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This study seeks to identify the dynamics of emotional relationships during counselling interviews in self-directed language learning. Counsellors’ and learners’ emotional states are inferred from tone of voice following analysis of audio recordings of their exchanges. Emotions expressed in every turn are characterized on valence and activation scales, and emotional relationships synthesized in a typology. Most of the observed emotional fluctuations are learner-initiated, and results suggest that counsellors regulate emotions in order to maintain an emotional climate, which is argued to favour self-directed learning tasks.

Adopting a feminist perspective, this exploratory and empirically based study of face-to-face advising dialogue will put into question two related aspects of advising that have seldom been discussed in the literature on advising: the gendered dimension and the psychological support. Based on the general and rarely discussed assumption that women’s speech is more emotional and best suited for establishing and maintaining more equal relationships than men’s speech, and on the fact that many language learning advisors in the world are women, this study examines the ways in which female and male advisors working in different educational contexts verbally establish a relationship where a learner’s autonomy can emerge. The preliminary results suggest that psychological support is provided through a wide range of verbal strategies and that gender seems less significant than work context to explain individual differences.