Frequency and listener perceptions of the <i>nursery we</i> in instructor-student interactions

Abstract Teachers are often cited as using the nursery we , in which the pronoun we functions as a second-person pronoun (e.g., “ We read about this last week”; De Cock, 2011 ). However, there is little consensus about how listeners perceive its use. An empirical investigation of the nursery we can help determine whether the instructor use of this pronoun strengthens or weakens rapport, an integral aspect of classroom learning. The present study examines frequency and listener perceptions of the nursery we through a mixed-methods approach. A corpus analysis of office hour visits documented in the TOEFL 2000 Spoken and Written Academic Language (T2K-SWAL) corpus ( Biber et al., 2004 ) reveals the nursery we is frequent in instructors’ speech but rarely used by students. Survey results demonstrate that students perceive the instructor use of the nursery we to be more likable, helpful, encouraging, and coaxing than the the use of you , and there is a negligible effect between how students perceive the nursery we compared to you in terms of being sarcastic or condescending. Focus group comments suggest the nursery we establishes solidarity between instructors and students, which can strengthen rapport. These findings support the instructor use of the nursery we as a rapport-building technique when interacting with students.