In an earlier article (The Aborignal Child at School, Vol.7, No.3, 1979) I explored the idea that we, as teachers, may transmit our attitudes and expectations to our pupils through our accommodating and non-accommodating moves towards them. I suggested that we might observe such moves if we monitored our language behaviour against our intentions, as these are modified by our beliefs and attitudes, and by the on-going interaction. I proposed a model to help us explore the motives underlying our own accommodating and non-accommodating behaviours; to help us explore how these motives affect the kinds and extent of shifts we make; and to help us explore the effects of these shifts on the whole class or on groups of individuals within the class. I indicated that the aim of such exploration would be to sensitize us to the extent to which our language behaviour signals, both overtly and covertly, our own attitudes and expectations to our pupils.

I would now like to look more closely at some of the items in the tentative list of ‘measures’ of accommodation that I detailed in that earlier article. In particular, I would like to look at questions in the classroom; at how teachers organize talk and use talk for organizing; and at joking in the classroom.