In this paper, I explore the significance of speech prosody for the affective climate of dialogue between teachers and students in classroom discussion. In particular, I examine how prosodic orientation – when a teacher shows awareness of the prosody used by a student in the prosody of his/her own next turn – can signal the extent of shared understanding between participants in classroom discourse. I suggest that prosody is an important resource for pedagogic communication in educational settings that has been largely overlooked in previous research, and indicate possible lines of enquiry for future studies in this field. I draw on recent work on speech prosody in spontaneous dialogue, particularly the concept of prosodic orientation (Szczepek Reed, 2006). Prosody is defined as the dynamic variation of the speaking voice along the dimensions of pitch, loudness and time (including pace and rhythm). Other features which may enter into prosodic analysis include silence, pauses and voice quality (such as whispered speech). Prosodic orientation is ‘the conversational activity of displaying awareness of another speaker’s prosody in the prosodic design of one’s own next turn’ (Szczepek Reed, 2006). The most common form of prosodic orientation is prosodic matching, for example imitating the intonation contour used by a previous speaker in one’s own next turn. The give-and-take of prosody between speakers engaged in dialogue has a cohesive force, creating a semiotic bridge between the turns of different speakers above and beyond what may be articulated in the verbal material alone (lexis, syntax etc.) (Wennerstrom, 2001). It indicates how speakers collaborate in the production of meaning in discourse, and can contribute to a sense of rapport and shared group membership (Sacks, 1995); conversely, marked problems in the prosodic domain (such as frequent overlapping utterances) can signal a breakdown of mutual understanding between partners in discussion (Wennerstrom, 2001). Prosody is a means of communicating the speaker’s attitudinal stance towards the encounter-in-progress, and the exchange of prosody across the successive turns taken by different contributors to dialogue can be seen as a barometer of the climate of feeling that prevails between participants in an episode of interaction (Erickson, 2004). In my presentation, I discuss in detail an exchange between a teacher and student, paying particular attention to their prosody, and draw attention to an instance of prosodic matching (Szczepek Reed, 2006), in which the teacher revoices a comment made by the student and echoes the intonation contour of the student’s utterance. Graphs prepared using the software program Praat are presented, showing the intonation contour used by the student and teacher when enunciating the repeated phrase. They reveal that the matching of the student’s intonation by the teacher is not precise, but is close enough to be perceptible. A fuller analysis of the prosody of the sequence is given in the full version of the paper.

I present and analyze a transcript of an extract from a whole class discussion led by the teacher in an English lesson in a secondary school in southern England. Transcription conventions from the tradition of Conversation Analysis are used to mark up prosodic aspects of the participants’ speech, e.g. rising or falling intonation (Maxwell Atkinson & Heritage, 1984). I carried out the transcription and analysis of speech prosody using the software programs Transana (Fassnacht & Woods, 2007), which is designed to assist the transcription and analysis of video recordings of spoken interaction, and Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2007), which is designed to assist in the analysis of speech sound, e.g. intonation.

I suggest that when the teacher revoices a student’s contribution and matches the prosody of the student’s utterance, we can see this as a kind of duetting, by analogy with musical performance. One speaker (the student) states the theme, which is then picked up and restated by their interlocutor (the teacher), rather in the manner of alternating jazz soloists who are trading riffs. I characterize this as a joint exercise in thinking aloud, in which the teacher’s prosodic orientation towards the speech of his/her students communicates the value placed on their contributions, and demarcates a shared social space for the creative exploration of ideas. Creative teaching from this point of view is a performance art, a collective exercise in structured improvisation (Sawyer, 2001). Questions for further research are identified.