{"title":"Masking directions: teacher instructions and COVID-19 protocols","authors":"Robert Jean LeBlanc","doi":"10.1515/text-2022-0118","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The arrival of COVID-19 disrupted the everyday life of the classroom. This interactional sociolinguistic research explores a teacher providing directions to students about COVID-19 safety protocols, delivered on the first three days of the students’ return to the classroom in August 2020 after a multi-month hiatus. Using audio-data collected over multiple hours as part of an ongoing long-term study of classroom interaction in a rural Canadian high school, it examines teacher strategies for delivering directives regarding COVID-19 safety policy, with particular attention to linguistic forms aimed at student compliance during the fraught early days of return. The findings outline strategies of delivering unambiguous directives regarding relatively mundane procedures, as well as strategies of avoidance—indirections—which were framed as negotiation and revoicing. This study explores the tenuous balance of risk and the everyday in the classroom, where the teacher attempts to reset the interactional order in light of new restrictions, new requirements, and new threats.","PeriodicalId":46455,"journal":{"name":"Text & Talk","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Text & Talk","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2022-0118","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The arrival of COVID-19 disrupted the everyday life of the classroom. This interactional sociolinguistic research explores a teacher providing directions to students about COVID-19 safety protocols, delivered on the first three days of the students’ return to the classroom in August 2020 after a multi-month hiatus. Using audio-data collected over multiple hours as part of an ongoing long-term study of classroom interaction in a rural Canadian high school, it examines teacher strategies for delivering directives regarding COVID-19 safety policy, with particular attention to linguistic forms aimed at student compliance during the fraught early days of return. The findings outline strategies of delivering unambiguous directives regarding relatively mundane procedures, as well as strategies of avoidance—indirections—which were framed as negotiation and revoicing. This study explores the tenuous balance of risk and the everyday in the classroom, where the teacher attempts to reset the interactional order in light of new restrictions, new requirements, and new threats.
期刊介绍:
Text & Talk (founded as TEXT in 1981) is an internationally recognized forum for interdisciplinary research in language, discourse, and communication studies, focusing, among other things, on the situational and historical nature of text/talk production; the cognitive and sociocultural processes of language practice/action; and participant-based structures of meaning negotiation and multimodal alignment. Text & Talk encourages critical debates on these and other relevant issues, spanning not only the theoretical and methodological dimensions of discourse but also their practical and socially relevant outcomes.