(F101)
Kääntä, Leila
(University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä)
Embodied attention focusing
in classroom interaction
In work settings, people draw upon both linguistic and embodied
means alongside with the material world in co-constructing meaningful,
locally managed interaction (see e.g. Goodwin 1996, Ochs et
al. 1996). Goodwin (1999), for example, has illustrated how crucial
pointing can be in generating work related meanings through the
unfolding interaction within such a work setting as archaeological
excavation. Classroom interaction functions alike in that participants
co-create meanings through their sequentially organized interaction.
However, the institutionality of classroom interaction poses
constraints and obligations for the participants as well as defi nes
its inherent purpose (e.g. Heritage 1997, Seedhouse 2004). That is,
teacher and students have certain identities that are relevant to the
main goal of classroom interaction : the teacher is to teach the students
the subject matter. In terms of CA, the participants’ actions,
both individual and whole group, are derived from this goal (Seedhouse
2004).
In my presentation, I will demonstrate how teachers effectively use
embodied as well as instrumental means in order to draw students’
attention to relevant aspects of content while aspiring to teach
L2 and to guide student participation. That is, I will demonstrate
that teachers’ embodied devices are an essential part of a network
designed to create meaning through the sequential organization of
institutional communication. The divergent means that I will concentrate
on are pointing, highlighting, gesticulation and displaying
and drawing attention to teaching materials such as books and handouts.
The presentation is based on my on-going doctoral research,
in which I examine teacher issued directives as embodied activity in
classroom interaction. The research method is conversation analysis.
The data for the dissertation consists of a corpus of 30 videotaped
lessons (12 English as a foreign language lessons and 18 content
based lessons taught in English).
