Epistemic positioning in an English-medium postgraduate advanced neuroscience module

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Bozbıyık M., Morton T.

BAAL2023 (British Association for Applied Linguistics, 56th Annual Conference), York, İngiltere, 23 - 25 Ağustos 2023

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: York
  • Basıldığı Ülke: İngiltere
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Abstract

Lecturers and students in university English Medium Instruction (EMI) contexts need not only to use English and other semiotic resources to

build content knowledge and develop disciplinary literacy, but also to position themselves and each other in relation to disciplinary

knowledge and practices. One key aspect of such positioning is epistemics, that is, how participants use interactional and semiotic resources

to position each other as more or less knowledgeable about disciplinary matters, or accountable for such knowledge due to ascribed

identities (Heritage, 2013; Jakonen & Morton, 2015). In this study, we use an interdisciplinary perspective, combining the sociological

framework of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) (Maton, 2014) with a multimodal Conversation Analysis (CA) approach to epistemics to explore

the positioning of lecturers and students with respect to disciplinary knowledge and practices in an advanced masters’ level neuroscience

module taught through English in a Spanish university. The participants were two lecturers on the module and their classes, and the data

consist of 10 hours of video recordings of classroom interaction and one-hour interviews with each lecturer. Collections of epistemic

positioning episodes were built, transcribed, and analysed using multimodal CA methods. These episodes were then reanalysed using the

LCT dimension of Specialization, specifically the social plane and its four “gazes” (Maton, 2014). The preliminary results reveal how the

lecturers and students positioned themselves and each other in relation to different social gazes (e.g., having had previous training, having

had the “right” connections and histories), using a wide range of interactional resources. The study has implications for practice and

professional development in university-level EMI, particularly for enabling lecturers to effectively deploy interactional and semiotic resources

to position students in desired ways in relation to disciplinary knowledge and practices.