Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ICOP-L2 (Interactional Competences and Practices in a Second Language) Barcelona 2022, Barcelona, İspanya, 8 - 09 Eylül 2022, ss.65-66
This study examines teachers’ use of the squeezed mouth smile (SMS) in response to student
utterances produced as humorous in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes in Turkey. More
specifically, within question-answer sequences in task-based context, it explores teacher’s responses
with SMS indicating that the students’ just prior response might not be appropriate. Although smile
and laughter have been widely explored in both institutional and mundane talk (e.g., Glenn, 2003;
Kaukomaa et al., 2013; Holt, 2016; Haakana, 2010), SMS is a social practice which appears to be
un(der)researched. Data comes from 29-hour video and audio recordings gathered from four different
EFL classes. Using Conversation Analysis, four extracts out of a collection of 15 cases will be analysed.
Analysis shows that SMS is used to display and manage disaffiliation indicating that the response might
not be appropriate. Given the potentially delicate moment of disaffiliating with the students’ turn
design (as humorous), SMS appears to enable the teacher to manage it in a mitigated way without
showing strong admonishment, thus without discouraging participation. However, teachers’ use of
SMS alone sometimes does not appear to prevent students from pursuing somewhat transgressive
line that they take. Therefore, it seems necessary for teachers to sometimes follow SMS with explicit
comments on the nature of the responses displaying both why the response is treated as
inappropriate and the nature of the ‘desired’ or ‘appropriate’ response. As such, teachers can exercise
control over the response that they wish to elicit by not leaving space for students to continue with
the inappropriate responses. Thus, they meet the pedagogical goals and maintain order in the
classroom without discouraging participation. Overall, this study unearths the dynamic, complex, and
delicate work that SMS can perform in EFL classes and talk-in-interaction more generally.