The Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDF) model has been widely used in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) research to explore learners' academic language performance across disciplines and to facilitate collaboration between teachers and researchers around assessment practices. In this study, we investigate the effects of an English teacher's explicit teaching of CDFs on year 8 CLIL learners' written performance of these CDFs in a history class in Spain. After participating in a seminar on CDFs conducted by the researchers, the teacher gave a lesson on CDFs to one group of learners. This experimental group (N = 13) and a control group (N = 13), who had not received any preparation on CDFs, responded to pre- and post-tests eliciting the same four CDFs (classify, define, evaluate, explain). We used the Semantics dimension of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to analyse how the teacher unpacked CDFs in classroom talk and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to examine students' written performance. Results show more contextualisation in the teacher's explanations of more complex CDFs (like evaluate) and mixed results in the effect on students' writing. They lead to pedagogical suggestions for teachers and researchers interested in improving CLIL learners' productions of CDFs in content subjects.
This paper shows how Legitimation Code Theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics can be used together to analyse classroom discourse, illuminating the way course content and examinations become charged with values. A visible curriculum provides the best learning environment, however the values underpinning subjects often remain part of the 'hidden curriculum'. This paper explores how classroom dialogue builds values in one senior secondary subject in the Australian state of New South Wales, Community and Family Studies. The sociological concept of constellations and the linguistic concept of mass are used to analyse lessons where the teacher is preparing students for their final examination. Analysis demonstrates values clustered around certain core concepts to form axiological constellations with which students must align to demonstrate their knowledge. In so doing, it makes visible the axiological nature of the subject and provides a basis upon which the values might be taught, discussed and challenged. It also demonstrates how values accumulate around examination procedure, positioning students as certain kinds of knowers in relationship to the writing they must do for examination. The results have important social justice implications given the overall performance of students studying the subject.
In recent years, increasing numbers of studies have explored knowledge-building practices in classrooms through the conceptual tools of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). At the same time, many researchers have used complementary methodologies (e.g. Systemic Functional Linguistics, Conversation Analysis) together with LCT to investigate pedagogy and classroom interaction. Highlighting the greater explanatory power, which is possible in interdisciplinary work, this special issue brings together papers that apply an integrative approach of discursive methodologies and the three LCT dimensions, Specialisation, Semantics, and Autonomy. The papers in this special issue represent a broad exploration of meaning-making and knowledge-building processes in various classroom environments. This special issue shows (1) how teachers and students organise knowledge-building practices in various classroom contexts and (2) how researchers/educators adopt combined approaches using discursive methodologies and a variety of LCT dimensions for interpreting knowledge-building procedures. The special issue provides theoretical and practical contributions towards understanding knowledge-building in classroom discourse and teacher education by presenting combined approaches that integrate discursive methods with the LCT dimensions.
The research on English Medium Instruction has increasingly shifted its focus towards the dynamics of classroom interaction. However, storytelling as a knowledge-building tool in these settings has yet to be explored. Thus, this study aims to explore how pedagogical storying practices of students interactionally unfold for the co-construction of disciplinary content and how they are positioned within the broader epistemic and social structures of the classroom. The analysed data consists of six hours of video-recorded classroom interactions at a Turkish tertiary institution, drawn from a larger dataset of EMI classroom discourse. The interdisciplinary analytical lens we adopted, combining multimodal Conversation Analysis and the Autonomy dimension of Legitimation Code Theory, reveals that students employ a wide range of interactional and multilingual resources in the pedagogical storying sequences to achieve social and epistemic positions and identities. The turn-taking and sequential organisation of these instances also yield three recurring patterns: (i) self-initiated, (ii) solicited, and (iii) assigned pedagogical storying practices of students. The LCT analysis demonstrates how lecturers manage student stories as external constituents to strategically repurpose them for target disciplinary knowledge-building by using autonomy tours. These findings have implications for the content and design of professional development programs for EMI lecturers.
Subject-specific knowledge has increasingly been foregrounded in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) research, particularly in subjects such as history and chemistry. However, the focus on subject-specificity may render invisible the potential impact of interdisciplinary knowledge resources in shaping, scaffolding, or extending knowledge-building in CLIL classrooms. Against this background, the present study investigates how a teacher refers to other disciplinary fields of knowledge (FoK) while constructing legitimate arts knowledge in a Finnish CLIL visual arts classroom, an under-explored subject area in CLIL. Methodologically, we combine multimodal Conversation Analysis (CA) with the Autonomy dimension of Legitimation Code Theory to analyse video-recorded lessons from both micro- and macro-sociological perspectives. The analysis focuses on two interactional environments: (1) teacher explanations and (2) teacher-initiated question-answer sequences. We demonstrate how the teacher mobilises references to other disciplinary fields to scaffold understanding of visual arts-specific knowledge, and how these multimodal practices involve movement across autonomy codes. In doing so, we illustrate the underlying principles governing the transition between disciplinary domains during knowledge-building. The study offers pedagogical implications for CLIL classroom discourse and teacher education, particularly concerning how teachers strategically draw upon other disciplinary fields to support students' learning of visual arts concepts.
This study examines disciplinary knowledge-building in classroom interaction in a 3rd-year English-medium instruction (EMI) chemistry classroom in a Japanese university. It uses a multi-framework analytical approach, which integrates the construct of Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs), a multimodal conversation analytic approach to classroom interaction, and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) dimension of Semantics, more specifically the concepts of unpacking/repacking, semantic gravity, and semantic density. The fine-grained analysis demonstrates that knowledge-building is accomplished through the coordinated interplay of CDF sequences, multimodal resources (talk, gestures, inscriptions on the whiteboard), and the processes of knowledge unpacking, all of which enact dynamic shifts in semantic gravity and semantic density. The study contributes methodologically to EMI research by demonstrating the value of the multi-framework approach to knowledge-building in classroom interaction. It also contributes theoretically to LCT by providing a revisualised representation of the notion of the semantic plane and by further reconceptualising unpacking as a multidirectional process across levels of abstraction. It further offers more dynamic models of semantic movement as multiple, non-linear pathways, each of which might contain local repacking moves. The study concludes with a series of implications for EMI practice and teacher education.
This study examines how English-medium instruction (EMI) lecturers in computing education manage context dependence by tying disciplinary meanings to specific situations or abstracting them into general principles. Adopting an integrative interdisciplinary approach, we draw on Legitimation Code Theory's semantic gravity to trace shifts between abstraction and contextualisation, and Systemic Functional Linguistics' presence to analyse the linguistic resources enacting these shifts. Video data from two Spanish university lecturers teaching computing topics in EMI courses were analysed across phases of explanation, demonstration, and feedback. The analysis reveals that effective EMI teaching shows strategic orchestration of both dimensions. Strong alignment anchors understanding in shared activity, while productive misalignment, where abstract conceptual content is embedded in high-presence, action-oriented dialogue, enhances accessibility by grounding theoretical principles within situated interaction. The study extends research on semantic waves in computing education by revealing how lecturers linguistically enact the unpacking and repacking of disciplinary knowledge through deictic reference, grammatical metaphor, and metadiscursive signalling. For EMI teacher education, this study offers practical applications: semantic gravity profiling for lesson planning, explicit signalling as teachable practice, and diagnostic frameworks for improving explanations of disciplinary content.
This article examines the interactional accomplishment of interlinguistic mediation by a plurilingual teenager interacting with peers and adults. Drawing on multimodal conversation analysis, the study elucidates how mediation emerges and is managed within forward-oriented and backward-oriented repair sequences. Specifically, we ask (1) why, when, how and by whom linguistic mediation is initiated; (2) what interactional moves and resources are mobilised in accomplishing mediation; (3) what the implications of mediation activity are for the ongoing interaction. Mediation in forward-oriented repair is characterised by pre-emptive delegation, where the mediated party recruits the mediator to assist incipient production troubles, allowing the speaker to maintain agency through collaborative co-construction. Mediation in backward-oriented repair shares some features of the former but involves reactive intervention, where the mediator actively monitors the interaction, self-selects to resolve troubles in prior talk and often assumes agency to proxy voices through third-person accounts and redistribute epistemic rights. The multimodal analysis shows how participants mobilise a wide range of linguistic, embodied and relational/epistemic resources to accomplish mediational work and how linguistic mediation (re)configures participation frameworks. This study contributes an empirical and multimodal understanding of the CEFR/CV mediation construct and advocates for recognising it as an observable phenomenon rooted in naturalistic interactions.
Although demonstration writing is typically treated as a teacher-led instructional practice, this study examines how first-grade students initiated spontaneous talk during writing mini-lessons and how teacher responses shaped authorship, participation, and epistemic positioning. Using discourse analysis framed by sociocultural theory, positioning theory and dialogic instructional stance, we analysed 62 student contributions - comments, suggestions and evaluations - across three demonstration-writing lessons in an author-inspired unit. We found that students used visual and textual features to make meaning and positioned themselves as legitimate knowers, contributors and co-authors with varying levels of epistemic risk. Teacher responses functioned as either uptake or gatekeeping moves, opening or constraining discursive space. Only uptake moves that accepted and incorporated student contributions repositioned students as co-authors. These findings reframe demonstration writing as an interactional site where discursive agency and authorship are continually negotiated. The findings offer implications for how teachers might recognise and respond to spontaneous student talk as consequential to meaning-making, participation and identity negotiation in the writing classroom.
There is ample research on 'disagreement' in conversation analysis (CA) in diverse contexts and cultures. However, the literature on sources of disagreement is scarce. Moreover, little is known about how it is enacted in academic classroom discourse. This CA study examines participants' orientations and interactional practices underlying disagreement in the context of academic discussions in the classroom. Drawing on the analysis of twelve multiparty academic discussions by students of social sciences, this paper argues that the assertion of a disagreement is primarily an epistemic act. The initial assertion functions to establish the speaker's epistemic position on a specific issue, and the first disagreement is designed to display greater epistemic authority relative to that position. This kind of epistemic authority is particularly evidenced through emphatic prosody in the first disagreements in our data. Overall, we found that disagreement is not only a reflection of the differences in opinions but about how deliberation of epistemic authority is managed and maintained in conversation.
Drawing on approximately 13 hours of video-recorded interactions among second language (L2) Chinese speakers participating in conversation tables in China, this study investigates how participants construct identities regarding language expertise during word search sequences. Adopting a conversation analytic perspective on language learning and identity construction, the study focuses on how identity alignment and misalignment are interactionally constructed and how these configurations contribute to or limit opportunities for language learning. The analysis shows that learning opportunities are most likely to arise when participants achieve identity alignment within the novice-expert membership categories. Furthermore, the type of word search initiation plays a crucial role in shaping participants' orientations to identity construction and determining the pattern of alignment or misalignment. While identity alignment often facilitates learning opportunities, one case demonstrates that inaccurate lexical provision may undermine these opportunities, highlighting potential limitations of L2-L2 conversation tables. The study concludes with recommendations for enhancing the effectiveness of L2 conversation tables as informal contexts for language learning. By linking identity work with learning opportunities, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the interactional dynamics of underexamined informal L2-L2 conversation-for-learning settings.
Language education institutions world-wide regularly use Oral Placement Tests (OPTs) to diagnose test-takers' second language (L2) accuracy and fluency to place them in the most appropriate class. Despite their widespread use, there are very few studies into the ways OPTs unfold. This study draws on a corpus of 26 video-recorded OPTs at a language institution in the UK. In these OPTs, examiners are given test sheets that contain various topics that they use to initiate a series of question-answer sequences that are followed by the examiner creating a written record of the test-taker's answer. Successfully achieving these sequences requires the examiner to carefully design their turns to meet with the abilities of each test-taker. We contend that designing turns that are appropriate for multiple test-takers of varying levels during first encounters is a considerable professional challenge facing examiners. By examining interactions stemming from the same test-sheet topic (i.e. job/study) across multiple OPTs using multimodal conversation analysis, this study reveals the ways examiners achieve mutual understanding and ultimately accomplish the institutional goal of completing part of the test-sheet. This contributes to explorations of L2 Interactional Competence in an under-researched testing setting.
This exploratory study examines how content and language teachers conceptualise the cognitive discourse function (CDF) define, and presents the scaffolding strategies they propose to overcome potential challenges encountered by students in classroom interactions. To this end, we analysed a science teacher's classroom interactions and a collective reflection involving 14 teachers from different disciplines and 2 researchers. The analysis showed that teachers tended to prioritise and justify working on the complete form of the definition. Teachers also identified both conceptual and linguistic challenges that students face when trying to produce definitions. The use of videotaped practice facilitated the teachers' reflection and the formulation of scaffolding strategies to enhance students' definitions, including multimodality, the use of closed-ended questions, the provision of clarifications and examples, and conceptual and linguistic modelling. This study contributes to the accessibility of the CDF construct from the teacher's perspective, which could facilitate both the design and the implementation of classroom interventions. Furthermore, the process used in the study highlights the value of reflective teacher training in developing collaboration between teachers in different disciplines and researchers.
Research on grammar pedagogy has shed much light on the effectiveness of different types of instruction (e.g. explicit vs. implicit, focus on form vs. focus on forms, etc.), but how grammar is explained in the moment-to-moment details of interaction remains under-researched. Using conversation analysis, this study provides a sequential account of unplanned grammar explanations from a high intermediate English as a Second Language course that was conducted entirely over Zoom for adults in a community-based programme. In doing so, eight practices for navigating the opening, core, and closing of grammar explanations are detailed in the relatively under-researched online pedagogical interaction context. Openings involved halting progressivity, isolating prior talk, and querying grammaticality, cores involved answering the query, invoking a rule, and tying back, and closings involved providing an upshot and claiming understanding. These findings contribute to the growing body of conversation analytic literature on explanations of grammar and illustrate practices that teachers can adopt and adapt to engage with talk about grammar.
This study explores the influence of classroom positioning practices on learner participation and their access to learning opportunities in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting. Drawing on positioning theory and adopting a qualitative case study design with a discourse analytic approach, the study focuses on two Iranian EFL learners in a communicative classroom context. Data were collected via video recordings, field notes, and observational charts over two 90-minute sessions and were analysed using a six-step thematic analysis approach. The results showed learners' positioning as well as interactive positioning by the teacher and peers significantly influenced participation patterns. Positive positioning boosted learner participation and inclusion, whereas negative or silencing actions such as interruption by a peer or public criticism discouraged participation by constraining learning access. The study suggests teachers' necessity to monitor students' as well as one's own positioning actions to ensure participatory experience on an equal basis. The findings showed the value of micro-level analysis of talk for capturing social dynamics in EFL classrooms.
This study investigates how oral storytelling in history classrooms can foster historical understanding by engaging students both emotionally and analytically. Drawing on classroom observations and linguistic analysis of an experienced eighth-grade teacher's narration of 16th-century European colonisation, the research identifies three storytelling types: insider-first, outsider-first, and narrative oscillation. These types reflect distinct shifts between immersive and analytical perspectives. Using systemic functional linguistics and process drama theory, the study demonstrates how narrative structures can evoke empathy, scaffold reasoning, and support disciplinary engagement. Findings suggest that insider-first storytelling promotes emotional connection and identification, outsider-first storytelling enhances conceptual clarity, and narrative oscillation enables integration of individual experience with broader historical analysis. The study concludes by advocating for storytelling as a deliberate pedagogical strategy and calls for further research into its reception and impact on students' historical understanding.
This study investigates how a group of three fifth-grade students - one autistic and two non-autistic - collaboratively create a fictional story through proposals and joint decisions. The video-recorded data were collected during L1 lessons (total of 3.5 hours). The students first developed a story using a mind map, followed by collaborative writing in a shared online document. Using multimodal conversation analysis, this study examines the design features and distribution of students' procedural and content proposals and the subsequent decision-making, with particular attention to content proposals that require greater interactional work to achieve joint decisions. The findings show that proposals often consisted solely of nominal elements. Additionally, procedural proposals were generally straightforward and readily accepted, whereas content proposals often prompted extended negotiation through supplements, counterproposals, or rejections. These disalignments were occasionally rooted in differing orientations. For example, the autistic student occasionally appeared to prioritise unconventional story elements, whereas the non-autistic students tended to favour more socially normative storytelling. Despite these differences, the group generally reached joint decisions. This study highlights collaborative storytelling as a valuable context for practicing storytelling skills, initiative-taking, and joint decision-making in inclusive educational settings.
