Part of
Questioning and Answering Practices across Contexts and CulturesEdited by Cornelia Ilie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 323] 2021
► pp. 227–254
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
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
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