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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. 350–376

Chapter 12
Do English affirmative polar interrogatives with any favor negative responses?

| University of Helsinki
| University of California Santa Barbara
| University of Colorado Boulder

In research on talk-in-interaction, English affirmative polar interrogatives with any have been argued to favor a negative response, with supporting data drawn largely from medical interactions. Considering a range of mundane interactional settings, we find that the response favored by an affirmative polar interrogative format with any varies according to the action it is being used to implement, to its sequential location, and – more generally – to what it will take to progress the sequence in that setting. In some cases, we find that the affirmative polar interrogative does not favor either a negative or affirmative response. Evidence for our claims comes from the type of response given and the format in which it delivered.

Keywords: any, negative polarity item, negative response, preference, tilt, request, offer, topic proffer, preliminary (pre-), information-seeking question
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research and current state of the art
  • 3.Data and methods
  • 4.Polar interrogatives with any tilted by the action they serve as a vehicle for
    • 4.1Actions with a positive tilt: Requests and offers
    • 4.2Actions with a negative tilt: Challenges
  • 5.Polar interrogatives with any tilted by sequential position
    • 5.1Sequence positions with a positive tilt: Topic proffers
    • 5.2Sequence positions with a positive tilt: Pre-requests for information
    • 5.3Sequence positions with a negative tilt: Pre-extended tellings
  • 6.Information-seeking polar interrogatives
  • 7.Discussion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.35.12cou
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