Interpersonal Meaning in Teacher Talk: An Appraisal Theory Analysis of Attitude Resources in Turkish Classrooms

Understanding classroom discourse is essential for explaining how teaching and learning develop through interaction. This study examines how teachers express evaluative meanings in classroom talk. The focus is on attitude resources affect, judgment, and appreciation which teachers use to evaluate emotions, behaviours, and classroom-related phenomena. This study adopts both quantitative and qualitative research methods to examine how teachers use attitude resources in classroom discourse. The corpus consists of video recordings from sixteen class hours involving eight Turkish teachers and their seventh-grade students. All classroom interactions were fully transcribed and systematically analysed. The findings of this study indicate that teachers mainly referred to appreciation resources, evaluative language related to instructional content and classroom processes. By employing judgment resources teachers evaluated student behaviour and performance. Affect resources expressing feelings were employed less frequently. The findings offer practical implications for teachers in scaffolding effective learning environment. This study underscores the importance of evaluative language in classroom interaction.