Investigating Arabic Pragmatic Markers in Teacher Talk: A Multi-Layered Analytical Approach
[Thesis]
Azi, Yaseen Ali
Gonzalez, Eva R.
The University of New Mexico
2019
420 p.
Ph.D.
The University of New Mexico
2019
Through this descriptive qualitative case study of three native speaking Arabic teachers in an L2 Arabic classroom in a private school setting in the U.S., this study presented a four-stage multi-layered analytical approach demonstrating functional, interactional and pedagogical analyses of the uses of Arabic Arabic pragmatic markers (PMs) in teacher talk and also providing a detailed emic analysis of the phenomena by incorporating teachers' perceptions of their uses of those elements in their classroom talks. Findings of the functional analysis clearly showed that Arabic PMs perform different micro functions at four macro levels (structural, interpersonal, referential and multi- functional). Moreover, linking results from the uses of Arabic PMs in the three teachers' actual productions to their perceived uses of those linguistic devices leads us to have a better understanding of why specific functional, interactional and pedagogical uses of those Arabic PMs are highlighted in each teacher talk. The analysis of the three teachers interview answers demonstrated that their classroom context is strongly associated with important variables such as students' age and fluency level, teacher's beliefs and language ideologies and those factors can have a significant impact on how Arabic was taught in their classrooms in general and how Arabic PMs were used in their classroom talks in particular. Finally, the present study concluded with significant pedagogical implications in relation to Arabic classroom pedagogy and Arabic teacher education in a foreign language context.