Before I get started, I commented on my previous blog in reply to someones comment, I dunno if that counts towards my three comments though...but anyway, I shall post links to my other comments in a seperate blog after this one.
Throughout my life I tend to try to avoid Discourse at all costs (Yes, discourse with a big D), by this I don't mean avoiding conversation in general, but discourse which is more institutional in nature. Discourse which is assymetrical, discourse with the 'higher ups'. This is because it's not something I'm comfortable with, I tend to be far too laid back and casual for these more demanding and strictly controlled types of interactions. But alas, I insist on being a uni student, so at times I don't have a choice.
This happened over the last few weeks, going through the process of changing courses and majors and what not, that parts a long story though, so I'll get to my point. I was freaking out about havnig to more than likely meets with the Dean or Sub-Dean, as far as university goes, it doesn't get much more Discoursey. Luckily though I was saved by a lovely lady at Arts Central, who got things sorted for me. But even speaking with them and the ladies at Student Central was too Discoursey (yeah, slightly smaller D) for me. This is because in these settings theres an obvious misbalance of knowledge...and far more rules governing the interaction than I prefer.
So, while I did have a few other things to add, I won't because I'm reaching my word limit, so here I want to talk about this idea of Institutional Talk in schools.
Teachers in schools use a very specific type of Discourse, known as Question-Answer sequences, while these are used in everyday life to gain information they are used slightly differently in interactions between a student and a teacher, as Pang (2003) says. The teacher firstly asks a question, recieves the answer, and then gives feedback. While this seems normal, it's not quiet everyday. Generally speaking when you get an answer from someone, you don't then go through and respond to or critique every thing they've just said, but given the position of the teacher relevant to the student this is accepted as the norm. This action too, helps to reaffirm the teachers role in the situation, and when a student queries or even corrects (as I did a couple of times throughout high school) a teacher, this balance is thrown off, with varying consequences. Consequences which I was going to mention, but I'm out of space :(
Pang, P (2003) Institutional talk : question-answer sequences in classroom interaction. University of Hong Kong. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.5353/th_b2683956
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