Constructing an apprenticeship with discourse strategies: Professor-graduate student interactions

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis longitudinal study examines the construction of the apprenticeship relationshiP between professor (expert) and graduate student (novice) during office-hour interactions. The findings demonstrate that apprenticeship is constituted by the strategic use of affect-indexing linguistic markers in discourse. By indexing stances of cooperativeness, interdependence, and shared Discourse membership, professor and student create a positive affect bond which provides a linguistic means of negotiating miscommunication arising from the student's incomplete socialization to the target Discourse. The socialization process is shown to proceed through a series of interim Discourses where quantifiable shifts in the participants' discourse strategies reveal the student's increasing mastery of the target Discourse. Constraints imposed by the institutional setting are also shown to structure the discourse strategies which characterize the interim Discourses. The results of this study strongly suggest that affect plays a measurable role in the process of language socialization, and is essential for defining “trusf”-based apprenticeship relationships. (Affect, language socialization, discourse analysis, apprenticeship)