A Study of Early Childhood English Teachers' Classroom Metadiscourse Use and Their Identity Construction from Metapragmatic Perspective

Using Chen Xinren's (2020) metadiscourse classification based on metadiscourse as a theoretical framework, this paper analyses the characteristics of early childhood English teachers' classroom metadiscourse use and identity construction, and explores the metadiscourse awareness embodied behind their metadiscourse use. The study found that early childhood English teachers use sender metadiscourse, addressee metadiscourse, information metadiscourse and code metadiscourse more frequently in the classroom. In the process of constructing identity types, early childhood English teachers mainly constructed the identities of interaction initiator, instructional guide, attitude expressor, classroom controller and contextual interpreter through metadiscourse. The results of this study can contribute to clarifying the role of teacher metadiscourse in early childhood English teaching and thereby promoting the professionalism and teaching competence of early childhood English teachers.