The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

[continues through 2.23 turn]
The professor here warns the student of a discursive-cum-thinking trap, holds the
dialogue for her, anticipating a possible problem, and in one sense averts a possi-
bly embarrassing (and confusing and time-consuming) tangle. (Although in an-
other sense, he puts words in her mouth that she may never have uttered.) Here,
as throughout our modified Socratic classrooms, the professor also employs humor
to lighten the tone of the exchange. Thus, in contrast with the stereotypical Socratic
exchange, the professor is doing a great deal of work to smooth out bumps in the
dialogue, to help and cue the student when she appears to stumble, and to keep a

---

152
Difference
collaborative construction of discourse going. In between, he is also filling in a lot
of the legal blanks and questions, stressing certain points or legal tests or specific
phrases over and over again, to ensure student comprehension.
21
 Indeed, he in-
dulges in a wry metacommentary on this at one point: “Okay, I don’t know how to
hammer this home anymore, so I’m- [[class laughter]] All right. Let’s turn to uh
something else.”
Throughout many of these exchanges, we have also seen an interesting deploy-
ment of “little” discourse markers, such as “well,” “all right,” “okay,” “right,” “now,”
and “wait” on the part of professors. At times, these mark a disagreement and begin
an initiated repair, as when the strict Socratic professor in Transcript 4.2 responded,
“Well that’s a rather general statement. How did this get to the appellate court?”,
or in Transcript 4.3, where he begins three successive turns (all of which conclude
with negative uptake) as follows:
1. “Well, all right now you y- I just wanted you to talk about this one thought (all
right) for the moment.”
2. “Well now there are two parts 
[ . . . ]
 what are the two parts?”
3. “Well n- name the two parts, would you, because people have a lot of trouble
with this.”
These seemingly small discourse markers can be doing intriguing work, at once qui-
etly redirecting the conversation while also serving a variety of different functions,
as we see here. In addition to their marking disagreement or opening the door to
repair, Matoesian lists a number of other possible functions for these seemingly mi-
nor terms, noting that they can do the work of “instructional markers, as in giving
someone instructions for baking a cake” (or, here, parsing a legal text or doctrine),
as well as sometimes of epistemic markers, conveying an aura of certainty or author-
ity.
22
 This can be particularly powerful when combined with the function of mark-
ing transitions in the ongoing exchange, as when we just heard the professor in Class
#4 say, “Okay, I don’t know how to hammer this home anymore, so I’m- [[class laugh-
ter]] All right. Let’s turn to uh something else.” The “all right” here signals a some-
what emphatic closure to the point he has just finished making, at the same time as
he is moving the class along to the next part of the analysis. Although in this case the
professor provides explicit metapragmatic signaling of the shift that is occurring, we
find a similar structure in many professor utterances without such overt indexing.
In these cases, it is the small discourse markers themselves that make the transition.
They at times mark the boundaries of portions of the statement of facts or legal test
that is being applied, signaling students that it is time to transition from one part of
the analysis to another (see Transcripts 7.1, 7.7).
23
 If the student has supplied the
needed responses, the use of “okay” or “right” is not only serving as an instructional
marker, an epistemic marker, and the signal for a transition; it is also ratifying the
student’s response, reinforcing a desired clarity and decisiveness of thought at a
microlinguistic level (see Transcript 7.2).
24
 Thus, these subtle discursive markers
perform multilayered functions as they contribute to the overall cohesion of the
ongoing exchange between professor and student.
We find patterns designed to coach students and to encourage cohesion in
the other modified Socratic classrooms as well—of course, in somewhat differ-

---

Professorial Style in Context
153
ent combinations and styles. For example, in Class #5, we find the professor using
humor in an attempt to pull a student who is having a great deal of difficulty
into the dialogue: