There are various applications of such linguistic analyses of classroom discourse. Several researchers have studied teacher-pupil interaction to investigate whether teachers and pupils understand each other. Willes (1978, 1981, 1983) and Holmes (1983) report on miscommunications between teachers and pupils in infant classrooms in Britain and New Zealand respectively. And Malcolm (1979) reports on communicative interference between teachers and Aboriginal pupils who speak varieties of non-standard English in Western Australia. He also goes further to propose how such sociolinguistic study can lead to action research, involving teachers and Aboriginal classroom aides.
- I will not be concerned here further with such direct applications of studies of classroom discourse, but will discuss whether it is possible to combine an increased understanding of teacher-pupil interaction with an increased understanding of language in general. Ideally, a linguistic approach to classroom discourse would: sensitise teachers to the complex but orderly nature of classroom dialogue; improve their teaching via this increased sensitivity; provide them with a firmer theoretical basis for understanding their own professional behaviour in the classroom; and provide them with a theoretically interesting account of an important aspect of language. This is undoubtedly too tall an order to be fulfilled on many teacher-training courses, and in the next section I will discuss what might be possible with reference to part of a second in-service training course which I have prepared.