Cover not available
Part of
Questioning and Answering Practices across Contexts and Cultures
Edited by Cornelia Ilie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 323] 2021
► pp. 227–254

Devices of alignment

Suoyi- and danshi-prefaced questions in Mandarin Chinese TV news interviews

ORCID logo | Shenzhen University, China
The Mandarin resultative connective suoyi ‘so’ and adversative connective dan(shi) ‘but’ are found to preface interviewer (IR) questions regularly in Chinese TV news interviews. This study draws on a conversational analysis (CA)-oriented micro-analytical approach and examines the form, placement and function of the two connective-prefaced questions. The findings show that IRs employ, on the one hand, a turn-initial suoyi to preface a declarative, alone or followed by a question tag that invokes a prior interviewee (IE) opinion, and, on the other, a turn-initial dan(shi) to preface either a wh-question or a yes/no question and bring forth a point of contrast and transition for questioning. Both questions not only encode IRs’ epistemic stance, but also display their alignment to IEs’ prior talk in different ways.
Keywords: question design, connective, interaction, conversation analysis, Chinese TV news interview
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1CA studies on QA organization and question design in news interviews
    • 2.2CA studies on connectives and connective-prefaced questions
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1IR questions prefaced by suoyi
    • 4.2IR questions prefaced by dan(shi)
  • 5.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 26 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.323.08gao
References (45)
References
Bolden, Galina B. 2006. “Little Words that Matter: Discourse Markers “So” and “Oh” and the Doing of Other-attentiveness in Social Interaction.” Journal of Communication 56: 661–688. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008. “‘So What’s Up?’: Using the Discourse Marker So to Launch Conversational Business.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (3): 302–337. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010. “‘Articulating the Unsaid’ via And-prefaced Formulations of Others’ Talk.” Discourse Studies 12 (1): 5–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven E. 1992. “Footing in the Achievement of Neutrality: the Case of News-interview Discourse.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 163–198. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2010. “Questions in Broadcast Journalism.” In Why Do You Ask? ed. by Alice Freed, and Susan Ehrlich, 256–278. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clayman, Steven E., and John Heritage. 2002. The News Interview: Journalists and Public Figures on the Air. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven E., Marc N. Elliott, John Heritage, and Laurie L. McDonald. 2006. “Historical Trends in Questioning Presidents 1953–2000.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 36 (4): 561–583. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, and Margaret Selting. 2018. Interactional Linguistics: An Introduction to Language in Social Interaction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Emmertsen, Sofie. 2007. “Interviewers’ Challenging Questions in British Debate Interviews.” Journal of Pragmatics 39 (3): 570–591. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fang, Mei. 2000. “Ziran kouyu zhong ruohua lianci de huayu biaoji gongneng [Reduced conjunctions as discourse markers in natural conversations].” Chinese Language 278: 459–470.Google Scholar
Freed, Alice, and Susan Ehrlich. 2010. Why Do You Ask? New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gao, Hua. 2005. “Hanyu zhong de chenshu yiwenju [On Chinese declarative questions].” In New Explorations in Chinese Grammatical Research (Vol. 2), ed. by Jingmin Shao, and Kang Kwong Luke, 307–328. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Education Press.Google Scholar
Guthrie, Anna M. 1997. “On the Systematic Deployment of Okay and Mmhmm in the Academic Advising Sessions.” Pragmatics 7 (3): 397–415. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John. 1984. “A Change-of-state Token and Aspects of its Sequential Placement.” In Structures of Social Action, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1985. “Analyzing News Interviews: Aspects of the Production of Talk for an Overhearing Audience. In Handbook of Discourse Analysis (Vol. 3): Discourse and Dialogue, ed. by Teun A. van Dijk, 95–117. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
. 2002. “Ad Hoc Inquiries: Two Preferences in the Design of Routine Questions in an Open Context.” In Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey Interview, ed. by Douglas W. Maynard, Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra, Nora C. Schaeffer, and Johannes van de Zouwen, 313–333. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.Google Scholar
. 2003. “Designing Questions and Setting Agendas in the News Interview.” In Studies in Language and Social Interaction: In Honor of Robert Hopper, ed. by Jennifer Mandelbaum, Phillip J. Glenn, and Curtis D. LeBaron, 57–90. London, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
. 2010. “Questioning in Medicine.” In Why Do You Ask? ed. by Alice Freed, and Susan Enrlich, 20–41. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45: 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “Turn-initial Position and Some of its Occupants.” Journal of Pragmatics 57: 331–337. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. “Turn-initial Particles in English: The Cases of Oh and Well. [URL]
Heritage, John, and David Greatbatch. 1991. “On the Institutional Character of Institutional Talk: The Case of News Interviews.” In Talk and Social Structureu: Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, ed. by Deirdre Boden and Don H. Zimmerman, 93–137. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, John, and Andrew L. Roth. 1995. “Grammar and Institution: Question and Questioning in the Broadcast News Interview.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 28 (1): 1–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John, and Marja-Leena Sorjonen. 1994. “Constituting and Maintaining Activities across Sequences: And-prefacing as a Feature of Question Design.” Language in Society 23: 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ilie, Cornelia. 1999. “Question-response Argumentation in Talk Shows.” Journal of Pragmatics 31 (8): 975–999. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. “Questions and Questioning.” In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, ed. by Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie, and Todd Sandel, 1257–1271. Boston: John Wiley and Sons. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. “Questioning the Questionable: Arguments and Counter-arguments in Political Accountability Interviews.” In Argumentation across Communities of Practice: Multi-disciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Cornelia Ilie, and Giuliana Garzone, 73–98. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo. 2019. “Grammatical Constructions and Chinese Discourse.” In The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Discourse Analysis, ed. by Chris Shei, 102–115. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, A. 2002. “So…?: Pragmatic Implications of So-prefaced Questions in Formal Police Interviews.” In Language in the Legal Process, ed. by Janet Cotterill, 91–110. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William, and David Fanshel. 1977. Therapeutic Discourse: Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Li, Charles N., and Sandra A. Thompson. 1981. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Los Angeles and Berkeley: UC Press.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Kazuko. 1999. “And-prefaced Questions in Institutional Discourse.” Linguistics 37 (2): 251–274. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mazeland, Harrie, and Mike Huiskes. 2001. “Dutch ‘But’ as a Sequential Conjunction: its Use as a Resumption Marker.” In Studies in Interactional Lingustics, ed. by Margaret Selting, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 141–169. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, Martin. 2011. “The Accountability Interview, Politics, and Change in UK Public Service Broadcasting.” In Talking Politics in Broadcast Media, ed. by Mats Ekström, and Marianna Patrona, 33–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nevile, Maurice. 2006. “Making Sequentiality Salient: And-prefacing in the Talk of Airline Pilots.” Discourse Studies 8 (2): 279–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey. 2003. “Grammar and Social Organization: Yes/No Interrogatives and the Structure of Responding.” American Sociological Review 68: 939–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1982. “Discourse as an Interactional Achievement: Some Uses of “Uh huh” and Other Things that Come between Sentences. In Analyzing Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 71–93. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
1984. “On Some Questions and Ambiguities in Conversation.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversational Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and Paul Drew, 28–52. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis I. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, and Makoto Hayashi. 2010. “Transformative Answers: One Way to Resist a Question’s Constraints.” Language in Society 39: 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tao, Hongyin, and Sandra A. Thompson. 1994. “The Discourse and Grammar Interface: Preferred Clause Structure in Mandarin Conversation.” Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association 29 (3): 1–34.Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun. A. 1979. “Pragmatic Connectives.” Journal of Pragmatcs 3: 447–456. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wang, Chueh-chen, and Lillian M. Huang. 2006. “Grammaticalization of Connectives in Mandarin Chinese: A Corpus-based Study.” Language and Linguistics 7 (4): 991–1016.Google Scholar
Wooffitt, Robin. 2005. “Conversation Analysis and Power.” In Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis: A Comparative and Critical Introduction, ed. by Robin Wooffitt, 137–157. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar