Prosodic imitation as a means of receiving and displaying a critical stance in classroom interaction

Abstract

This paper investigates (Finnish) classroom interaction and explores the displays of stance and the rules of emotion in this institutional multi-party setting. The main focus of the analysis is on teacher's imitation of students' talk.The starting point is to analyze stance as a situated practice in the sequential organization of interaction, in particular in sequences that contain criticism. Although it is quite common for teachers and students to criticize each other's activities during (pedagogic) interaction, criticism is treated more or less as a delicate issue. Participants deal with the emotional elements of criticism by using, for example, various prosodie practices, including prosodie imitation. Prosodie imitation is a frequerit practice among students, but the teachers imitate students' turns quite rarely and only in specific sequential environments. Teachers repeat and imitate the prosodically marked students' answers that occur subsequent to teachers' critical comments on students' behavior, and the students' self-selected turns that mimic teacher-talk and convey implicit criticism in their prosody. With the help of these prosodie practices the participants are able to receive and deal with a critical stance without jeopardizing the norms, fi-ameworks, and "rules of emotion" valid in this specific institutional setting.

The automation of feedback in collaborative learning: A design ethnography of maritime simulation

“…We see it imminently, re exively, whenever the parties to an interaction can go on, and several implications follow. The instructors' continuous monitoring of displays of understanding relies on a number of implicit and explicit social cues involved in a conversational turn's production and coherence, such as student gaze (Hindmarsh et al, 2011), bodily disposition (Husebø et al, 2012), as well as the prosodic features of their talk, such as intonation, volume, pitch, and pace (Tainio, 2012). Taken all together, they form the basis for the instructors to make embedded assessments of the students' actions during simulation (Author, year).…”

Expressing evidentiality through prosody? Prosodic voicing in reported speech in Spanish colloquial conversations

“…In reported speech, prosody has usually been associated with affection or emotion (Besnier, 1992;Günthner, 1997b;Sherer et al, 2003;Couper-Kuhlen, 2004;Tainio, 2012; among others), given the physical alterations suffered by the human body when experiencing emotion, amongst which are those affecting speech (and prosody) production. It has been often related to stance in general (Clift, 2006), more specifically to the speaker's lack of commitment or distancing from the words uttered (Ingrids and Aronsson, 2014:70) and, metonymically, from the person that originally uttered those words (this can even be mocking; see, among others, Günthner, 1997a), as well as to the mimicking of the speaker being reported, be it by repeating only his/her particular intonation or by reproducing his/her exact words and intonation (CouperKuhlen, 1996).…”

10. Discourse Markers

“…Raevaara (2004) discusses Finnish wh-questions, such as Mitäs kolesteroli näist tykkää? Tainio (2012) focuses on how in Finnish classroom interaction teachers may occasionally repeat and prosodically imitate the students' turns, thus conveying implicit criticism of the students' behavior. She demonstrates that one of the uses of the particle is in stanced wh-question turns which seek confirmation from the recipient.…”