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You, I, and We: Personal Pronouns in EAP Classroom Discourse

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Exploring Spoken English Learner Language Using Corpora

Abstract

Personal pronouns are important markers of teacher-student relationships, as they permit both parties to locate themselves and each other in the varying conversational spaces in classroom settings. They also serve as critical indicators of degrees of personal involvement and interaction in the classroom. While a growing number of studies have examined instructors’ use of personal pronouns in university classrooms, very little is known of L2 learners’ and teachers’ use of the same. This chapter explores personal pronouns, specifically you, I, and we and their variants in learner and teacher speech in the EAP classrooms. We not only examine the distribution of these pronouns in the L2CD-S and L2CD-T, we also report on the comparative analysis of their sub-functions in the two sub-corpora.

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Friginal, E., Lee, J.J., Polat, B., Roberson, A. (2017). You, I, and We: Personal Pronouns in EAP Classroom Discourse. In: Exploring Spoken English Learner Language Using Corpora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59900-7_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59900-7_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-59899-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-59900-7

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