Editor: Viv Edwards (University of Reading, UK)
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Volume: 10 Number: 2 Page: 82–102
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'Save the Talk for After the Listening': The Realisation of Regulative Discourse in Teacher Talk
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Rick Iedema
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This paper addresses the increasingly sophisticated means by which teachers get students to do things. First, it discusses the resources available for realising should-ness, or modulation. In Halliday's
(1985:336) interpretation, modulation can be realised subjectively (e.g. 'You should go') or objectively ('You are required to go'). The semantic continuum ranging from subjective realisations via objective
realisations to demodalised realisations like 'The requirement is that ... ' proposed in the Write it Right industry research monograph Vol. III (Iedema, 1996) is briefly presented. This framework is then
applied to seven teacher talk extracts. It is shown that early primary teacher talk tends to make use of mostly subjective kinds of modulation, while late primary teacher talk makes use of both highly objectified
and ideationalised as well as highly 'interiorised' forms of control. Thinking of the school as 'an expert system of civic governance' (Hunter, 1994: xx), I argue that students' induction into bureaucratic-pastoral
self-discipline and self-determination is enabled by their exposure to and eventual control over linguistic modes of modulation. These modes both increasingly background the sources of should-ness and thus
its interpersonal negotiability, and increasingly interiorise the ultimate source of compliance. I also argue for explicit classroom attention to these technologies of positioning and social control.
© Multilingual Matters 1999
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