Publications
Publication details [#25912]
Jefferson, Gail. 2002. Is "no" an acknowledgement token? Comparing American and British uses of (+) / (-) tokens. Journal of Pragmatics 34 (10-11) : 1345–1383.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
Elsevier
ISBN
0378-2166
Journal WWW
Annotation
This study demonstrates that the response-token 'no' following a negatively-framed statement, is used differently by British and American speakers, alongside differences between civilians and medical professionals. Whilst British civilians use (-) tokens for both acknowledgment and affiliation, British doctors use (+) tokens for acknowledgment and (-) tokens for affiliation. American civilians use the tokens similarly to British doctors, and American doctors do not use the (-) token at all.