Unpacking the Functions of Personal Metadiscourse in Teachers’ Classroom Discourse

Abstract

This paper reports on a corpus-driven study on teachers’ use of three personal metadiscourse markers, namely, engaging you, inclusive-we, and self-mentioning I, in teachers’ classroom discourse. The analysis is based on eight sessions of teacher contributions to classroom discourse from four native English-speaking English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers in the UK. A quantitative analysis shows that teachers unanimously attach great importance to actively engaging students in classroom instructions. The qualitative analysis identified four types of metadiscourse functions in relation to teacher–student(s) interactions, including managing comprehension, managing students’ responses, imagining scenarios, and managing students’ discipline, which were further divided into nine sub-categories. This study extends the scope of existing research on personal metadiscourse functions and enriches metadiscourse research in formal instructional settings, thereby enhancing our understanding of personal metadiscourse use in spoken academic genres. Moreover, it may also provide insights for researchers and practitioners in EAP teaching by providing a fine-tuned functional categorisation of personal metadiscourse markers.