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Yasmine Soheim, The American University in Cairo, EgyptAbstract
Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) are widely used in higher education to assess teaching effectiveness, yet the rich qualitative feedback within them remains underexplored—particularly in cross-cultural and sociopragmatic contexts. This study examines how undergraduate students at the department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo use language to evaluate instructors, focusing on how praise and criticism are linguistically constructed in written SET comments. Grounded in Appraisal Theory, Politeness Theory, Cross-Cultural Pragmatics, and Biber’s Stance Analysis, the research explores how students manage face-threatening acts and position themselves in relation to authority figures. Using a qualitative methodology, the study analyzes written comments from six semesters of SETs collected from eight instructors in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition, alongside semi-structured interviews with faculty and students. Key features examined include expressions of affect, judgment, appreciation, stance markers, engagement strategies, and linguistic intensification. Preliminary findings indicate that SET discourse is overwhelmingly positive, with students frequently using direct and intensified language to convey praise while softening or depersonalizing criticism. Cultural norms, particularly those aligned with collectivist values in the Egyptian context, influence students’ preference for effusive praise and indirect critique. Gender-based patterns also emerge, with male instructors receiving more personal and emotive language, while feedback for female instructors tends to be more formal and professional. This study offers insights into the sociopragmatic dimensions of student feedback and underscores the importance of attending to language patterns when interpreting SETs. Findings aim to inform more equitable evaluation practices and improve the design and use of feedback mechanisms in higher education.
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Conference: PCE2025Stream: Foreign Languages Education & Applied Linguistics (including ESL/TESL/TEFL)
This paper is part of the PCE2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Soheim Y. (2025) Voices of Value: A Sociopragmatic Analysis of Discourse Patterns in Student Evaluations of Teaching ISSN: 2758-0962 The Paris Conference on Education 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 541-551) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0962.2025.41
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2758-0962.2025.41
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