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ABSTRACT. This article investigates tutor dominance in academic writing tutorials within the framework of institutional discourse. Tutor gender and tutee gender and language proficiency, as well as the interaction of the three, are considered as exponents of interactant dominance. Pragmatic measures of tutor dominance selected are frequency of directives, directive type, and mitigation strategies. Analysis indicates that these features of tutors' speech remain relatively constant in interactions with male and female tutees or with native and nonnative speakers of English. These results suggest that institutional context outweighs gender and language proficiency in the definition of participant roles and the sanctioning of tutor dominance behaviors.

From abstract: ncludes recommendations for "tutor preparation and in-service training" that "emphasize less idealized, more pragmatic conceptualization of tutor roles and actions and focus on behaviors demonstrated as constitutive of success"

Beth Carroll - Pragmatist philosophy puts writing center theory into action.