Dialogic Classroom Talk - Rethinking 'Messy' Classroom Interaction

Over the past decades, dialogic classroom talk has increasingly been acknowledged to be of prime importance for teaching and learning. Many researchers refer to the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin when conceptualising ‘dialogic’ or ‘dialogism’, either as an epistemology or an ontology. In our study we rely on an ontological view of ‘dialogue’ and on the distinction drawn by Bakhtin between ‘authoritative’ and ‘internally persuasive word’ to conduct a sequential analysis (informed by CA) of an extract taken from the film ‘The Class’. Although, the teacher-student interactions at times appear to be ‘messy’ at first sight, our analysis will show that students’ utterances can be considered as an expansion of the subject matter which is accomplished dialogically with their teacher.