Classroom discourse analysis: a tool for critical reflection

摘要

In Classroom discourse analysis: a tool for critical reflection, Betsy Rymes offers a lucid, engaging, compelling account of how discourse analysis can be fruitfully exploited as a self-reflective tool by teachers to examine interactional dynamics in the classroom. Central to the book is the argument that 'discourse-level inequality in the classroom is in large part produced by long-standing inequalities present in society outside the classroom' (153). It follows then that the purpose of classroom discourse analysis is not to analyze discourse as an isolated linguistic phenomenon, but to unravel the embedded social inequalities that inform and influence moment-to-moment interactions. Rymes demonstrates that through a discourse analytic lens, teachers will come to understand how interactions in the classroom are constrained by social conditions. Such an understanding will in turn help teachers develop an enhanced sense of agency in challenging the force of social structure.