Softening Without Sharing: Teachers’ Speech Acts, Interactional Space and Learner Engagement in Indonesian EFL Classrooms Under the Merdeka Curriculum

Abstract

Across Asia and the wider Global South, curriculum reforms have asked English teachers to replace teacher-centred instruction with student-centred and dialogic learning, yet research has rarely examined how such reforms are realised in classroom talk. Indonesia’s Merdeka Curriculum, so far studied mainly through perceptions and policy documents, is a timely case. This study examines the speech acts English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers perform, the pragmatic strategies through which they realise them, and the consequences of these choices for learner participation. Nine audio-recorded lessons taught by three EFL teachers in schools implementing the curriculum in Bantaeng Regency, South Sulawesi, were analysed by coding each teacher utterance for speech act type and politeness strategy and each following learner turn for the kind of response it contained. Directives made up nearly half of teacher talk, followed by expressives and representatives, while commissives and declarations were rare. The teachers consistently softened their authority through indirect requests, praise, humour and inclusive language. They seldom, however, handed interactional control to learners: open questions were closed by praise, learners’ questions were answered by the teacher rather than returned to the class, and roles and rewards were decided by the teacher. I conceptualise this pattern as softening without sharing and propose a framework that separates relational mitigation from the redistribution of interactional rights. The study shows that reform can change the tone of classrooms before it changes who takes part, with implications for teacher education and curriculum monitoring.