ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews corpus approaches to the analysis of spoken classroom discourse and reports on a corpus-based analysis of the discourse marker you know in second-language (L2) teacher talk to illustrate how spoken classroom discourse could be analyzed through a corpus-based approach. In a book-length treatment of spoken English learner language, E. Friginal, J. J. Lee, B. Polat, and A. Roberson, among other dimensions examined, looked at stance options, personal pronouns, spatial deixis, and modal verbs in English for academic purposes (EAP) learner discourse in the classroom. In terms of stance, L2 learners were found to use more boosters to indicate a greater commitment to their propositional statements than EAP teachers, who used a higher frequency of hedges. The students also demonstrated a limited repertoire for expressing both uncertainty and certainty in their talk. An interesting finding was the striking similarities in the most frequently used interpersonal resources in both learner and teacher talk.
