Emotional Effect of Teachers’ Discourse in a Multicultural Classrooms

Abstract

The manifestation, meaning, categorization of emotions, as well as the factors that cause them, have cultural characteristics. To build successful intercultural interaction it is necessary to be aware of them. This study explores classroom discourse and emotions of international students in a multicultural classroom. Our goal is to determine what emotions the discourse of Russian teachers evokes in students from different lingua-cultures and which speech acts have an emotional perlocutionary effect. The material was obtained through a questionnaire with the participation of 70 international students (45 Chinese and 25 Algerian). We focus on emotions and emotional states of surprise, happiness, sadness and offense. Being drawn on qualitative and quantitative methods the comparative analysis showed that the behavior of Russian teachers is more likely to surprise Chinese students than Arab ones, besides Chinese students experience negative emotions and states more often than Arabs which may indicate a greater cultural distance. In relation to speech acts that evoke the emotions, we identified some similarities and differences, which are discussed through the type of culture and cultural values. The results contribute to the study of culture specific features of emotions in communication. They specify the factors that evoke emotions in students belonging to different lingua-cultures, and can contribute to the successful interaction of Russian teachers with international students in a multicultural classroom.