ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we come to those approaches to classroom talk which show the most directly linguistic orientation. Common to all the studies reviewed here is, first, a sense of talk as centrally involved in social action and, secondly, a distinctive concern for the structure of spoken discourse as influential in the shaping of events. This is talk considered less as a mirror to be looked throughthan as medium to be looked at,because of its role in constituting events. From this perspective, analysis of discourse structure also captures the structure of the events to which the discourse inherently belongs. Not all the researchers whom we group in this way agree on the extent to which systematic analysis is possible at this level. Nor do they agree on the extent to which features of other levels (notably intonation) can be integrated with those of discourse. Latterly, too, the apparently convergent concerns of ‘basic’ linguistic and educational researchers using classroom settings, to which we referred to in chapters 1 and 3 , have tended once more to separate. Those bent on further refinement in the analysis of discourse have explored other settings (for example, Coulthard, 1987); those with an educational focus (for example, Cazden, 1988; McCarthy, 1991) have applied theoretical constructs of discourse analysis to pedagogy with little or no modification of the constructs themselves. Nevertheless, it is useful to identify a continuing and common linguisticorientation towards classroom talk, embracing as it does a range of purposes, theoretical arguments and substantive issues.
