Adjacency Pairs, Gender, and Institutional Power in Master's Oral Examinations at Tikrit University/Iraq

Abstract

Oral examinations are institutionally asymmetrical encounters in which examiners possess particular rights to question, evaluate, direct, and challenge candidates. This study examines how adjacency-pair sequences contribute to the enactment of institutional power in examiners’ oral feedback, with particular attention to examiner gender. Data were drawn from six video-recorded Master’s viva voce examinations conducted at the Department of English, Tikrit University, Iraq, involving six candidates and 16 examiners. The study employed a qualitative discourse-analytic design combining an adjacency-pair framework adapted from Paltridge (2012) with Fairclough’s (2013) three-dimensional approach to Critical Discourse Analysis. Five recurrent patterns were identified: question–answer, directive–response, assessment/critique–response, request/advice–response, and compliment–acknowledgement. Examiner-initiated sequences established interactional expectations for candidates to answer, justify, clarify, acknowledge, or undertake corrective action, making institutional asymmetry sequentially observable. The gender-grouped analysis revealed qualitative differences in the relative prominence of particular patterns: question–answer sequences were more prominent in female-examiner discourse, whereas directive–response sequences were more prominent in male-examiner discourse. However, both groups employed direct and mitigated forms of authority. The findings suggest that gender intersects with the discursive realisation of institutional power rather than determining examiner authority itself.