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Pragmatics: Online-First Articles

Polar answers

Accepting proposals in Greek telephone calls

| Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
| Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

The purpose of this paper is to examine the forms and functions of answers to proposals for joint action, implemented through polar interrogatives, in Greek telephone calls. Our analysis indicates a distinct functional distribution of three types of accepting answers to such proposals. Particle-type answers do ‘simple’ acceptance of the proposal, i.e. they only display the respondent’s willingness to take on the proposed action and nothing else, while repetition-type answers display the speaker’s epistemic/deontic stance towards additional aspects of the proposal. With a third type of responses, speakers accept the proposal in a mitigated manner. Our findings align with Enfield et al.’s (2019) conclusion that particles serve as pragmatically unmarked polar answers. They do not, however, evince the prevalence of this type of answer to proposals to the same extent as to epistemically oriented polar interrogatives.

Keywords: proposals, polar interrogatives, answers, particles, repetition, Greek, conversation analysis, telephone calls
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Polar answers
  • 2.On ‘proposals’ and their answers
  • 3.The present study
    • 3.1Theoretical delineations
    • 3.2Polar interrogatives in Greek
    • 3.3Data
  • 4.Coding categories and distribution
    • 4.1Linguistic formats of polar interrogatives for proposals for joint action
    • 4.2Types of responses
    • 4.3Distributional information
  • 5.Analysis of answers to proposals for joint action
    • 5.1Particle-type answers
    • 5.2Repetition-type answers
    • 5.3Other-type answers
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 25 May 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.22020.pav
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