Inner and outer 165part move structure of Teacher Initiation, Student Response, Teacher Follow-
up. A further Boundary move (3) is followed by a Teacher Directive exchange
(4) —an Initiation followed by a non-verbal Responding move as the students
find the words by the picture.
At this point, (6), Socoop is asked to make the question, and the teacher
gives him the cue words, quoted from beside the picture in the book; these
cue words are an example of an utterance on the Inner level. After checking
he has the right picture in (7) which is a Student Elicit, on the Outer, as it
is a real question, Socoop finally responds to the teacher’s Directive and
forms the question—back again to the Inner.
The teacher’s Follow-up ‘That’s right’ is Outer again, but then she re-
initiates, (11), correcting him, by going into the Inner, repeating the sentence,
laying emphasis on the target word, ‘the’. He replies on the Inner, inserting
the ‘the’, and the teacher shows her acceptance with a Follow-up ‘Yes’ on
the Outer.
Notice how, in (11), we have on the Inner level, as a Responding move,
a form of words that looks like a question, which would usually be an
Initiation, but which in fact acts as an answer. Normally, if a question is
asked, in class, an answer is expected. This is certainly the case with any
Initiating move on the Outer. The question here, though, in its position on
the Inner, does not predict an answer; we merely expect the teacher to
evaluate it as a form of words. This is one of the ways we can recognize
and distinguish the Inner structure. The question that Socoop forms has no
propositional content; and it is only interactive in that Socoop has complied
with the teacher’s directive to form a question using those words. The
teacher’s Follow-up, ‘That’s right’ —when in fact the question is wrongly
formed—can only be explained by understanding ‘Yes, you’ve responded
correctly by making a question, you have carried out my directive.’ Her Re-
Initiation beginning, ‘Only when did Fred join the army’ tells him there is
something wrong after all, but that his mistake is an Inner mistake. He
complies with her directive to say it again, and she completes the exchange
with a ‘Yes’ as Follow-up.
Note that if you read down the Inner column, the utterances on the Inner
do not form any coherent discourse on their own. They are only interactive
in so far as they are related to the rest of the exchange on the Outer. They
are completely dependent on the moves on the Outer for their existence.
The Outer, on the other hand, can and does exist on its own, as we see from
the first four exchanges in this lesson.
If you look at the exchanges which go from Outer to Inner, there is a
very definite lack of propositional coherence. In real life, if someone says
to you ‘Look at the question by the picture’, you can answer in a variety
of ways: ‘Yes, but why?’ or ‘Wow! I didn’t realize it was like that’ or ‘No,
I can’t do that one either’, but it would be very difficult to think of a
situation where you would answer ‘When did Fred join the army?’ and hear
the other person replying That’s right’. In other words, the only way to