Conversation Analysis of ESL Learners’ Speech Acts in Classroom Discourse

Classroom discourses, particularly in making learners do what teachers or fellow learners ask them to do with what they say, are crucial in the learners’ language comprehension. Hence, this study examined the speech acts of learners through analysis of their conversations in classroom discourse, particularly in an ESL classroom context. Specifically, it identified the locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary acts performed in ESL classroom discourse. Qualitative method was employed in the study and data were gathered through classroom observations which were audio and video recorded. The respondents of the study are students and teachers as they interact in the language classroom. Full transcripts of classroom discourses were documented and out of these full transcripts, several conversations were extracted which became the corpus of analysis in this study. In analyzing the speech acts performed in classroom discourse by the students and teachers, the categorical approach to the application of Speech Act theory by Cohen (1996) in analyzing the transcribed dialogues was adopted. Results show after careful analysis and interpretation of the transcripts of actual classroom discourses, that ESL learners’ performative utterances in the classroom are those for purposes of explaining, asking questions, confirming, giving emphasis, citing examples, suggesting, scolding, and advising, requesting and commanding.

Keywords: conversation analysis, speech acts, locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary, performative utterances