Teachers, Discourses, and Authority in the Postmodern Composition Classroom

This book is a sophisticated analysis of the teachers role and authority in postmodern academic settings. Xin Liu Gale argues that the teachers authority is inevitable and indispensable in effective teaching, and that, furthermore, it is necessary for symbolic imposition. The author insists that teachers and scholars should explore how the teachers authority functions in the pedagogic context and how it can help students develop critical literacy.Influenced by the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieu, JeanClaude Passeron, Paulo Freire, Richard Rorty, and various poststructuralist theorists, Gale investigates the complex relationships among the teachers and the institutions authority, the teachers discourse(s) and social and pedagogic roles, and students discourse(s) and diverse backgrounds. She then proposes a twolevel interactional model of teaching that is based on a new discourse relationship characterized by the edifying role of the teacher.