Mood Metaphor without the Institution: A Flattened Reading of Classroom Discourse

Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 68):

As the analysis in (22) shows, the teacher in fact answers their own question of who can tell him, by calling on a student Tony. Following the open proposition of why is it? In the left column of analysis, we have analysed the dialogue for what the teacher is ultimately aiming at – to have an answer to the question why is it? From this perspective, the students’ it changes direction completes this proposition successfully, as indicated by the teacher’s support through Right. In the middle column we account for the fact that the who can tell me and the Tony? commands Tony to speak (whether or not he knows the answer), and so the student’s response in and of itself supports this command (as it would if the student had responded with I don’t know). Finally in the right column, we account for the ‘literal’ reading of the question Who can tell me? that focuses on the who. In this tier of analysis, the teacher themselves answers the question by specifying Tony. Taken together, we can account for the highly nuanced interpersonal meaning that occurs in classroom discourse and the sequence of responses that occur.

ChatGPT Comments:

This account underplays the ritualised choreography of classroom talk. In this institutional register, Who can tell me? does indeed license the “I can” response—most often via a silent, codified gesture such as a raised hand. This is not mere trivia: it’s the canonical first move in a compliance sequence, with the student’s spoken answer contingent on explicit selection (e.g., Tony?).

By omitting this, the text erases the layered exchange structure that organises participation and authority. The effect is to flatten a socially and pedagogically consequential process into an oversimplified question–answer pair.

The actual exchange structure runs more like this:

1. Initiation: statement
   The electron by definition is accelerating.

2. Initiation: question
   Why is it accelerating?

3. Initiation: question
   Who can tell me why it is accelerating?
   Response: answer — Tony’s raised hand signals “I can.”

4. Initiation: command
   Tony, you tell me why it is accelerating.
   Realised metaphorically as interrogative:
   Tony, can you tell me why it is accelerating?
   Response: undertaking
   It changes direction.
   Response: acknowledgement
   Right.

In other words, what’s being described as “contextual repositioning” is little more than a rebranding of a standard mood metaphor—minus the institutional scaffolding that gives it meaning.