Cover not available
Part of
Responding to Polar Questions across Languages and Contexts
Edited by Galina B. Bolden, John Heritage and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 35] 2023
► pp. 76–108

Chapter 3
Responding to polar questions in Brazilian Portuguese

É-responses and repeats

| University of Helsinki
| Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul | National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

This paper explores the division of labor between particle and repetitional responses to polar questions in Brazilian Portuguese. We examine a response form that occurs both as a particle and as a verb repeat – the é-response – and compare its uses to repeat responses consisting of elements other than é. Freestanding and expanded responses are analyzed to gather evidence of the participants’ orientations to the epistemic and action commitments that the initial polar responses convey. The analyses indicate that é-responses (both particle and repeat) sufficiently confirm previously established information, for instance, in response to understanding checks. In contrast, when responding to requests for confirmation about a new matter, é responses only weakly confirm the proposition in the question, indicating that it might not be true, or treat it as ancillary. Importantly, é-responses do not affirm genuinely new information but instead suggest a lack of commitment to affirming the proposition. In order to provide a committed confirmation or affirmation, minimal repetitional responses other than é are used. The study thus sheds further light on é-responses in different sequential and action environments and on the role of repetitional responses in Brazilian Portuguese, including a discussion in relation to findings from other languages.

Keywords: affirmation, Brazilian Portuguese, commitment, confirmation, conversation analysis, é-response, expansion, particle, repeat
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Polar questions and responses in Brazilian Portuguese
    • 2.1Question design
    • 2.2Response variants
  • 3.The corpus
  • 4.É-responses
    • 4.1É-particle as a freestanding response: Confirming already addressed matters
    • 4.2É-particle response expanded: Weak commitment
    • 4.3É-particle and moving on: Treating the matter as ancillary
    • 4.4É-repeat
  • 5.Repeats other than é
    • 5.1Minimal repeat as a freestanding response: Affirming new information
    • 5.2Repeat expanded: Committing and specifying
    • 5.3A further look at what repetitional responses convey
  • 6.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.35.03har
References
Antaki, Charles
2012 “Affiliative and Disaffiliative Candidate Understandings.” Discourse Studies 14 (5): 531–547. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, Meghan E.
2008 “Pragmatic Restrictions on Affirmative Response Choice in Brazilian Portuguese.” In Selected Proceedings of the 10th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by Joyce B. de Garavito and Elena Valenzuela, 288–299. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Bolden, Galina
2016 “A simple da?: Affirming Responses to Polar Questions in Russian Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 100: 40–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth, and Margret Selting
2018 Interactional linguistics. Studying language in social interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Enfield, Nick J., and Jack Sidnell
2015 “Language Structure and Social Agency: Confirming Polar Questions in Conversation.” Linguistics Vanguard 1 (1): 131–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enfield, Nick J., Tanya Stivers, Penelope Brown, Christina Englert, Katariina Harjunpää, Makoto Hayashi, Trine Heinemann, Gertie Hoymann, Tiina Keisanen, Tiina, Mirka Rauniomaa, Chase W. Raymond, Federico Rossano, Kyung-Eun Yoon, and Stephen C. Levinson
2019 “Polar Answers.” Journal of Linguistics 55 (2): 277–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Figueiredo, Giacomo
2015 “Uma Descrição Sistêmico-Funcional dos Marcadores Discursivos Avaliativos em Português Brasileiro: a Gramática das Partículas Modais.” Alfa: Revista de Linguística 59 (2): 281–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guimarães, Estefania
2007 Talking About Violence: Women Reporting Abuse in Brazil. Ph.D. thesis, University of York.
Hakulinen, Auli
2001 “Minimal and non-minimal answers to yes-no questions.” Pragmatics 11 (1): 1–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hakulinen, Auli, and Marja-Leena Sorjonen
2009 “Designing Utterances for Action: Verb Repeat Responses to Assessments.” In Talk in interaction. Comparative dimensions, ed. by Markku Haakana, Minna Laakso, and Jan Lindström, 124–151. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.Google Scholar
Heritage, John
1984 “A Change-of-State Token and Aspects of Its Sequential Placement.” In Structures of social action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 “Questioning in Medicine.” In “Why do you ask?”: The function of questions in institutional discourse, ed. by Alice Freed and Susan Ehrlich, 42–68. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45: 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John, and Geoffrey Raymond
2012 “Navigating Epistemic Landscapes: Acquiescence, Agency and Resistance in Responses to Polar Questions.” In Questions. Formal, Functional and Interactional Perspectives, ed. by Jan P. de Ruiter, 179–192. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail
1978 “What’s in a “Nyem”?”, Sociology 12 (1): 135–139. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1984 “On Stepwise Transition from Talk about a Trouble to Inappropriately Next-Positioned Matters.” In Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 191–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kato, Mary A., Martins, Ana Maria, and Jairo Nunes
2023 The Syntax of Portuguese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keevallik, Leelo
2010 “Minimal Answers to yes/no Questions in the Service of Sequence Organization.” Discourse Studies 12 (3): 283–309. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William, and David Fanshel
1977 Therapeutic Discourse: Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Laury, Ritva
2018 “The Finnish Verb Repeat Response: Its Emergence and Its Nature as a Formulaic Expression.” Journal of Pragmatics 123: 139–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen
2012 “Interrogative Intimations: On a Possible Social Economics of Interrogatives.” In Questions: Formal, functional and interactional perspectives, ed. by Jan P. De Ruiter, 11–32. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lindström, Anna
2017 “Accepting Remote Proposals.” In Enabling Human Conduct: Studies of talk-in-interaction in honor of Emanuel A. Schegloff, ed. by Geoffrey Raymond, Gene H. Lerner and John Heritage, 125–142. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moraes, João Antônio de
1999 “Intonation in Brazilian Portuguese.” In Intonation Systems. A Survey of Twenty Languages, ed. by Daniel Hirst and Albert Di Cristo, 179–194. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Oloff, Florence
2014 “L’évaluation des complétions collaboratives: analyse séquentielle et multimodale de tours de parole co-construits.” SHS Web of Conferences 8, 4e Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française, 2125–2145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ostermann, Ana Cristina, and Camila de Almeida Teixeira
2017 “Small Things that Matter a Lot’: the Deontic Nature of ‘né.” Presentation at 18th AILA Congress. Rio de Janeiro.
Pomerantz, Anita
1980 “Telling My Side: “Limited Access” as a “Fishing” Device.” In Language and social interaction. Sociological Inquiry 50 (3/4): 186–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 57–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey
2003 “Grammar and Social Organization: Yes/No Interrogatives and the Structure of Responding.” American Sociological Review 68 (6): 939–967. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010a “Prosodic variation in responses: the case of type-conforming responses to yes/no interrogatives.” In Prosody in Interaction, ed. by Dagmar Barth-Weingarten, Elisabeth Reber & Margrit Selting, 109–130. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010b “Grammar and Social Relations. Alternative Forms of Yes/No–Type Initiating Actions in Health Visitor Interactions.” In “Why do you ask?”: The function of questions in institutional discourse, ed. by Alice Freed and Susan Ehrlich, 87–107. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “At the Intersection of Turn and Sequence Organization. On the Relevance of “Slots” in Type-Conforming Responses to Polar Interrogatives.” In Units of Talk – Units of Action, ed. by Beatrice Szczepek Reed and Geoffrey Raymond, 69–206. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosemeyer, Malte, and Scott A. Schwenter
2019 “Echoic and non-echoic confirming affirmative responses in spoken Brazilian Portuguese.” Journal of Pragmatics 141, 80–101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1992 Lectures on conversation (vols. 1 & 2). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Santos, Ana Lúcia
2003 “The Acquisition of Answers to yes/no Questions in European Portuguese: Syntactic, Discourse and Pragmatic Factors.” Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 2: 61–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
1996 “Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action.” American Journal of Sociology 102 (1): 161–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Selting, Margret
1996 “Prosody as an Activity-Type Distinctive Cue in Conversation: the Case of So-called “Astonished” Questions in Repair Initiation.” In Prosody in Conversation: Interactional Studies, ed. by Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Margret Selting, 231–270. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seuren, Lucas M., and Mike Huiskes
2017 “Confirmation or Elaboration: What Do Yes/No Declaratives Want?” Research on Language and Social Interaction 50 (2): 188–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sorjonen, Marja-Leena
2001a Responding in Conversation: A Study of Response Particles in Finnish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001b “Simple answers to polar questions: The case of Finnish.” In Studies in interactional linguistics, ed. by Margret Selting and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 405–429. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sorjonen, Marja-Leena, and Auli Hakulinen
2009 “Alternative responses to assessments.” In Conversation analysis: Comparative perspectives, ed. by Jack Sidnell, 281–303. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steensig, Jakob, and Trine Heinemann
2013 “When ‘yes’ is not enough as an answer to a yes/no question.” In Units of Talk – Units of Action, ed. by Beatrice Szczepek Reed and Geoffrey Raymond, 207–241. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya
2005 “Modified repeats. One Method for Asserting Primary Rights From Second Position.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 38 (2): 131–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2019 “How We Manage Social Relationships Through Answers to Questions: The Case of Interjections.” Discourse Processes 56 (3): 191–209. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, and Makoto Hayashi
2010 “Transformative answers: One way to resist a question’s constraints.” Language in Society 39 (1): 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A., Barbara A. Fox, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
2015 Grammar in Everyday Talk: Building Responsive Actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Urbano, Hudinilson, Leonor Fávero, Maria Lúcia Andrade, and Zilda Aquino
1993 “Perguntas e respostas na conversação (‘Questions and responses in conversation’).” In Gramática do português falado. Vol. III, ed. by Atalíbio Teixeira de Castilho, 75–97. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp.Google Scholar