Instructional and regulative discourse in language tutorials: An analysis of educators’ response to potentially offensive views

Abstract

Contemporary perspectives on language learning emphasises the importance of encouraging students to play an active role in the learning process. Accordingly, teacherstudent interaction must reflect these views, by facilitating student participation. This presents educators with unique challenges. For example, students may express views which are potentially offensive to their peers. This article conducts an analysis of two case studies, in which educators were faced with this challenge. The research is situated in the context of literature tutorials. To achieve this goal Bernstein’s (1990; 1996) pedagogic discourse is employed, as it was used by Buzzelli and Johnston (2001).

Keywords: language learning, learning process, teacher-student interaction, participation, potentially offensive views, pedagogic discourse