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Abstract In the1960s and1970s ,linguists and educationalists in the West started doing research into the typology and functions of the language of teaching ,or teacher discourse .An abundance of literature was published which discussed how the linguistic forms of teacher discourse are related to the instructional context ,content ,goals and outcomes ,as well as to their influence on the participants of the teaching process and their relationship with other discourses in educational institutions .While the structural ,social and cognitive features of teacher discourse have been extensively discussed ,there has been scant research into the effect of pedagogical discourse on the learner's attitude towards the cognitive goal ,and even less into the learner's affective identification with the subject they are taught .The aimof studying a subject is not just acquisition of the ability to recognize and represent knowledge;more importantly ,it is the development of an appropriate attitude towards the subject and an application of the attitude to subject-related activities ,i .e .,a permanent change in attitude .While linguistic and educational circles in China have in recent years shown a growing tendency to give more prominence to the cultivation of the affective goal ,the lack of research into teacher discourse has been a hindrance to the practice and realization of the goal . Instructional discourse functions not merely to decode and communicate knowledge ,it also transmits cognitive affect .In this paper ,the immediacy construct of instructional discourse is advanced to analyze the mechanism inherent in discourse by which knowledge is transmitted and the immediacy features that characterize instructional discourse .The theoretical frameworks of conversation analysis and of the appraisal theory of systemic functional linguistics are applied to reveal the de-authoritarian ,contextualized ,dynamic and affect-generating features of immediate instructional discourse ,highlighting the dialogic ,participatory and affective aspects of knowledge . Anti-immediacy forms of discourse include specialized symbolic codes and claims of uniqueness and certainty which build the authority and hierarchy of knowledge .Interactive conversation analysis shows that in discourse sequences ,teachers continuously make use of metaphors of affect to maintain and renew their immediacy discourse ,bringing a cumulative effect to overall immediacy .It seems that to a large extent ,the interactive forms of instructional discourse influence a learner's affect for and value judgment of the knowledge being taught .It is therefore necessary to take knowledge immediacy as a key proposition and take the teachers'actual discourse practices as important contexts for affect cultivation when considering the discoursal composition of knowledge immediacy .This discussion is expected to be highly relevant for practical instructional discourse .The paper ends with an empirical study of a classroom case from the perspective of immediate instructional discourse .
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2012, Vol. 42 
