Elaborating Explanations During OpenCourseWare Humanities Lectures: The Interplay of Verbal and Nonverbal Strategies
Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli · 2015
In instructional contexts, academics are called upon to explain theories and concepts, as well as their own thoughts and opinions as experts in their particular fi eld. Explanation is therefore a crucial component of the learning process where language is used to transmit information in a way that enables novices to comprehend. According to the Merriam-Webster online concise encyclopedia, explanations are a “set of statements that makes intelligible the existence or occurrence of an object, event, or state of affairs.” 1 From a linguistic perspective, explanations are complex phenomena that may take the form of defi nition, exemplifi cation, reformulation, and argumentation (e.g., discursive patterns based on a claim followed by a justifi cation, or cause and effect sequences). These discourse functions may also be combined to produce elaborate explanatory passages. With particular reference to the argumentative dimension of explanations, Weimer (1977, p. 5) affi rms that “explanation is inherently a matter of argument.” A typical argumentative pattern is seen in what von Wright (1971) characterizes as causal explanation . Here the relationship between two events is explained in terms of the second event being a consequence, result or effect of the fi rst. 2 Causal explanations are encoded on a linguistic level by lexical items such as because, so, in order to, as a result and the reason why . Sbisa (1987) mentions other types of linguistic markers associated with explanation, including items such as namely, that is and for example, which are used to elaborate and exemplify propositional content. The explanatory role of such items, also called code glosses by Hyland (2005), is evident in their metadiscursive function through which writers and speakers interact with readers or listeners in order to clarify intended meanings and guide comprehension. Explanations have also been studied in terms of speech act theory (Sbisa, 1987, p. 11), where the verb explain could be interpreted as a performative verb used to “metacommunicatively present a speech act” that will then be uttered by the speaker, e.g., now I will explain it . Thus, we seethat explanation is a multifaceted feature of discourse that may manifest itself in numerous ways and can be investigated from diverse theoretical and analytical perspectives.