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ff, 1990). The phenomenon of politeness was analyzed by the use of maxims by Leech in 1983. The tact maxim: minimize cost to other; maximize benefit to other, helps distinguish requests from offers and influences the way we structure directives. The approbation maxim: minimize dispraise of other; maximize praise of other, influences the way we structure representatives (Peccei, 1999). As for language teaching, the politeness of TT can be very peculiar when investigated combining many contributing factors such as pragmatic distance between teacher and students. 3. Communicative Characteristics and Strategies of Teacher Talk This chapter is the central part of the paper where the communicative characteristics of TT are analyzed from the perspective of discourse analysis. After investigating some important factors in the context of TT, I intend to concentrate on the communicative nature of TT; dominant speech acts used by the teacher; and the features of co-operative principles displayed in TT; The strategies of TT used in language teaching classroom are enquired from the analysis of middle schools’ English teaching classroom. And in what follows, I try to offer a discussion about the peculiarity of politeness in TT. 3.1. Communicative and Non-communicative Nature of Teacher Talk Due to the peculiar context of TT, some part of TT is communicative and some non-communicative. The content language used in TT is non-communicative, including the language of the teaching tasks as prescribed in textbooks: reading them aloud in sentence order or paragraph-wise. The explanatory medium language is also non-communicative, which is used by the teacher to paraphrase words or sentences of texts; to illustrate grammar rules; to provide further information relating to texts. In contrast, the co-ordinative medium language used for class management is communicative when TT stretches to speeches for greetings, question delivery, comments, task switching, discipline regulation, homework, etc. Additionally, Thornbury (1996) proposes that some respects of TT are communicative: (1) using questioning questions when the teacher has the purpose of communicating without knowing the answers to the questions beforehand; (2) delivering feedback judging on content instead of on form; (3) carrying out meaningful negotiation with learners; (4) adjusting, pausing and re-illustrating of TT. Thornbury (1996) suggests that some other respects of TT are non-communicative: (1) using much more displayed questions; (2) delivering feedback focusing on content; (3) repeating learners’ speech to ensure the whole class’s understanding; (4) adopting the continual discoursed pattern, i.e. initiation-response- feedback. 3.2. Institutional Contexts of Teacher Talk 3.2.1. Roles of Teacher Teacher’s role is corresponding with the functions of TT. The role of being an instructor decides on non-communicative function of TT while only communicative function of TT can meet the demand of a teacher’s role as a participant in class interaction. So teacher’s role is another factor in TT's institutional context. In terms of teacher’s role, we all agree with this point that a teacher cannot simply be described as an “instructor” in class, whose major role is to pass on knowledge. There are many other roles a teacher plays such as classroom managers or an activity participant. According to Harmer (1983: 200-204), a language teacher’s potential roles will be: A. As controller o