Abstract
Classroom discourse refers to contextualized or situated language use in classrooms as a specific interactional context that reflects cultural and social practices. Interest in classroom discourse analysis has grown with an enhanced understanding of the mediating role of talk in learning as a high-level mental activity (see review by Green and Dixon, Vol. 3). From a sociocultural point of view, a person’s speech is a marker of identity. The interweaving between identity and the contextualized use of language in the classroom has been brought to our attention by poststructuralist and social constructivist researchers, who view classrooms as a social and cultural space where power politics and ideological conflicts are in constant interplay (e.g., Kumaravadivelu 1999). An understanding of how such politics and conflicts come into being requires an understanding of teachers’ and students’ identities as a dynamic, (re)negotiable, and powerful factor in the process of interaction, which in turn affects ways of teaching and learning. In this review, I shall identify major developments and themes in classroom discourse analysis pertaining to teachers’ and students’ identity construction and how these contribute to our understanding of teaching and learning.
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Luk, J.C.M. (2015). Classroom Discourse and the Construction of Learner and Teacher Identities. In: Wortham, S., Kim, D., May, S. (eds) Discourse and Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02322-9_11-1
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