The educational rhetoric of empowerment in academic tutoring: The teacher's and student's perspectives

Abstract

The paper discusses the complex issue of language used in individual tutorials in tertiary education. The methodological setting is Critical Discourse Analysis, which allows for the interpretation of language used by teachers as empowering or denigrating students: in both cases language which appeals to their emotions and determines their intellectual and cognitive progress. The assumption of the paper is that the tutorial should be viewed as an exceptional educational context within which the rhetoric of empowerment, viewed as crucial for educational success, can be used. Thus, the concept of an educational rhetoric of empowerment, and the tutorial as a framework for its exemplification and application, as well as some examples of real language used for the description of experiencing learning in a tutorial shall be elaborated on and quoted.