Conversational Dominance in Thai Language and Factors Relating to Social Status
A Case Study of Conversation between Teachers and Students in Mister O Corpus
Keywords:
conversational dominance, teachers and students, Mister O Corpus, social status, conversation analysisAbstract
Conversational dominance is a significant topic of scholarly interest. This article aimed to examine conversational dominance in Thai language in relation to status. The research focused on the relationship between teachers and students as a representative of different statuses. The data was elicited from two sets of conversations in Mister O Corpus: 9 pairs of task-based conversations and 9 pairs of experience-exchanged conversations. The entire length was 145.3 minutes. The frameworks proposed by Linell et al. and Itakura were adopted in this study. The findings revealed that status affected conversational dominance in Thai society. In other words, the teachers dominated the conversations in terms of length and sequence of turns. Nonetheless, it was found that both teachers and students attempted to dominate their interactions when it came to participation. This finding significantly reflected that the teacher–student relationship in present day Thai society is likely to have less power distance.
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