开题报告终极版本.docx

1、开题报告终极版本湖 南 工 业 大 学 硕 士 学 位 研 究 生开 题 报 告选 题 名 称：外语环境下同伴异议话语研究 - 社会文化视域学 科 专 业：外国语言学及应用语言学研 究 方 向：应用语言学院（系） 所：外国语学院年 级： 2013级研究生姓名：龙 娟指 导 教 师 ：王晓燕撰 写 日 期：2015.1.7A Study of Peer Disagreement Discourse in ForeignLanguage Environment:A Sociocultural Perspective1. Introduction In foreign environment, di

2、sagreement can hardly escape in peer interaction. However, few scholars have speculated the nature of disagreement from sociocultural perspective. The present paper is an empirical study which tries to the real situation of focusing on disagreement in English classroom. This chapter is the introduct

3、ory part of the whole paper in which four issues will be mentioned. Research background will come first and then the research purposes and significance. The next part is the research questions as well as research methods. The last section is the organization of the thesis, which is a panorama showin

4、g the landmarks.1.1 Research background In current years, disagreement is a hot topic which has been analyzed by linguistic scholars from other perspectives.(e.g. Meredith, 2012; Jo, 2012) In the present study, the definition of disagreement is cited from Kakava(2002), who think that disagreement is

5、 defined as the negation of a stated or implied proposition. This definition, as interpreted here, includes the negation of or objection to not only factual statements, but also points of view, positions, plans and actions. This thesis intends to analyze peer disagreement from Sociocutural theory (S

6、CT), SCT is proposed by Vygoysky, however, it has little to do with culture and society as its name indicates. This theory emphasizes that human behaviors and activities occur in the sociocultural world, therefore this sociocultural world impacts human activities and human development. Human develop

7、ment is not individual; instead, it is interrelated with the sociocultural world.Within the framework of Politeness Theory, disagreement has traditionally been considered a face-threatening act, which interactants seek to avoid using. Conversation analysts within the framework of Preference Theory h

8、ave noted that interactants orient toward agreement, and expressed disagreements as dispreferred responses, via mitigation markers, such as delays, prefacing, and hedges. In fact, The Journal of Pragmatics has recently devoted a special issue to the topic of disagreements (2012, Volume44, issue12) w

9、hich indicates that disagreement is also highly influenced by culture and context. These studies have shown that in some cultures/contexts, disagreements have their own social functions and are not necessarily mitigated. Whats more, after the special issue of disagreements has been provided, the dis

10、agreements in personal blogs, workplaces, negotiations etc were conducted by the western scholars, which provide further empirical support to the claim that disagreement is not inherently face-threatening and needs to be contextualized. The phenomenon of disagreement is also common in foreign enviro

11、nment, which should be given emphasis in research. Though peer-peer teaching method is emphasized and advocated in the current studies, the researchers have paid more attention to other focuses, such as: negotiation, correction, recast and so on, of which most studies emphasize the importance for SL

12、A from the perspective of sociocultural theory (SCT). However the research about nature and influence of disagreement is few. Hadar(2014) analyzes the disagreement patterns in gifted classes, which constitute interactional context in which are unmarked and do not seem to undermine solidarity among i

13、nteractants. This study provides further empirical support to the claim that disagreement is not inherently face-threatening and needs to be contextualized. Although the thesis categorizes the taxonomies of disagreement which will guide related research of this focus, the causes and nature of disagr

14、eement havens been speculated from any perspectives. Wu(2011) on the basis of the chinese learner spoken English corpus(COLSEC) , attempts to analyze the main features of Chinese English foreign language learners disagreement expressions in discussion, adopting Conversation Analysis, Speech Act Theo

15、ry, and Brown and Levinsons (1978) the Politeness Theory as the main theoretical rationales to do studies on the student-student in the COLSEC. Yet elements such as personal cognition, sociocultural element and interaction environment etc which lead disagreement are ignored. 1.2 Research purposes an

16、d significanceThis study makes a new attempt to analyze the disagreement in foreign classroom from SCT and indicates that disagreement plays a significant role not only in promoting the communication of peer-peer interaction in foreign environment, but also in showing social identity and maintaining

17、 social relationship. In this section, the research purposes and significance are introduced. 1.2.1 Research purpose Based on the research gaps, the main purpose of this present study is to investigate the current situation about disagreement used among peers in English as a second language classroo

18、m from sociocultural perspective and to propose some implications for second language learning.To be more specific, there are four main research purposes. The first one is to find out disagreement patterns of disagreement appeared and frequencies of patterns in the data, in order to realize this pur

19、pose, the general look of the data will be shown mainly by giving percentages and statistics. The second one is to seek out the causes of disagreement from several dimensions. The last but one is to see into the functions of the disagreement and to give explanations. Final purpose is to provide some

20、 implications for second language learning.1.2.2 Research significanceThe present study is going to investigate the characteristics of disagreement among peers in English as a second language classroom, which can make a contribution to the study of peer-peer interaction and then to SLA in general fr

21、om three aspects: theoretical perspective, research orientation and classroom practical implications.Firstly, concerning the theoretical perspective, this research is backed by Vygotskian SCT, SCT basically consists of eight concepts including mediation, regulation, internalization, zone of proximal

22、 development, scaffolding, private speech/inner speech, activity theory and the genetic method that are all closely related to language. The concepts have been widely applied SLA researches, shedding new light on second language learning. The findings of the present study will focus on the main conc

23、epts of SCT: mediation, ZPD and scaffold to interpret disagreements, expecting to provide additional evidence for SLA. Meanwhile, the efforts made in the study can be hopefully viewed add some weight to the sociocultural end of this skewed scale.Secondly, regarding research orientation, comparing wi

24、th other focuses of classroom interaction, such as negotiation, corrective feedback, recast etc, the present study adopts disagreement as the direction to approach the data in interaction, which enables the author and readers to understand the phenomenon of disagreement that scholars need to be atta

25、ched more importance to, instead of being mitigated or ignored.Thirdly, in terms of classroom practice, as a research of peer interaction, the present study may help teachers and learners to get a better understanding of pair work or group work in second language classrooms and implications for the

26、improvement of L2 classroom interactions among peers.1.3 Research questions and methods 1.3.1 Research questionsThere are altogether three general research questions. The first one is about the general results of the data. And the following two research questions are intended to deal with the data b

27、ased on the analytical tool SLA.Research Question 1: What are the patterns of the disagreement expressions according to the related data and how many types are the patterns categorized into? Research Question 2: What are the causes which lead to disagreement in peer discourse?Research Question 3: Wh

28、at are the functions of disagreement in peer discourse on SLA and sociocutural dimensions?1.3.2 Research methodsThis thesis employs the data of peer-peer interaction to examine the patterns and causes of disagreement in English L2 classroom as well as the function analyzed by conversational analysis

29、 as the research tool. The data used in this study is from the transcription of junior students in a university for two terms. Each class lasts for about 30 minutes, about the first 15 minutes of which are chosen. Because the kind of peer interaction often has been carried out, the environment for p

30、articipants is free. Authentic classes are recorded and then the transcripts are the data used by the author. Collecting the data, the author reads the transcription in order to find the episodes of disagreement and categorize them. After the coding, the analysis is going on both quantitatively and

31、qualitatively. In the quantitative analysis, the numbers of some analyzing categories are counted and the analysis aims to compare the frequencies of each pattern of disagreement and to show the general picture of the data. In the qualitative analysis, the typical examples are analyzed in detail to

32、show the real situations of authentic classrooms.2. Literature ReviewThis chapter firstly introduces focus on disagreement which mainly is divided into two parts: previous studies on disagreement in non-classroom environment and classroom environment. Then the previous research on peer interaction, especially the theses of negotiation and correction, in foreign environment is revisited, which can shed some light on the present study. And lastly, the studies on peer interaction sociocultural perspective are introduced.2.1 Previous studies on disagreement Most studies of disagreement have be