Classroom as Context: Procedural Consequentiality in a Secondary English Classroom

Abstract

Discussions abound concerning the role of context when examining data from a conversation analytic (CA) framework. Lively debates concerning the place of gender, class, and other cultural constructs in CA (e.g. Schegloff, 1997; Wetherall, 1998) have led some to conclude that nothing other than the talk itself can be used when practicing CA. However, Schegloff (1991, 1992) has noted at least two instances when the relevance of contextual features can be shown. One of those notions, termed procedural consequentiality (Schegloff, 1992), denotes that a certain aspect of context affects how the interaction unfolds. This brief discussion will analyze such a spate of talk, where the very direction of the conversation is contingent on the fact that a teacher is interacting with students.