2.1An overview of studies on questions in academic lectures

Various studies have been undertaken to provide insight into how lecturers use questions. Some of the most relevant include Thompson (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press., Bamford (2000Bamford, Julia 2000 “Question and Answer Sequencing in Academic Lectures.” In Dialogue Analysis VII: Working with Dialogue, ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill, and Frances Rock, 159–170. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. , 2005Bamford, Julia 2005 “Interactivity in Academic Lectures: The Role of Questions and Answers.” In Dialogue within Discourse Communities: Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres, ed. by Julia Bamford, and Marina Bondi, 123–145. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. ), Crawford Camiciottoli (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. , Schleef (2009)Schleef, Erik 2009 “A Cross-cultural Investigation of German and American Academic Style.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (6): 1104–1124. , Suviniitty (2010)Suviniitty, Jaana 2010 “Lecturers’ Questions and Student Perception of Lecture Comprehension.” Helsinki English Studies 6: 44–57. and Chang (2012)Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116. .

Thompson (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press. explored question types and their use in a mixed British corpus of 10 scientific and linguistic academic lectures and 23 research presentations. She was the first to introduce the broad functional division between content-oriented and audience-oriented questions. Within the first category, Thompson (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press. explored two formal realisations and identified two functions – raise an issue and introduce information. As she analysed these functions collectively, not separating their use in lectures and research talks in English, some modifications and new functions may be identified by examining larger corpora that are composed exclusively of lectures.

Bamford (2000Bamford, Julia 2000 “Question and Answer Sequencing in Academic Lectures.” In Dialogue Analysis VII: Working with Dialogue, ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill, and Frances Rock, 159–170. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. , 2005Bamford, Julia 2005 “Interactivity in Academic Lectures: The Role of Questions and Answers.” In Dialogue within Discourse Communities: Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres, ed. by Julia Bamford, and Marina Bondi, 123–145. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. ) specifically investigated question/answer sequences characterised by one interactant performing both the questioning and answering roles in a corpus of 11 lectures delivered by English native speakers in the subfields of economics. Bamford (2000Bamford, Julia 2000 “Question and Answer Sequencing in Academic Lectures.” In Dialogue Analysis VII: Working with Dialogue, ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill, and Frances Rock, 159–170. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. , 161) examined how lecturers used question/answer pairs as “an effective attention-focusing mechanism” (Bamford 2005Bamford, Julia 2005 “Interactivity in Academic Lectures: The Role of Questions and Answers.” In Dialogue within Discourse Communities: Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres, ed. by Julia Bamford, and Marina Bondi, 123–145. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. , 126). Her analysis involved a qualitative approach, without providing the data on the relative frequency of the forms and various contextual functions of the lecturers’ question/answer sequences.

Following Thompson’s functional division (1998Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press.), Crawford Camiciottoli (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. examined the use of questions in two different communicative modes – lectures and written instructional material. In the corpora of 12 lectures given by native and non-native speakers of English and the written text material in the field of business studies, she analysed three question forms – wh-, yes/no and alternative questions – dividing them between content-oriented and audience-oriented questions. Crawford Camiciottoli (2008Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. , 1222) determined two functions of content-oriented questions, focusing information and stimulating thought, which she herself qualified as “two broad functional categories”. Her contribution was to reveal that mode could have a marked influence on the use of three question forms in spoken lectures as opposed to written text material.

Schleef (2009)Schleef, Erik 2009 “A Cross-cultural Investigation of German and American Academic Style.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (6): 1104–1124. focused on German and American academic style in general, exploring the MICASE corpus of lectures and seminars and a self-designed corpus of German lectures in the natural sciences and humanities. Among other linguistic items reflecting the lecture style, he investigated the connection between certain question forms and academic style in the two different academic cultures rather than distinguishing between content-oriented and audience-oriented questions. Schleef (2009Schleef, Erik 2009 “A Cross-cultural Investigation of German and American Academic Style.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (6): 1104–1124. , 1121–1122) concluded that the American instructors used interactive questions more frequently to create a more interactive classroom than their German colleagues, and suggested conducting further contrastive studies on the use and function of questions in lectures.

Suviniitty (2010)Suviniitty, Jaana 2010 “Lecturers’ Questions and Student Perception of Lecture Comprehension.” Helsinki English Studies 6: 44–57. examined the relation between lecturers’ questions and students’ perceptions of comprehension of 6 lectures given by Finnish nonnative speakers of English in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) situations. She reported that students viewed lectures with a greater number of questions as well-comprehended, while lectures with fewer questions were viewed as less-comprehended. Suviniitty classified the questions into two general categories – genuine questions, where a response is expected, and rhetorical questions, where a response is not expected from the audience. The rhetorical questions were further divided into those primarily concerned with focusing and organising. This classification needs to be revised given that the genuine question category appears to be broad, as Suviniitty states herself (2010Suviniitty, Jaana 2010 “Lecturers’ Questions and Student Perception of Lecture Comprehension.” Helsinki English Studies 6: 44–57., 48), and the rhetorical one should be distinguished from content-oriented questions since a rhetorical question (e.g. Who knows?) “has the force of a strong assertion” and “generally does not expect an answer” (Quirk et al. 1985Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik 1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London and New York: Longman., 825). Content-oriented questions are those that are both posed and answered by lecturers. The specific formal realisations of content-oriented questions were not discussed in Suviniitty’s paper. Hence, a more fine-grained functional and specific formal question division appears necessary.

Combining Thompson’s (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press. and Crawford Camiciottoli’s (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. question taxonomies, Chang (2012)Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116. explored the use of questions in 15 lectures taken from the MICASE, in three broad academic divisions: the social sciences, the humanities and arts and the physical sciences. Following Thompson (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press., Chang distinguished between content-oriented and audience-oriented question categories. She found that wh-, yes/no and declarative/imperative + word tag questions were the three most common question forms across the corpus as a whole, with their relative frequencies not being identical in each academic division. In terms of the functions of content-oriented questions, Chang followed Crawford Camiciottoli’s (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. division of the questions into two broad functions, focusing information and stimulating thought. With regard to the use of questions in academic lectures in the three broad academic divisions, Chang (2012)Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116. revealed the stronger impact of the lecture genre than that of being in a disciplinary culture, and recommended additional research with a larger corpus to verify her findings.

2.2The current study and research questions

From the review above, it can be concluded that only Schleef (2009)Schleef, Erik 2009 “A Cross-cultural Investigation of German and American Academic Style.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (6): 1104–1124. provided a contrastive analysis of lectures given in two different languages, in that case English and German. Nonetheless, he was interested in the style of American and German lectures and seminars, and analysed questions, among other linguistic features, influencing the academic style and the forms of interaction in general. Thompson (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press., Crawford Camiciottoli (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. and Chang (2012)Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116. examined content-oriented questions in their respective corpora in English. They identified two contextual functions related to these questions. Thompson (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press. reported on two forms of content-oriented questions without determining their overall normalised frequency distribution, even though normalised frequency provides a basis for the accurate comparison of raw frequency counts from texts of different lengths (Biber et al. 1998Biber, Douglas, Susan Conrad, and Randi Reppen 1998 Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 263). Crawford Camiciottoli (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. presented the overall normalised frequency distribution of three formal realisations of content-oriented questions in her corpus. Chang’s (2012Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116. ) study provided a detailed functional and formal framework exploring the MICASE corpus. However, there remains the lack of investigation of the use of content-oriented questions in British lectures. It is assumed that there could be a variation in the employment of content-oriented questions between American and British lectures given that they are delivered in “different academic cultures” (Lin 2012Lin, Chia-Yen 2012 “Modifiers in BASE and MICASE: A Matter of Academic Cultures or Lecturing Styles?” English for Specific Purposes 31: 117–126. , 118). As “BASE lectures are mainly monologic, whereas those in MICASE are classified into monologic, interactive and mixed” (ibid.), it is supposed that the exploration of the British lectures from the corpora under study could lead to modifications in existing formal and functional content-oriented question classifications.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, none of the researchers have thus far paid attention to the impact of different languages on the forms and use of questions in academic lectures. As such, the employment of questions could be, to some extent, culturally bound. Montenegrin is the language of an academic culture that is rather limited in scale compared to English, which is the lingua franca of academia. Nonetheless, as Montenegrin belongs to the group of South Slavic languages, it provides an example of a non-English academic culture, more precisely a Slavic academic culture. Some contrastive studies on written academic genres in English and Slavic languages (English–Bulgarian, Vassileva 2001Vassileva Irena 2001 “Commitment and Detachment in English and Bulgarian Academic Writing.” English for Specific Purposes 20 (1): 83–102. ; English–Ukrainian, Yakhontova 2002Yakhontova, Tatyana 2002 “ ‘Selling’ or ‘Telling’: The Issue of Cultural Variation in Research Genres.” In Academic Discourse, ed. by John Flowerdew, 216–232. London: Longman.) reveal that the variations observed between the languages in the use of studied linguistic features are attributed to, among other elements, different academic cultures. Starting from these results and taking into account the relative lack of contrastive research on content-oriented questions in lectures as a type of spoken academic genres, English and Montenegrin can therefore be taken as being representative of different academic cultures. The current study thus compares and examines content-oriented questions in British and Montenegrin university lectures, with the intention of discovering the possible similarities and differences in question forms, their frequency and functions. It tackles the following research issues:

Given that this contrastive study investigates content-oriented questions in lectures in two different languages, it is assumed that it will lead to findings showing variations in questioning practices employed by British and Montenegrin lecturers. On the other hand, as the lecture represents an established spoken academic genre in academic communities worldwide, it is supposed that the study will reveal certain similarities with regard to British and Montenegrin lectures.

Exploring the questioning practices of British and Montenegrin lecturers could contribute to a view of the phenomenon as linked not only to one language, and point to certain elements shared by the two academic communities. As the comparison of languages can reveal what is general and what is language specific and, therefore, important both for the understanding of language in general and for the study of the individual languages compared (Johansson and Hofland 1994Johansson, Stig, and Knut Hofland 1994 “Towards an English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus.” In Creating and Using English Language Corpora, ed. by Udo Fries, Gunnel Tottie, and Peter Schneider, 25–37. Amsterdam & Atlanta, GA: Rodopi., 25), the investigation of content-oriented questions could thus facilitate a better understanding of this linguistic feature, both at the level of the specific languages and in general.

3.1The corpus

The corpus compiled for this study consists of 24 university lectures in the field of linguistics, containing a total of 181,008 words. The lectures are subdivided into two corpora: one British and one Montenegrin. Lectures in the field of linguistics were chosen, as it is the discipline with which the author is the most familiar, and from which the author was in a position to collect the corpus of Montenegrin lectures.

The British corpus includes 12 academic lectures (94,242 words) on various linguistics topics – seven lectures were extracted from the BASE22.The recordings and transcriptions used in this study come from the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus, which was developed at the Universities of Warwick and Reading under the directorship of Hilary Nesi (Warwick) and Paul Thompson (Reading). Corpus development was assisted by the Universities of Warwick and Reading, BALEAP, EURALEX, the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Board. corpus, one lecture from the British National Corpus (BNC)33.The written part of the BNC forms 90%, whereas the spoken part constitutes 10% of the BNC. and four lectures from the University of Reading and its SACLL (Self-Access Centre for Language Learning). The total length of the recordings in the corpus was 10 hours, 55 minutes and 24 seconds.

To compare the British material to the Montenegrin corpus, the same number (n = 12) of academic lectures in the linguistics field was explored. As an electronic corpus of Montenegrin academic spoken and written language has not yet been created, a corpus of Montenegrin lectures was compiled. The lectures44.Formal permission to record lectures at the University of Montenegro was obtained. which were given in undergraduate and graduate level university courses were first audio-recorded. They were delivered by different lecturers, who were all Montenegrin native speakers and either Assistant, Associate, or Full Professors of Linguistics. The audio files were then transcribed, applying the common transcription symbols used in discourse analysis. The analysed Montenegrin data include 86,766 words with a total duration of 12 hours, 43 minutes and 26 seconds. Full details of the British and Montenegrin corpora are provided in the Appendix.

The Montenegrin lectures exhibit a high to medium degree of interactivity, with 361 exchanges initiating a student response, whereas the British ones exhibit a medium and low interactivity degree with 171 exchanges (Živković 2015Živković, Branka 2015 “Funkcionalne strukture i njihovi lingvistički eksponenti u diskursu univerzitetskih predavanja [Functional Structures and their Linguistic Exponents in the Discourse of University Lectures].” PhD thesis, University of Montenegro: Faculty of Philology. http://​eteze​.ucg​.ac​.me​/application​/showtheses​?thesesId​=132, 2021Živković, Branka 2021 “Interaktivnost predavanja iz lingvistike na Univerzitetu Crne Gore [Interactivity of Linguistics Lectures Delivered at the University of Montenegro]”. In Primenjena lingvistika [Applied Linguistics], a special issue in honour of Radmila Šević, ed. by Ksenija Šulović, 271–286. Serbia: Applied Linguistics Association of Serbia, Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade.). Three British lectures are true monologues, while all the Montenegrin lectures invite audience participation.

For comparative reasons, the British and Montenegrin corpora have the following features: (a) they contain the same number of university lectures in the field of linguistics, (b) they cover various topics within this subject field, (c) they were delivered by lecturers in a university context, (d) all the lecturers are either British English or Montenegrin native speakers.

3.2Analysis

The analysis of content-oriented questions was done in several steps. The first included a manual search for all the formal realisations where lecturers asked questions and then answered themselves in both corpora. The question forms were identified following the presence of lexico-grammatical signals pointing to a specific question form. The second step encompassed a qualitative analysis to supply information on the contextual functions of the identified forms. It was necessary to carefully examine what was used before and what occurred after the question, since an awareness of the wider discourse context is always important for an accurate interpretation of the function or discursive meaning of an interrogative (Holmes and Chiles 2010Holmes, Janet, and Tina Chiles 2010 “ ‘Is That Right?’ Questions and Questioning as Control Devices in the Workplace.” In “Why Do You Ask?” The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice F. Freed, and Susan Ehrlich, 187–210. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 192). For comparative reasons, a quantitative analysis was conducted, which included calculating the absolute frequency of each formal realisation and their functions, their relative frequency and a normalised frequency per 1,000 words. Both the audio files and an additional researcher were also consulted in the identification of certain question forms and functions, as is explained further in Sections 3.2.1 and 3.2.2.

3.2.1Question forms

Content-oriented questions were realised through a range of different question forms. Their identification in the British corpus was based on Quirk et al. (1985)Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik 1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London and New York: Longman., Biber et al. (1999)Biber, Douglas, Stig Johannson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan 1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. and Bamford (2005)Bamford, Julia 2005 “Interactivity in Academic Lectures: The Role of Questions and Answers.” In Dialogue within Discourse Communities: Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres, ed. by Julia Bamford, and Marina Bondi, 123–145. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. . In terms of the Montenegrin lectures, the question forms were determined following Mrazović and Vukadinović (1990)Mrazović, Pavica, and Zora Vukadinović 1990 Gramatika srpskohrvatskog jezika za strance [A grammar of Serbo-Croatian for nonnative speakers]. Novi Sad: Dobra vest. and Piper et al. (2005)Piper, Predrag, Ivana Antonić, Vladislava Ružić, Sreto Tanasić, Ljudmila Popović, and Branko Tošović 2005 Sintaksa savremenog srpskog jezika [Syntax of contemporary Serbian]. Beograd: Beogradska knjiga.. In addition, there was one type of question realisation which did not conform to the syntactic rules for the interrogative form and which was not recognised in the above-mentioned literature. It was named as questions with a question word/phrase at the end. The question forms were then classified into the five most frequently employed types: tag, wh-, yes/ no, questions with a question word/phrase at the end and multiple questions (see Table 1).

Bamford (2005Bamford, Julia 2005 “Interactivity in Academic Lectures: The Role of Questions and Answers.” In Dialogue within Discourse Communities: Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres, ed. by Julia Bamford, and Marina Bondi, 123–145. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. , 136) used the term double questions for two questions in a row that were both posed and answered by lecturers, whereby “the first question is reformulated and re-specified” in the second one. The term was changed into one more appropriate to this study – multiple questions, because British and Montenegrin lecturers also, on occasion, asked three or four questions in a row (see Table 1). Thus, this term simultaneously covers two, three, four or more questions in a row.

Table 1.The analysed forms of content-oriented questions in British and Montenegrin lectures

Content-oriented questions	Examples
1. Tag questions	but also teenagers have slang words don’t they (sslct038) Konkretna realizacija foneme je glas, jel’ tako? (ML2) ‘A concrete realisation of a phoneme is a sound, isn’t it?’
2. Wh-questions	So what is it that makes a conversation work? (EL9) Zašto se ove skraćenice razlikuju od prethodno pomenutih skraćenica? (ML9) ‘Why are these abbreviations different from the previously mentioned abbreviations?’
3. Yes/no questions	Was that a good idea? (EL11) Da li može da li možete da dođete do toga da se oba govornika ili grupa grupa sagovornika slože prvo oko značenja riječi, pa onda krenu u dalju diskusiju? (ML12) ‘Is it possible is it possible that you can reach a point where both interlocutors or a group a group of interlocutors first agree on the meaning of a word, and then enter into a further discussion?’
4. Questions with a question word/phrase at the end	Jedini padež koji ima iste nastavke je koji? (ML10) ‘The only case that has the same suffixes is which?’
5. Multiple questions	why do languages change at all why i mean why did this patalization occur when it did why didn’t it occur before why didn’t it occur later (sslct036) Znači, šta se dešava ovdje? Šta bi bila u Crnoj Gori ova faza posle standardizacije i varijantizacije? (ML5) ‘So, what is happening here? What would this phase after standardisation and variantisation be in Montenegro?’

Questions with a question word/phrase at the end were included in the analysis as a new formal realisation, one that is often employed by Montenegrin lecturers, but not by their British colleagues. These are essentially statements with a question word/phrase used at the end (see Table 1). For their identification, transcripts were manually searched with reference to their audio files, and an additional reseacher55.An additional researcher coded this question form and her results were compared to the author’s. The cases with different codes were examined and a consensus was reached. was consulted.

3.2.2Question functions

After the question forms were determined and quantified, a qualitative analysis was performed. Thorough attention was paid to what was used before and after the questions to obtain information on their contextual functions, as both the form and function dimensions are of interest to this study from a contrastive perspective.

The functions of the content-oriented questions determined by Thompson (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press., Crawford Camiciottoli (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. and Chang (2012)Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116. were examined for their possible application in the current study (see Table 2). Thompson’s raise an issue and introduce information functions were adapted to a more specific function, introducing a new lecture subtopic (see Table 2). Crawford Camiciottoli (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. established the other two functions focusing information and stimulating thought, later followed by Chang (2012)Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116. . Crawford Camiciottoli herself (2008Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. , 1222) characterised them as “broad functional categories”. The former corresponds with Thompson’s raise an issue function as it “refers to the introduction of new information in the form of an answer to a question”, while the latter “appears to encourage reflection on the part of the reader without providing an explicit answer” (Crawford Camiciottoli 2008Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. , 1222, 1226). As this article deals with the questions that lecturers both posed and answered themselves, the function stimulating thought seems not to be entirely applicable. In the lecture transcripts, the lecturers draw students’ attention to the content expressed by their question and at the same time provide answers to those questions.

Apart from the adapted function introducing a new lecture subtopic (see Table 2), five new functions were introduced into the functional framework after the thorough contextual analysis was performed. Given that question forms can be multifunctional, it was essential to assess the context surrounding the five most frequent question forms, i.e. to thoroughly examine what preceded and what followed them. The longer stretches of discourse around these forms were carefully read. Since identifying question functions was less straightforward than determining question forms (Crawford Camiciottoli 2008Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. , 1223), an additional researcher66.An additional researcher conducted a contextual analysis of the five new question functions within the wider discourse context where the five most frequent question forms of content-oriented questions were used. Her analysis was compared to the author’s. The cases with different results were examined and a consensus was reached. was also consulted.

The process of differentiating between the functions of tag questions proved to be the most challenging aspect (see Example (1)). Tag questions perform two functions – indicating shared knowledge and intensifying evaluation (see Table 5). The tag question in Example (1) may be interpreted as having both functions. Considering tag questions as statements strengthened by a question word/phrase used at their end (Mrazović and Vukadinović 1990Mrazović, Pavica, and Zora Vukadinović 1990 Gramatika srpskohrvatskog jezika za strance [A grammar of Serbo-Croatian for nonnative speakers]. Novi Sad: Dobra vest., 624), the evaluative adjective frightening preceded by the amplifier quite adds to the intensity of the evaluation of the propositional content given in the previous utterances. Therefore, when evaluative adjectives and their amplifiers appeared in statements with tag questions, these were determined to be fulfilling the intensifying evaluation function.

(1)

well we’ll go back and look at what somebody else has said but in fact i-, er er with a lot of research you can’t do that you have to make your own decisions it’s quite frightening really isn’t it when you do research and then you suddenly look round and you’re the one who’s making the decisions you can’t just say you ju-, can’t just report on what somebody else has said (EL₇)

The framework used in this study contains six question functions: the adapted introducing a new lecture subtopic, and the five original to this study – defining new terms, indicating shared knowledge, intensifying evaluation, explaining the prior lecture content and enhancing the clarity of the lecture content. The six overall functions are listed in Table 2, and discussed in more depth in Section 4.

Table 2.Functions of content-oriented questions in previous studies and the current study

Previous studies and the current study	Functions of content-oriented questions
Thompson (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press.	Raise an issue Introduce information
Crawford Camiciottoli (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231.	Focusing information Stimulating thought
Chang (2012)Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116.	Focusing information Stimulating thought
The current study	Introducing a new lecture subtopic (adapted from Thompson 1998Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press.) Defining new terms Indicating shared knowledge Intensifying evaluation Explaining the prior lecture content Enhancing the clarity of the lecture content

At this point, a few factors that could influence the results need to be considered. The issue of multimodality was not taken into account for a technical reason. Video recordings of the BASE corpus in the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, are “only available to students and academic staff in the Centre for Applied Linguistics for research and teaching purposes”.77.Taken from: https://​warwick​.ac​.uk​/fac​/soc​/al​/research​/collections​/base/. Given this limitation, so as to be able to conduct a contrastive analysis, the Montenegrin lectures were audio-recorded. In addition, questionnaires and interviews with lecturers were not incorporated into the research design since ready-made corpora, such as the BASE and BNC, do not include them. “Using a ready-made corpus […] constrains the researcher’s ability to obtain ethnographic data” (Lee 2009Lee, Joseph J. 2009 “Size Matters: An Exploratory Comparison of Small- and Large-class University Lecture Introductions.” English for Specific Purposes 28: 42–57. , 53), thus making it difficult to encompass the lecturers’ perceptions of the questions they posed and answered. For comparative reasons, lecturers’ perceptions were not considered while compiling the Montenegrin corpus. Hence, the current study did not involve lecturers’ observations on the questions they asked and answered themselves, but focused on the analysis of their forms and contextual functions realised in the corpora. In addition, other studies on questions by Thompson (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press., Bamford (2000Bamford, Julia 2000 “Question and Answer Sequencing in Academic Lectures.” In Dialogue Analysis VII: Working with Dialogue, ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill, and Frances Rock, 159–170. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. , 2005Bamford, Julia 2005 “Interactivity in Academic Lectures: The Role of Questions and Answers.” In Dialogue within Discourse Communities: Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres, ed. by Julia Bamford, and Marina Bondi, 123–145. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. ), Crawford Camiciottoli (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. , Schleef (2009)Schleef, Erik 2009 “A Cross-cultural Investigation of German and American Academic Style.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (6): 1104–1124. and Chang (2012)Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116. did not explore the issue of multimodality and lecturers’ attitudes to these linguistic devices either.

In the results section below, the most frequent realisations of content-oriented questions are analysed from a contrastive perspective, including a quantitative and qualitative comparison of the results from the British and Montenegrin corpora.

4.1Tag questions

The first similarity between the corpora exists in the use of tag questions in British and Montenegrin lectures. However, a great difference in their frequency is observed. Figure 1 shows that tag questions are employed over 5 times more frequently in the Montenegrin corpus compared to the British.

The contextual analysis of tag questions shows that these perform two functions in both corpora – indicating shared knowledge and intensifying evaluation. Examples (2) and (3) illustrate the first function, while Examples (4) and (5) point to the second one.

Example (2) is a part of the lecture subtopic on the difference between speech and computer mediated communication. A lecturer compares these two communication types and reminds students of what they already know. The same function is fulfilled in the Montenegrin corpus. In Example (3), a lecturer shares previous knowledge by mentioning how Milorad Radovanović determined standardisation through the circle of ten phases before elaborating on them. Hence, tag questions recontextualise the prior lecture content and assist students in better comprehending the topics to follow.

Examples (4) and (5) show the second function of tag questions – intensifying evaluation of the propositional content given in previous utterances. Tag questions represent statements strengthened by a question used at the end (Mrazović and Vukadinović 1990Mrazović, Pavica, and Zora Vukadinović 1990 Gramatika srpskohrvatskog jezika za strance [A grammar of Serbo-Croatian for nonnative speakers]. Novi Sad: Dobra vest., 624). In Examples (4) and (5), they are signaled by the phrase isn’t it, and posed at the end of evaluative utterances in bold, making them stronger. The evaluative content is marked by the amplifier very and the evaluative adjectives difficult and important. Tag questions in both the British and Montenegrin lectures thus attach greater significance to the propositional content expressed in the previous statements.

4.2Wh-questions

Wh-questions are slightly over twice as common in the Montenegrin lectures (see Figure 1). In both corpora, they are multifunctional – they have three functions: defining new terms, introducing a new lecture subtopic and explaining the prior lecture content. A difference is observed in their frequency, which is greater in the Montenegrin corpus (see Table 5).

Both British and Montenegrin lecturers pose wh-questions to give definitions of the new terms introduced during a lecture. Wh-questions in the content-oriented question category do not “seek information on a specific point” (Quirk et al. 1985Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik 1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London and New York: Longman., 804) from an interlocutor, but rather introduce a new concept or new terms. This defining new terms function appears not to have been recognised by Thompson (1998)Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press., Bamford (2000)Bamford, Julia 2000 “Question and Answer Sequencing in Academic Lectures.” In Dialogue Analysis VII: Working with Dialogue, ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill, and Frances Rock, 159–170. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. , Crawford Camiciottoli (2008)Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. , Schleef (2009)Schleef, Erik 2009 “A Cross-cultural Investigation of German and American Academic Style.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (6): 1104–1124. or Chang (2012)Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116. .

In Examples (6) and (7), wh-questions introduce the terms learning syndicate and affix. After posing wh-questions, the lecturers take over the role of the interlocutor and provide the missing information required to answer the question.

Wh-questions are employed to introduce a new lecture subtopic in both the British and the Montenegrin lectures. They have a structural role, as they show a thematic transition from one lecture subtopic to the other. This function is similar to Thomspon’s (1998Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press., 143) raise an issue function of content-oriented questions. It is not found in English grammars (Quirk et al. 1985Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik 1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London and New York: Longman.; Biber et al. 1999Biber, Douglas, Stig Johannson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan 1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.), or in grammar and syntax books regarding Montenegrin (Mrazović and Vukadinović 1990Mrazović, Pavica, and Zora Vukadinović 1990 Gramatika srpskohrvatskog jezika za strance [A grammar of Serbo-Croatian for nonnative speakers]. Novi Sad: Dobra vest.; Piper et al. 2005Piper, Predrag, Ivana Antonić, Vladislava Ružić, Sreto Tanasić, Ljudmila Popović, and Branko Tošović 2005 Sintaksa savremenog srpskog jezika [Syntax of contemporary Serbian]. Beograd: Beogradska knjiga.). It is illustrated by Examples (8) and (9).

Example (8) begins with the boundary marker so marking the transition to a new lecture subtopic on the purpose of education, which is introduced by the wh-question in bold. Example (9) from the Montenegrin corpus opens with a wh-question performing the same function of initiating a new lecture subtopic, in this case the structure of a dictionary of a language.

In the British and Montenegrin corpora, wh-questions also have an explanatory function, which is their most common function in both corpora. The exemplification act, marked by the signal noun (an) example in English or the verb recimo ‘let’s say’ in Montenegrin, mostly precedes these questions. In Examples (10) and (11), the lecturers use wh-questions to explain the content given in the exemplification act, and thus drawing the students’ attention to what is significant and helping them to more easily follow and comprehend the lecture content. The lecturers, as is the case with the other questions considered here, simultaneously ask and answer the wh-questions themselves.

4.3Yes/no questions

The normalised frequency of yes/no questions in the British lectures is slightly higher than that recorded in the Montenegrin corpus (see Figure 1). These questions are common in everyday conversation, and they presuppose the condition that two or more interlocutors participate in the conversation (Schegloff and Sacks 1973Schegloff, Emanuel A., and Harvey Sacks 1973 “Opening up Closings.” Semiotica 7: 289–327. ). However, in the British and Montenegrin university lectures, it is the lecturers who play both the asking and the answering roles. Yes/no questions have the function of explaining the prior lecture content, which is slightly more common in the British corpus (see Table 5).

Examples (12) and (13) show the explanatory function of yes/no questions. They refer to the content given in previous utterances. Lecturers employ and answer them to focus students’ attention on the specific content and help them more easily follow and understand it.

4.4Questions with a question word/phrase at the end

The most striking difference between the corpora is perceived in questions with a question word/phrase at the end (see Figure 1). This formal realisation is found in the Montenegrin lectures, whereas it is atypical of the British material. The logical question thus arises – why are these questions posed by the Montenegrin and not by the British lecturers? Previous studies on questions in lectures given in English did not identify this question form (Thompson 1998Thompson, Susan 1998 “Why Ask Questions in Monologue? Language Choice at Work in Scientific and Linguistic Talk.” In Language at Work, ed. by Susan Hunston, 137–150. Clevedon, England: University of Birmingham Press.; Bamford 2000Bamford, Julia 2000 “Question and Answer Sequencing in Academic Lectures.” In Dialogue Analysis VII: Working with Dialogue, ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill, and Frances Rock, 159–170. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. ; Crawford Camiciottoli 2008Crawford Camiciottoli, Belinda 2008 “Interaction in Academic Lectures vs. Written Text Materials: The Case of Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 1216–1231. ; Schleef 2009Schleef, Erik 2009 “A Cross-cultural Investigation of German and American Academic Style.” Journal of Pragmatics 41 (6): 1104–1124. ; Chang 2012Chang, Yu-Ying 2012 “The Use of Questions by Professors in Lectures Given in English: Influences of Disciplinary Cultures.” English for Specific Purposes 31: 103–116. ), which could point to it not being a characteristic of questioning practices employed in lectures in English. In terms of the Montenegrin context, questions with a question word/phrase at the end are not distinguished as question forms in the grammar and syntax books by Piper et al. (2005)Piper, Predrag, Ivana Antonić, Vladislava Ružić, Sreto Tanasić, Ljudmila Popović, and Branko Tošović 2005 Sintaksa savremenog srpskog jezika [Syntax of contemporary Serbian]. Beograd: Beogradska knjiga. and Mrazović and Vukadinović (1990)Mrazović, Pavica, and Zora Vukadinović 1990 Gramatika srpskohrvatskog jezika za strance [A grammar of Serbo-Croatian for nonnative speakers]. Novi Sad: Dobra vest.. Their use in the Montenegrin corpus may have been influenced by the lecture genre. This possibility calls for future contrastive research on these question forms in both lectures and other spoken academic genres.

Questions with a question word/phrase at the end are employed to draw students’ attention to the specific piece of information required to answer the question. They fulfil the function of explaining the prior lecture content:

In Example (14), the question in bold is finished with the question phrase which meaning used at the end. Examples regarding the use of the preposition o ‘at’ precede this question form. The lecturer asks the question to explain the specific content, helping the students to more easily comprehend the issue being discussed.

4.5Multiple questions

British lecturers pose and answer multiple questions with a slightly higher normalised frequency than their Montenegrin counterparts (see Figure 1). Multiple questions represent the forms containing two or more questions in a row referring to the same issue. The first question is repeated in similar forms serving as its “reformulations” (Bamford 2000Bamford, Julia 2000 “Question and Answer Sequencing in Academic Lectures.” In Dialogue Analysis VII: Working with Dialogue, ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill, and Frances Rock, 159–170. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. , 167). The analysis reveals that they fulfil two functions: enhancing the clarity of the lecture content and introducing a new lecture subtopic. The former is slightly more frequent in the British lectures, while the latter has an equal normalised frequency in both corpora (see Table 5). Let us consider the following examples:

The questions from Examples (15) and (16) show that the first question is repeated twice to make the content clearer. Apart from the lexical similarity between the questions achieved by means of the repetition of certain lexical units, such as the adverbs best and how and the verbs learn and teach, the grammatical similarity exists in the use of parallel interrogative structures in both corpora. The repetition of the first question gives students time to think about the content being presented. It can ensure comprehension and provide the audience with cognitive support to process what are perhaps quite complex issues (Suviniitty 2012Suviniitty, Jaana 2012 Lectures in English as a Lingua Franca: Interactional Features. PhD Thesis. University of Helsinki: Department of Modern Languages., 24, 138). In Examples (15) and (16), repetition draws student attention to the important but also complex issues of how individuals learn a foreign language best and how teachers will teach students to analyse and conclude.

Examples (17) and (18) illustrate how multiple questions are used to signal a transition from one lecture subtopic to another. This function was not distinguished in Bamford (2005)Bamford, Julia 2005 “Interactivity in Academic Lectures: The Role of Questions and Answers.” In Dialogue within Discourse Communities: Metadiscursive Perspectives on Academic Genres, ed. by Julia Bamford, and Marina Bondi, 123–145. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. , who investigated double questions asked and answered by lecturers themselves.

The discourse marker well from Example (17) precedes multiple questions, all referring to and introducing the lecture subtopic palatalization. These questions are linked lexically and grammatically. The lecturer uses the verb occur three times, as well as the same interrogative structures. The lecturer continues to answer the questions beginning again with the discourse marker well, which indicates that the answer will be complex. Multiple questions are also employed to initiate a new lecture subtopic in Example (18), where the lecturer uses three lexically and grammatically parallel questions relating to the topic of what should be considered in a literary work, which students should know.