Cover not available
Part of
Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns
Edited by Kristin Davidse, Caroline Gentens, Lobke Ghesquière and Lieven Vandelanotte
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 63] 2014
► pp. 321–350

The speech functions of tag questions 
and their properties. A comparison of their distribution in COLT and LLC

| KU Leuven
| KU Leuven
ORCID logo | KU Leuven

This article proposes a classification of speech functions of variable tag questions in British English conversations. Based on intonational, conversational and formal criteria the analysis shows that tag questions can not only function as questions and statements, but also as responses, commands and offers. A large group of tag questions cannot be captured by any of the traditional speech functions and are classified instead as Statement-Question blends. The article investigates the impact of the LLC and COLT corpora, and features such as gender, age and social roles, on the distribution of the different speech functions and their properties. The main finding is that all speech functions are present in the two different corpora, albeit with differing relative frequencies.

Published online: 14 November 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.63.21kim
References
Aarts, B
2007 Syntactic Gradience. The Nature of Grammatical Indeterminacy. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Aarts, B. & McMahon, A
2006 The Handbook of English Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Andersen, G
1998 Are tag questions questions? Evidence from spoken data. Paper presented at the 19th ICAME Conference. Belfast, May 1998. [URL] (16 May 2012).
Ashby, W.J
2001 Un nouveau regard sur la chute du ne en français parlé tourangeau: s’Agit-il d’un changement en cours? French Language Studies 11: 1–22.Google Scholar
Axelsson, K
2011 Tag Questions in Fiction Dialogue. PhD dissertation, University of Gothenburg. [URL] (1 January 2012).
Bald, W.-D
1979 English tag questions and intonation. In Anglistentag 1979, K. Schumann (ed.), 263–292. Berlin: Technische Universität.Google Scholar
Baumann, M
1976 Two features of ‘women’s speech’? In The Sociology of Languages of American Women, B.L. Dubois, & I. Crouch (eds), 33–40. San Antonio TX: Trinity University.Google Scholar
Berry, M
1981 Systemic linguistics and discourse analysis: A multi-layered approach to exchange structure. In Studies in Discourse Analysis, M. Coulthard & M. Montgomery (eds), 120–145. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Biber, D. & Conrad, S
2009 Register, Genre and Style. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Calnan, A. & Davidson, M
1998 The impact of gender and its interaction with role and status on the use of tag questions in meetings. Women In Management Review 13: 19–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cameron, D., McAlinden, F. & O’Leary, K
1989 Lakoff in context: The social and linguistic functions of tag questions. In Women in their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex, J. Coates, & D. Cameron (eds), 74–93. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Case, S.S
1988 Cultural differences, not deficiencies: An analysis of managerial women’s language. In Women’s Careers: Pathways and Pitfalls, L. Larwood & S. Rose (eds), 41–63. New York NY: Praeger. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dubois, B.L. & Crouch, I
1975 The question of tag questions in women’s speech: they don’t really use more of them, do they? Language in Society 4: 289–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fishman, P
1980 Conversational insecurity. In Language: Social Psychological Perspectives, H. Giles, P. Robinson & P.M. Smith (eds), 127–132. New York NY: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Ford, C.E
1993 Grammar in Interaction: Adverbial Clauses in American English Conversations. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M.A.K. & Matthiessen, C
2004 An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 3rd edn. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Heritage, J
2012 Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language and Social Interaction 45: 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, J
1984 Hedging your bets and sitting on the fence: Some evidence for hedges as support structures. Te Reo. Journal of the Linguistics Society of New Zealand 27: 47–62.Google Scholar
Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G
2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Kimps, D. & Davidse, K
2008 Illocutionary force and conduciveness in imperative constant polarity tag questions: a typology. Text & Talk 28: 699–722. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kimps, D., Davidse, K. & Cornillie, B
2014 A speech function analysis of Britisch English tag questions in spontaneous dialogue. Journal of Pragmatics 66: 64–85. DOI logo
Labov, W
1972 The study of language in its social context. InLanguage and Social context, P.P. Giglioli (ed.), 283–307. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Labov, W. & Fanshel, D
1977 Therapeutic Discourse: Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York NY: Academic press.Google Scholar
Ladd, R
1981 A first look at the semantics and pragmatics of negative questions and tag questions. Proceedings of Chicago Linguistic Society17: 164–171.Google Scholar
Lakoff, R
1975 Language and Woman’s Place. New York NY: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Lapadat, J. & Seesahai, M
1977 Male versus female codes in informal contexts. Sociolinguistics Newsletter 8: 7–8.Google Scholar
Levinson, S.C
1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Martin, J.R
1992 English Text. System and Structure. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McMillan, J.R., Cliftin, K., McGrath, D. & Gale, W
1977 Women’s language: Uncertainty or interpersonal sensitivity and emotionality. Sex Roles 3: 545–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meyerhoff, M
2006 Routledge Sociolinguistics Reader. Glossary. [URL] (5 July 2013).Google Scholar
Nuyts, J
2001 Epistemic Modality, Language and Conceptualization [Human Cognitive Processing 5]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J
1985 A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Sankoff, G
2006 Age: apparent time and real time. In Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edn, E.K. Brown & A. Anderson (eds). Boston: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Schegloff, E.A
1972 Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In Studies in Social Interaction, D. Sudnow (ed.), 75–119. New York NY: Free Press.Google Scholar
Stenström A.-B. & Andersen, G
1996 More trends in teenage talk: A corpus-based investigation of the discourse items cos and innit . In Synchronic corpus linguistics, C.E. Percy,. C.F. Meyer & I. Lancashire (eds), 177–190. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Stenström, A.-B., Andersen, G. & Hasund, I
2002 Trends in Teenage Talk: Corpus Compilation, Analysis and Findings [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 8]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Svartvik, J
1990 The London Corpus of Spoken English: Description and Research [Lund Studies in English 82]. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Tandberg, A
1996 Innit from a Grammatical and Pragmatic Point of View. MA thesis, University of Bergen.Google Scholar
Verstraete, J.-C
2001 Subjective and objective modality: Interpersonal and ideational functions in the English modal auxiliary system. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 1505–1528. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wagner, S.E
2012 Age grading in sociolinguistic theory. Language and Linguistics Compass 6: 371–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Alsaraireh, Mohammad Yousef, Abdel Rahman Mitib Altakhaineh & Lama Ahmed Khalifah
2023. The use of question tags in Jordanian Arabic by Facebook users. Cogent Arts & Humanities 10:1 DOI logo
Carvalho, Ana M. & Joseph Kern
2019. The permeability of tag questions in a language contact situation. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 29:4 ► pp. 463 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.