Hypothetical mistakes: hedging wrong answers with conditional language in initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) sequences in an American high school classroom

Abstract

Abstract This article analyzes American high school students hedging incorrect responses to teacher-initiated questions in IRE (Initiation-Response-Evaluation) format using conditional language and hypotheticals in ways that facilitate an affiliative stance between students and their teacher. Scholarship on hedging details its use to approximate responses as a shield against doubt and criticism or as collaborative communication, whereas stance is a grammatically encompassed expression of attitudes related to the content of a message. This study brings together theories of stance, hedging, and conditional language use to outline how errors can be a student-initiated pedagogical tool to deepen explanations and engagement. To broaden understanding of the form and function of both incorrect answers and hedging as a structure expanding traditional IRE turntaking for managing classroom discourse, this article outlines seven examples total where students hedge what they know to be incorrect answers drawn from recordings made in forty, fifty-minute high school level Latin lessons over the 2019–2020 academic year. This study presents a model and impacts of students creatively reconfiguring evaluative responses along with their teacher during instruction through hedging incorrect information in conditional, and sometimes hypothetical, formats.