Teaching work at private language schools: Direct speech and the voice of hierarchy

Abstract

This paper aims at focusing on an aspect of the activity of the teacher who works at private language schools. It presents an analysis of teachers' speeches about their work. These speeches were produced during an interview, which was conceived and applied as a research instrument to generate data. More specifically, our analysis covers the process of their selection and training, which took place before their hiring. The theoretical framework of the investigation are the language sciences from the perspective of the sociological method, as developed by Mikhail Bakhtin and the Circle, and the ergological approach of the activity. In relation to the linguistic-discursive resources used by the teachers during the interviews, it is possible to observe, in the excerpts analyzed in this paper, the constant presence of reported speech, and especially the occurrences of quotations in direct speech, through which an effect of sense of authenticity is produced and the boundaries with respect to the voice of hierarchy are marked. Furthermore, the authoritarian reception of the alien word, the degree of its ideological assurance and also dogmatism explain the use of direct speech.