Pedagogic Ventriloquation: Posttraditional Discourse in the English Classroom

• In Event: 34.097 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Four - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 34.097-5 - Intertextuality, Frame, and Footing: Exploring Linguistic Performance

Abstract

Drawing on an interactional sociolinguistic approach to classroom talk, I conceptualize pedagogic ventriloquation in ELA teacher talk: the representation of students’ linguistic actions which have not actually happened but which are framed as potential or likely through hypothetical quotatives. Using data from audio-recordings of a 9th Grade ELA classroom in Southern California, I argue that the teacher draws on this form i) as a means to provide an evidentiary base for claims about students’ classroom work habits and, ii) as a form of indirect criticism which allows the teacher/speaker to simultaneously distance or detach themselves from the censure. I argue for conceptualizing the use of this colloquial genre as contributing to and drawing from post-traditional public discourse.

Author

• Robert Jean LeBlanc, University of Lethbridge