The teaching of formal oral discourse genres in school and university contexts: critical reflections on the tension between communicative inequality and educational justice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.71112/3wrwhr03Keywords:
formal oral discourse genres, systematic instruction, communicative inequality, educational justice, school context, higher education context, communicative competence, pedagogical mediationAbstract
This essay argues that formal secondary oral discourse genres, characteristic of school and university settings, are complex, historically situated and socially regulated discursive practices whose mastery requires systematic instruction rather than the spontaneous maturation of language. It examines the acquisition theories of Skinner, Chomsky and Bruner, showing that none of them alone accounts for the learning of complex genres such as academic exposition or debate. It then draws on Wittgenstein's language games, Derrida's logic of the supplement, Bajtin's notion of discursive genre and the communicative competence framework developed by Hymes and Canale to argue that mastering these genres demands explicit pedagogical mediation. Finally, it contends that omitting this instruction reproduces communicative inequalities that strain educational justice, by unevenly distributing the tools needed to participate in the spaces where school and university knowledge is constructed and legitimized, following Habermas's theory of communicative action.
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