have been that way

Teacher: Me too! That would be nice.

Group presentations, information about what the teacher expects

from the students:

Teacher: Okay, and what do we do when someone else is having

their presentation?

Student1: Laughing

Teacher: No(.) that’s what we don’t do, right?

Student1: Okay

Teacher: So what do we do?

Student2: We be quiet

Teacher: [We’ll be quiet(.) Yeah! No phones, no

computer, no laughing

After no1 group presentation; teacher feedback:

Student: [talks about their presentation and what they might

have omitted] I don’t know if we actually explained

it, but.(.)

Teacher: You did, you did(.) you did explain that, and also

where the executive branch checks it(.) You could have

mentioned the judicial branch as well and how they

play into it(.) but in general I think you had really

good structure in your PowerPoint (0.5) you could have

practiced it a bit more(.) but your structure was

good! and mainly you all speak clearly so it’s really

easy to hear what you are saying, and I think that you

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were able to manage to do the assignment well and

according to the instructions, so pat yourselves on

the back(.) Really good job, guys(.) Thank you

After group no2 presentation, teacher feedback:

Teacher: Alright guys(.) how did you feel?

Student1: Nervous and.(.)

Student 2: [inte så bra

Not great

Teacher: Not good?

Student1&2: Nä:

No:

Teacher: Stay with the English please.(.)

Student1: Not so good.

Teacher: Not so good(.) Okay! And you felt nervous?

How did you feel, Erik?

Erik: Nervous and(.) eh(.) I am angry at myself.

Teacher: Why are you angry with yourself?

Erik: Because I was reading eh(.) [from] the computer when I

(0.5)

Teacher: when you should have been speaking freely?

Erik: Yeah.

Teacher: So, in general guys, I think you did a go:od job! You

have good structure, you had good information(.) I

think your nerves were what was the main issue here

Student: xxx calm

Teacher: [Yeah, if you would have gone ((shrugs)) I’ll be fine,

I think you’d all be feeling less like Sophie is doing

right now since she thinks it didn’t go well – I think

it went well - good structure, good content(.)

could’ve had more of a conclusion. What you guys

should do(.) all of these words you haven’t said

before [that are] hard to pronounce - succession,

presidential, constitution, constitutional – you

should say those a hundred times before because even

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if you’re nervous you’ll be able to say them(.)

they’ll be in the back of your head like this ((snaps

fingers)). Pat yourselves on your back!

Student1: I just got one question(.)

Teacher: Yeah?

Student1: There was one word I didn’t understand(.) What’s

[vett-o]?

Teacher: What’s what?

Student: Vett-o? Veto?

Teacher: Veto! A veto is

[((student Peter raises hands))(.)

Teacher: Yeah Peter?

Peter: I can answer.

Teacher: Yeah go ahead!

After no3 group presentation:

Teacher: Okay so you also had good structure(.) that goes for

all of you. It was very clear what you were talking

about(.) Good content as well. I think you could have

been a little clearer with […] However there were some

issues with the pronunciation; judicial(.)

Student: it is a hard word

Teacher: yeah! I know! ((laughs)) There are hard words and we

might have to do a pronunciation lesson and talk about

how to look up how words are pronounced

Student: Google translate! You know the(0.5) the words under

the(.) you know the translation(.)

Teacher: [there are weird symbols!

Student: there is a: yeah weird symbols and the way you

pronounce it

Teacher: Yes! The international phonetic alphabet

Student: elephants what?

((teacher and students laugh))

Teacher: Phonetic. We will talk about it (1.0) Anyway! I think

you did a good job(.) you speak clearly, your

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pronunciation is good in general so it’s easy to

understand you. Really really good job(.) I am really

proud of you. Pat on the back! [((pats her own back))

Before no4 group presentation, information for whole class:

Teacher: What do we do when other groups are presenting?

Student: Be quiet

Teacher: Yes! We’re quiet(.) yes. We don’t look at our

computers or phones(.) right? And we’re supportive

(0.5) No laughing, no giggling

After no4 group presentation, teacher feedback:

Teacher: Thank you guys! How did that feel?

Student: Okay

Teacher: okay. Linn, how did you feel?

Linn: Hm:: (1.0) okay.

Teacher: yeah? How about you Tim?

Tim: Not the worst thing I know

Teacher: Sorry?

Tim: Not the worst thing I know

Teacher: ((laughs and smiles)) okay. Lily, how did it feel for

you?

Lily: You know I hate speaking in front of people

Teacher: [yeah.

Lily: [so no(.) it doesn’t feel good

Teacher: [gives feedback on presentation] and Lily, you did

very well so you should be proud of yourself. I know

that you don’t like this, but you did very well. So

please, take that to heart. Alright guys. Well done!

Please sit and take a breath.

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Before no5 group presentation:

((students are plugging in their computer to do their

presentation))

Student1: [I believe in us

((students laugh))

Teacher: ((chuckles and smiles)) GOOD!

After no5 group presentation, teacher feedback:

Student: I wasn’t well prepared.

Teacher: You weren’t well prepared

[students are performing off-topic conversations in

the background] but you also – LADIES (1.0) ((sighs))

I am talking to you right now, will you please focus?

Students: Yeah, sorry

Teacher: Thank you. I know you felt unprepared Sebastian and I

know [you had issues within the group], but watching

you guys work for the past two weeks (.) I know that

you have had a hard time with the assignment(.)

finding sources and putting it together, so with that

in mind I think you did really well

Teacher addresses whole class in between group presentations:

Teacher: I am wondering why you never speak English in class

with me because this sounded great(.) so I want to

hear more of that because it was really good, guys

(0.5) I need you have some more confidence in your own

abilities, okay?

Student Sebastian in no5 group approaches the teacher:

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Sebastian: Is it okay if I have a chat?

Teacher: Yes of course!

Teacher and student: xxx

Teacher: I see you’re not feeling awesome right now(.)you’re

fine(.)you did really well(.)don’t beat yourself up.

After no6 group presentation:

Teacher: How did that feel?

Robert: Det gick bra tycker jag

I think it went well

Teacher: English, Robert

Robert: It felt ve:ry good!

Teacher: It felt very good ((smiles)). Good! How about you

ladies?

Student: A little bit nervous but it was fine

Teacher: Mhm ((smiles)) (0.5) same for you Samantha?

Samantha: Yeah

Teacher: Klara?

Klara: I think since it’s not our first language it was

pretty good

Teacher: ((laughs)) yes, it was good guys. You’re easy to understand (.) there is no problem at all [students talk in the background – Guys (0.5) I’m speaking here – uhm. You had good structure, so it was easy to follow you. All of you though – legislative – its le[ʤ]e-slative – not le[g]e-slative(.) le[ʤ]eslative. […] pat yourselves on the back and go ((breathes out)). You’re done!

(10.0)

Teacher: You did good, Samantha (.) you did good Samantha ((shakes head)) Teacher: Why are you so hard on yourselves? Samantha: Because we get grades and it’s hard to just say ‘Oh

I’m good at this!’ Teacher: Well, I think that is just the exact attitude you guys

need(.)you need to be like (0.5) ‘I’m a:wesome’

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Samantha: ((laughs)) [no Teacher: ((laughs)) Yes! You’re way too hard on yourselves. Teacher: How did you feel, Bella? Bella: (2.0) Nervous Teacher: Nervous, yeah (.) and still you talked without any

help, no cards no nothing (.) that is very impressive(.)especially if you feel nervous

Teacher: Uhm(.) Honestly, all of you, like this entire class, you’re too hard on yourselves (0.5) like it’s insane! You have to learn how to go ‘I’m pretty good at this, I know my stuff’, right? (0.5) You are better at this than you give yourselves credit for (1.0) You’re all clear, it is structured, I can hear every word you say. Yes (.) there are always things we can improve upon, but sometimes you have to stop and go ‘I did this, I’m good (.) I never thought I’d have the courage to speak English in front of someone’ but you do it and you nail it(.) Am I ever gonna get you to be kind to yourselves?

Student: No ((shakes head)) Teacher: I think you did great (.) at least I’m happy.

E7 – Classroom instructions before students work on their individual essays: Teacher: Last class, you started preparing work for the essay

[…] do you remember this? Student: Yes Teacher: Okay good(.)how far did you get with all of this? Student: Don’t know Teacher: Don’t know(.)do you want to check? [The teacher reminds the students about the topic that

they are going to write about. The students have watched

a film about the topic]

Teacher: Did any of you take notes when watching? Student: No

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Teacher: Do you maybe realize that it would have been good to take notes to be able to answer these questions?

Jim: Yeah [student Johan shakes his head

Teacher: Ye:ah(.)Johan don’t be stubborn, you know I’m right [((smiles))

Teacher: You also need one page with works cited(.)right? I’m

not saying you have to have -you look scared, John! - you don’t have to have sources that take up a whole page(.)I’m saying you need a separate page for your sources even if you only used three of them.

Teacher: And(.)did I(.)okay I didn’t write that here, but I’m gonna add it! But I’m(.)can anyone tell me what format your paper will be in?

Students: Times New Roman Teacher: Times New Roman. And what(.)12 points? Students: No. Size 12 Teacher: 12 points((smiles)). And do we have any spacing? Students: 1.5 Teacher: Yeah, go:od guys, you’ve actually learned [((laughs

and puts her hands together at chest level) Students: ((claps their hands))

Teacher interacts off-task with student during lecture: Student: ((opens a bottle of soda and drinks)) Teacher: Don’t you think it’s too early for that? ((smiles))

Teacher enquires about students progression: Teacher: ((approaches students)) how are we doing? Student: Zehr gut. Teacher: Zehr gut? This is not German class ((smiles))

Teacher approaches student who is using his cellphone Teacher: Carl, what are you doing? Carl: I need to text [the class coach] Teacher: That’s not an excuse

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Rasmus: It kinda is, but it’s a shitty excuse Joel: He was bitten! Teacher: Bitten? Rasmus: Yeah, at a soccer game. Teacher: Did you actually get bitten? Carl: Yes Teacher: By what? Carl: A human. Teacher: A human? Really? That’s gross! Did you get a tetanus shot?

Conversation with student: Student: I don’t know why but I prefer writing on paper(.)it’s

strange Teacher: Actually, it is not strange at all! I do that too its

good because it makes it more visual.

Addressing whole class: Teacher: We have another hour where you get to work with your

essays so ple:ase let me know if you need any help or if anything is unclear(.) but try to keep focused and keep your voices down if you need to discuss anything with each other(.)remember that you only have two classes and you have used half of this one already so please stay focused and work

Students: yeah Teacher: Good(.)thank you. Let’s get started!

Teacher acknowledges students’ off-task activity: [Students are engaging in off-task talk] Teacher: are you actually working on your essays? Students: Hm? Teacher: Guys, if you still can’t focus, separate yourselves

from each other […] please just try and focus for five minutes(.)please, I know you can do it.

Summing up class, E7:

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Teacher: Alright guys will you all listen up please(2.0)I just want to be very clear(.)that this class and next class are(.)you’re writing your papers(.)the class after that you will be peer review your papers […] after that you will turn in your final draft […] do you guys feel like you’re on top of things?

Students: yeah Teacher: Here’s the deal(0.5)I feel like crap

[students: oh no] so I will let you go a few minutes early today. Thank you guys

INFORMATION FROM INTERVIEW (not coded): How long have you been teaching? 7th year, since 2014 – started teaching directly after getting her degree. Teaches English and Swedish, but is also able to teach history Information about E6: Elective, English 6 (not mandatory) 35 students from two different classes – both in the same program (naturbruk). Profile horses and writing, and the others have animal parks and nature guiding/adventure. Mostly girls – 8 boys. 2nd year students.Special group. Very different from each other depending on their profile Energetic boys who can’t sit still or be quiet and “animal park girls” who are fairly quiet, want to do well, kinda shy. Headstrong ladies who are doing the horse profile. They are very ambitious, but they have a tendency to think “my way or the highway” so you kinda have to navigate around them a little bit to make sure you keep the atmosphere in the classroom at an acceptable level. What are your strategies for keeping the classroom at an acceptable level? Teacher: I joke around with them a lot ((laughs)) but mostly I’m fairly non-confrontational, but kind and sweet and still firm and clear so they appreciate structure and clear instructions. It is a good frame to work within. Otherwise it’s a lot of personal chemistry with those ladies in particular – it’s like “do they like you or don’t they like you” and if they don’t like

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you, they are not going to behave well. We’ve had a good start so far. I went in knowing this, so I had a “buddy-buddy” approach from the get go and now I’m transitioning into becoming more strict as we go on to ascertain they know I’m not “your friend” and I’m still your teacher. It’s working so far! I’ve heard it so many times: no smiles before Christmas. I think it’s better to create an environment in your classroom where everyone’s comfortable and that they know I care about them. This generation, I’m not sure what it was like when we were in school, but they’re very sensitive, and they need to know that you care about what happens to them. I think it might be just teenagers actually, and if you are kind but still structured and firm, and have demands and have expectations, they’ll know that: she cares about me and it helps the environment a lot. Information about E7: Third year – technical program/engineering 25 boys from two different classes, same program divided in two. The teacher has had had one class before and the other one was brand new. Teacher comment: “that was kind of interesting going in. that I knew half of them and didn’t know the other half at all. They are happy ((laughs)) spirited, not all of them are very serious and ambitious and they go in without realizing that English 7 is a way more difficult course than the previous one […] not everyone takes it seriously” Do you feel like you communicate differently with the students that you’ve known longer than the ones that are new? Teacher: Yes In what way? Teacher: I think I can be harsher with the one’s I’ve known longer because they know me and they know that if I tell them to be quiet or work or throw a jovial insult in there, they know it’s a joke because they know me. With the ones I haven’t known as long I’ve been testing the waters a bit and see what type of people they are […] after a month and a half they’re starting to come together as group rather than half and half, so I think that works fairly well now. In the beginning I was more reserved with the ones I didn’t know Do you find class composition to be an important factor in terms of how comfortable you are, or is it easier to be comfortable with the students you have known longer?

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Teacher: The people that are in the group makes it easier, but I have to say that [class composition] matters more than having known them a longer time. Do you notice a difference in yourself in terms of how comfortable you are when you speak to the students formally or informally? Teacher: I’m more comfortable being informal with a group I feel comfortable with or have known a long time. To be formal is also to have some kind of shield or protection. You don’t really put yourself out there as a person. Being formal or informal and how I’m comfortable with it comes with the group. They way to talk to a group, an individual and the response a specific student needs comes with experience. What are your thoughts about giving feedback or critique to someone? Teacher: Depends on if it’s in a group, then I’m heavy on the positive feedback so you kind of wrap the negatives into that. Like, “You could think about this one thing but overall it’s amazing”. If it’s one to one it’s easier to say “you have to work on these things” but always telling them why. Being more explicit and informative .. do “this” because of “this”. They don’t feel embarrassed then. They never leave me with the feeling of them not being good. They have a tendency to take it to heart and it being an attack on them as people rather than their skills. In written, I’m always very careful with how I phrase it. I never say “you haven’t cited your sources” I always phrase it as “the text doesn’t contain the sources” so it’s never on the person but the product. That is also learned from experience. [Feedback also] depends on the group and the people because some students need more of the negative feedback. Sometime they think a little too much of themselves and you need to bring them down to have them understand that you can’t just stop learning. In [E6], some girls think they’re just bad at everything – so I focus more on “you’re fine, you’re good, you can do so much more than you think. Just think about this thing (at the bottom)” What usually triggers conflict? Teacher: Usually I’d say some kind of miscommunication. Maybe I’m in a bad mood and I snap way earlier, and the students go “I didn’t do that or you didn’t tell them” – usually it’s just not understanding each other. Like, you were supposed to do for today, why haven’t you done it? [the students say] You didn’t say that. I usually don’t say “Yes I did, you didn’t listen”.

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Solving [the issue of miscommunication] is just to always being really clear, and I try to make sure I know that I’m right before I even try to defend myself. I don’t go into conflict to show “I’m the big boss here” it’s just easier to say that “I might be wrong, I’m gonna double check this”. I’d rather do that than have an unnecessary conflict

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