Cover not available
Part of
Tense, Aspect, Modality, and Evidentiality: Crosslinguistic perspectives
Edited by Dalila Ayoun, Agnès Celle and Laure Lansari
[Studies in Language Companion Series 197] 2018
► pp. 213–238

Chapter 10
Questions as indirect speech acts in surprise contexts

| Université Paris Diderot and University of Colorado

This chapter offers an analysis of two types of interrogatives used as indirect speech acts in surprise contexts in English – unresolvable questions and rhetorical questions. The function of these questions is not to request information that is unknown to the speaker. It is argued that surprise-induced unresolvable questions are expressive speech acts devoid of epistemic goals. Surprise-induced rhetorical questions are shown not to suggest an obvious answer, but to request a commitment update from the addressee. Adopting a schema-theoretic approach to surprise, it is shown that unresolvable questions and rhetorical questions can express mirativity, the former at the initial stage of the cognitive processing of unexpectedness, the latter at the last stage.

Keywords: rhetorical questions, conjectural questions, unresolvable questions, commitment, mirativity, surprise, expressivity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The data
  • 3.Unresolvable questions
  • 4.Surprise-induced rhetorical questions
    • 4.1Expectation violation
    • 4.2 Informative answers
    • 4.3 The surprise-induced rhetorical scenario
    • 4.4 Addressee commitment
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Corpus data
  • References
Published online: 2 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.197.10cel
References

Corpus data

Base textuelle FRANTEXT, ATILF - CNRS & Université de Lorraine
Site internet : http://​www​.frantext​.fr. Version décembre 2016. http://​www​.opensubtitles​.org/
Jörg Tiedemann
2009, News from OPUS - A Collection of Multilingual Parallel Corpora with Tools and Interfaces. In N. Nicolov and K. Bontcheva and G. Angelova and R. Mitkov (eds.) Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (vol V), pages 237–248, John Benjamins, Amsterdam/PhiladelphiaGoogle Scholar
Akatsuka, Noriko
1985 Conditionals and the epistemic scale. Language 61(3): 625–639. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alcázar, Asier
2017 A syntactic analysis of rhetorical questions. In Proceedings of the 34th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Aaron Kaplan, Abby Kaplan, Miranda K. McCarvel & Edward J. Rubin (eds), 32–41. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Ameka, Felix
1992 Interjections: The universal yet neglected part of speech. Journal of Pragmatics 18(2): 101–118. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Azzopardi, Sophie & Bres, Jacques
2014 Futur, conditionnel, et effets de sens de conjecture et de rejet en interrogation partielle. SHS Web of Conferences 8: 3003–3013. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beyssade, Claire
& Marandin, Jean-Marie. 2009 Commitment: Une attitude dialogique. Langue Française 162: 89–107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourova, Viara & Dendale, Patrick
2013 Serait-ce un conditionnel de conjecture? Datation, évolution et mise en relation des deux conditionnels à valeur évidentielle. Cahiers Chronos 26: 183–200.Google Scholar
Caponigro, Ivano & Sprouse, Jon
2007 Rhetorical questions as questions. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 11, E. Puig-Waldmüller (ed.), 121–133. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra.Google Scholar
Carroll, James M. & Russell, James A.
1997 Facial expressions in Hollywood’s portrayal of emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72: 164–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Celle, Agnès
2007 Analyse unifiée du conditionnel de non prise en charge en français et comparaison avec l’anglais. Cahiers Chronos, Etudes Sémantiques et Pragmatiques sur le Temps, l’Aspect et la Modalité 19: 43–61.Google Scholar
2009 Question, mise en question: la traduction de l’interrogation dans le discours théorique. Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée XIV(1): 39–52.Google Scholar
2018 Epistemic evaluation in factual contexts in English. In Epistemic Modality and Evidentiality in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective, Zlatka Guentchéva (ed.). 22–51 Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Celle, Agnès & Lansari, Laure
2014 Uncertainty as a result of unexpectedness. Language and Dialogue 4(1) 7–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 On the mirative meaning of aller + infinitive compared with its equivalents in English. Cahiers Chronos, Taming the TAME Systems 27: 289–305. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Celle, Agnès
, & Lansari, Laure 2016 L’inattendu et le questionnement dans l’interaction verbale en anglais: Les questions en why-would et leurs réponses. In Représentations du sens linguistique: Les interfaces de la complexité, Olga Galatanu, Ana-Maria Cozma & Abdelhadi Bellachhab (eds), 235–248. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Celle, Agnès, Jugnet, Anne, Lansari, Laure & L’Hôte, Emilie
2017 Expressing and describing surprise. In Expressing and Describing Surprise [Benjamins Current Topics 92], Agnès Celle & Laure Lansari (eds), 215–244. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Celle, Agnès, Jugnet, Anne, Lansari, Laure & Peterson, Tyler
Forthcoming. Interrogatives in surprise contexts in English. In Surprise at the Intersection of Phenomenology and Linguistics, Natalie Depraz & Agnès Celle eds Amsterdam John Benjamins
Darwin, Charles
1965 The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
DeLancey, Scott
2001 The mirative and evidentiality. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 369–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dendale, Patrick
2010 Il serait à Paris en ce moment. Serait-il à Paris? A propos de deux emplois épistémiques du conditionnel: Grammaire, syntaxe, sémantique. In Liens linguistiques. Études sur la combinatoire et la hiérarchie des composants, Castro Camino Alvarez, Flor Marίa Bango de la Campa & Marίa Luisa Donaire (eds), 291–317. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
den Dikken, Marcel & Giannakidou, Anastasia
2002 From hell to polarity: “Aggressively non-D-linked” wh-phrases as polarity items. Linguistic Inquiry 33(1): 31–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Desmets, Marianne & Gautier, Antoine
2009 “Comment n’y ai-je pas songé plus tôt ?” Questions rhétoriques en comment . Travaux de Linguistique 58: 107–125. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diller, Anne-Marie
1977 Le conditionnel, marqueur de dérivation illocutoire. Semantikos 2: 1–17.Google Scholar
DuBois, John
2007 The stance triangle. In Stancetaking in Discourse [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 164], Robert Englebretson (ed.), 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Charles
1985 Syntactic intrusions and the notion of grammatical construction. In Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 73–86. Berkeley CA: BLS.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, Jonathan
2012 The Interactive Stance: Meaning for conversation. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guentchéva, Zlatka
2017 An enunciative account of admirativity in Bulgarian. Special issue The Linguistic Expression of Mirativity. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 15(2): 539–574.Google Scholar
Gunlogson, Christine A.
2001 True to Form. Rising and Falling Declarative as Questions in English. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey
2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haillet, Pierre-Patrick
2001 A propos de l’interrogation totale directe au conditionnel. In Le conditionnel en français, Patrick Dendale & Liliane Tasmowski (eds.), 295–330. Paris: Klinksieck.Google Scholar
Hoeksema, Jack & Napoli, Donna Jo
2008 Just for the hell of it: A comparison of two taboo-term constructions. Journal of Linguistics 44: 347–378. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jörg Tiedemann
2009, News from OPUS - A Collection of Multilingual Parallel Corpora with Tools and Interfaces. In N. Nicolov and K. Bontcheva and G. Angelova and R. Mitkov (eds.) Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (vol V), pages 237–248, John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphiahttp://​www​.opensubtitles​.org/Google Scholar
Kay, Paul
, & Fillmore, Charles 1999 Constructions and linguistic generalizations: The what’s X doing Y? construction. Language 75(1): 1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Korotkova, Natalia
2016 Heterogeneity and Uniformity in the Evidential Domain. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Littell, Patrick, Matthewson, Lisa & Peterson, Tyler
2010 On the semantics of conjectural questions. In Evidence from Evidentials, Tyler Peterson & Uli Sauerland (eds), 89–104. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Working Papers in Linguistics (UBCWPL).Google Scholar
Meyer, Wulf Uwe, Reisenzein, Rainer & Schützwohl, Achim
1997 Toward a process analysis of emotions: the Case of Surprise. Motivation and Emotion 21(3): 251–274. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miceli, Maria & Castelfranchi, Cristiano
2015 Expectancy and Emotion. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Michaelis, Laura & Feng, Hanbing
2015 What is this, sarcastic syntax? Constructions and Frames 7(2): 148–180.Google Scholar
Michaelis, Laura & Knud, Lambrecht
1996 The exclamative sentence type in English. In Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Structure, Adele Goldberg (ed.), 375–389. Stanford CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Mihas, Elena
2014 Expression of information source meanings in Ashéninka Perené (Arawak). In The Grammar of Knowledge, A Cross-Linguistic Typology, Alexandra Aikhenvald, Robert Dixon & Malcolm Ward (eds), 209–226 Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ortony, Andrew, Clore, Gerald L. & Collins, Allan
1988 The Cognitive Structure of Emotions. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pesetsky, David
1987 Wh-in-Situ: Movement and unselective binding. In The Representation of (in)Definiteness, Eric Reuland & Alice ter Meulen (eds), 98–129. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Peterson, Tyler
2017 Grammatical evidentiality and the unprepared mind. In Expressing and Describing Surprise [Benjamins Current Topics 92], Celle Agnès & Laure Lansari (eds), 51–89. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pinker, Steven
2007 The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. New York NY: Penguin.Google Scholar
Potts, Christopher
2005 The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
2007 The expressive dimension. Theoretical Linguistics 33(2): 165–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reese, Brian
2007 Bias in Questions. PhD dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
Reisenzein, Rainer
2000 Exploring the strength of association between the components of emotion syndromes: The case of surprise. Cognition and Emotion 14(1): 1–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rett, Jessica & Murray, Sarah
2013 A semantic account of mirative evidentials. In Proceedings of SALT 23. Proceedings of the 23rd Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, May 3–5, 2013, Todd Snider (ed.), 453–472. https://​journals​.linguisticsociety​.org​/proceedings​/index​.php​/SALT​/issue​/view​/85
Rocci, Andrea
2007 Epistemic modality and questions in dialogue. The case of Italian interrogative constructions in the subjunctive mood. In Tense, Mood and Aspect: Theoretical and descriptive issues, Louis de Saussure, Jacques Moeschler & Genoveva Puskas (eds), 129–153. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Rohde, Hannah
2006 Rhetorical questions as redundant interrogatives. San Diego Linguistics Papers, Vol. 2, 134–168. San Diego CA: University of California.Google Scholar
San Roque, Lila, Floyd, Simeon & Norcliffe, Elisabeth
2017 Evidentiality and interrogativity. Lingua 186–187: 120–143.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Scherer, Klaus, Clark-Polner, Elizabeth, Mortillaro, Marcello
2011 In the eye of the beholder? Universality and cultural specificity in the expression and perception of emotion. International Journal of Psychology 46(6): 401–435. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siemund, Peter
2017 Interrogative clauses in English and the social economics of questions. Journal of Pragmatics 199: 15–32.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stein, Nancy L. & Hernandez, Marc W.
2007 Assessing understanding and appraisals during emotional experience. In Handbook of Emotion Elicitation and Assessment, James A. Coan & John J. B. Allen (eds), 298–317. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya
2010 An overview of the question-response system in American English conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 42(10): 2620–2626. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tutin, Agnès
2017 Surprise routines in scientific writing: a study of French social science articles. In Expressing and Describing Surprise [Benjamins Current Topics 92], Agnès Celle & Laure Lansari (eds), 153–172. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Dijk, Wilco W. & Zeelenberg, Marcel
2002 What do we talk about when we talk about disappointment? Distinguishing outcome-related disappointment from person-related disappointment. Cognition and Emotion 16(6): 787–807. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vingerhoets, Ad, Bylsma, Lauren & De Vlam, Cornelis
2013 Swearing: A biopsychosocial perspective. Psychological Topics 22 (2013), 2, 287–304.Google Scholar
Zaefferer, Dietmar
2001 Deconstructing a classical classification: A typological look at Searle’s concept of illocution type. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 2(216): 209–225.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 5 other publications

Celle, Agnès, Anne Jugnet, Laure Lansari & Tyler Peterson
2019. Chapter 7. Interrogatives in surprise contexts in English. In Surprise at the Intersection of Phenomenology and Linguistics [Consciousness & Emotion Book Series, 11], ► pp. 118 ff. DOI logo
Celle, Agnès & Maud Pélissier
2022. Surprise questions in spoken French. Linguistics Vanguard 8:s2 ► pp. 287 ff. DOI logo
Depraz, Natalie & Agnès Celle
2019. Introduction. In Surprise at the Intersection of Phenomenology and Linguistics [Consciousness & Emotion Book Series, 11], ► pp. 2 ff. DOI logo
Rodríguez Rosique, Susana
2023. Time after time. In Verb and Context [IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature, 34], ► pp. 263 ff. DOI logo
Trotzke, Andreas & Anna Czypionka
2022. The pragmatics of surprise-disapproval questions: An empirical study. Linguistics Vanguard 8:s2 ► pp. 239 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 march 2023. 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.