| dc.description.abstract | Compared to the first person, the forms of the second person singular appear as a not very diverse and relatively
small group: most utterances were made by the teacher in the present tense (50%), past tense (37%), and in the
meaning of the future—only 13%.
When talking about the illocutionary force of speech acts (in the present tense), the largest group is formed by
questions (45.4%), assertions constitute 23.3%, control acts 18.2%, acts of valuation 11.5%, answers—1.6%.
This may indicate that the teacher avoids using statements that emphasize the oppositionality (the controversy)
between the sender and the receiver. In a classroom situation the person entitled to formulate statements in the
second person (to use the familiar forms of ‘you’) is the teacher (when addressing the teacher the only possible
forms are: sir or madam, or professor).
In a sample of a school discourse numbering 10,000 word forms there were 1392 finite verb forms (including 957
finite verb forms used by teachers and 435 finite verb forms used by students). Within these forms we can include
forms of the second person singular in total combination (teacher + students) among which there are: 34 indicative
mood forms, 37 uses of forms in imperative mood and 7 uses of conditional mood.
Present tense forms are represented by 78 examples (teacher: 65, students: 13), past tense forms—by 18 examples (T:
17, S: 1), and there are no examples of the analytical forms of the future tense (Gasińska 2011). | en |
