multivocality

Critical pedagogy (CP), as a poststructuralist educational movement, challenges the asymmetrical, power-over nature of classroom discourse and seeks to accommodate multivocality in the classroom and in the society. This study probed the discourse architecture of EFL classrooms in Iran. Specifically, it aimed to explore to what extent Iranian EFL classrooms have stepped away from the teacher-dominant initiation-response-follow-up (IRF) discourse structure and welcomed CP-oriented dialogism and multivocality. To this end, a number of EFL classrooms in Isfahan and Shahrekord (Iran) were observed, and the running classroom discourse was audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The results showed that discourse-construction opportunities were distributed unevenly in favor of teachers regarded as the sole authority in the classroom. Student-regulated symmetrical talks were seldom evidenced in the classrooms. The findings further demonstrated that the power-over IRF discourse architecture, despite its communicative inadequacies, still seems to be dominant in EFL classrooms in Iran. Finally, it is suggested that L2 practitioners should move towards transforming the status quo, include more elements of CP into L2 classrooms, and invest in dialogism and multivocality as essential mechanisms to de-silence the students.

In this unorthodox autoethnographic study, we present a dialog between us - two transnational scholars. Throughout the manuscript, we explore several issues, which instantaneously came out during our unstructured, simultaneous, and casual conversations. We first discuss how our dichotomous relationships based on respect as an advisee and an advisor; a mentee and a mentor; and a student and a teacher have transformed into a sincerity-based friendship over time owing to our shared interest in autoethnography. We then move on to a discussion of our beliefs/thoughts/emotions about “home” in accordance with our lived experiences as transnational scholars. We scrutinize how inhabiting, knowing about, and becoming in academia complicated our understanding of where, or more importantly, what “home” means for us. Afterwards, we talk about the affordances and challenges of autoethnographic discourse agreeing that it requires us to practice vulnerability in order for us and our readers to benefit from the therapeutic effect of autoethnography. Throughout the manuscript, we also discuss how using both singular and plural first-person voice provide us with the opportunity to maintain our individual voices in an interpersonal and collaborative relationship while achieving a multivocal tone. We hope that our discussion extends with our readers’ critique of, negotiation with, participation in, and/or resistance to our beliefs/thoughts/emotions as stated in our conversation.