Abstract
How do academic instructors use space in their lectures and in classroom environments which may imply a clear phyisical separation between instructors and students? To what extent are instructors' varying positionings in space exploited for pedagogical purposes? Based on such research questions, the paper compares the exploratory analysis of space management in four university lectures held in Italian, German and English and examines a set of examples both for monological speech and dialogic phases. It thus formulates the hypothesis that body movement, position and orientation can be considered as an extra-linguistic set of resources on which instructors' can draw upon, in order to visibly display the organization and development of the lecture on the one hand, and to enhance students' active participation on the other.