Lecturer Talk and Power Relations in EFL University Classrooms: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Lecturer talk plays a central role in university EFL classrooms, not only in organizing learning but also in shaping participation and power relations through everyday interaction. This study aimed to investigate how power relations are constructed and negotiated through lecturer talk in EFL university classroom interaction. Employing a qualitative Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) design, the study examined naturally occurring classroom discourse involving two lecturers in an English Education (Tadris Bahasa Inggris) program at a private higher education institution in Jambi, Indonesia. Data were generated through repeated non-participant classroom observations, audio recordings, and field notes across three to five sessions for each lecturer, producing approximately 15–20 hours of classroom discourse. The analysis was guided primarily by Fairclough’s three-dimensional CDA framework, with Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge used as a complementary interpretive perspective. The findings revealed four recurrent and interconnected patterns: directive authority and modality, epistemic authority and evaluative positioning, interactional dominance and turn control, and solidarity strategies and mitigated power. Lecturer authority was enacted through directives, modality, evaluation, reformulation, turn management, and interactional control, while inclusive pronouns, collaborative expressions, and humor mitigated interpersonal distance without eliminating institutional asymmetry. The study concludes that lecturer authority in higher education EFL discourse is multidimensional and relationally adjustable, operating across pedagogical, epistemic, interactional, and relational dimensions. These findings contribute to CDA and classroom discourse research by demonstrating how institutional authority can be simultaneously maintained, negotiated, and mitigated through interconnected discourse practices.