Nauczycielskie proszę w szkole podstawowej i w gimnazjum

Abstract

The variety of functions and meanings of the teacher’s asking for/to (proszę) is joined mainly with separateness of pragmatic and social contexts within which educational speech acts are produced. In classroom communication teacher’s directive utterances are understood by pupils as instructions (requests) because of the non-coordinate system of social roles: a pupil is not supposed to reject a teacher’s „request”, he/she is made to obey under threat of sanctions that he/she may face in case of denying to performed a task made by a teacher. Directives formulated by means of the verb to ask for/to are more effective, more motivating, encouraging to stronger engagement in doing activities recommended by a teacher than those formulated in imperative mood. The verb to ask for/to may then be considered as performing a function of specific modal verb of politeness that weakens or hides the pragmatic force of instruction, introduces the mood of friendliness masking the distance between a teacher and a pupil and in this way enables to govern gently the process of teaching. It is necessary to distinguish the word please (proszę) added to an instruction or a question that performs mainly the function of inducement and simultaneously the function of delimitative signal in the course of speech (the signal of beginning another matter).