ABSTRACT
Why bother with all these complicated views of discourse, interaction, positioning, alignment, status, identity and self, worlds, interdiscursivity, power and face? Our answer is that these ways of understanding interaction help us understand how knowledge is constructed socially. If we understand the dynamics of constructing knowledge socially through language acts, we are better able to be intentional in building learning communities. We can also participate more productively in learning processes. In this section, we focus on building knowledge. We want to demonstrate how learning is a social process, and how teachers can be more intentional in the ways they go about helping students learn what teachers think they should know.
