Tag questions in conversation: A typology of their interactional and stance meanings

This study deals with variable tag questions (henceforth TQ), i.e. utterances with a variable interrogative tag, e.g. 'It's peculiar writing, isn't it', and the semi-variable tag 'innit', e.g. 'Nice, innit'. The aim is to provide a corpus-based, comprehensive semantic-pragmatic typology of British English TQs. The proposed typology is novel in comparison with existing descriptions in three ways. Firstly, whereas almost all existing typologies are single-layered classifications, the functions of TQs are categorized into two parallel dimensions of interpersonal meaning: the speech function and the stance layer. Secondly, semantic generalizations are proposed for clusters of grammatical, intonational and conversational properties. Thirdly, the bottom-up description is based on a sizeable amount of authentic, spontaneous conversations, which are analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Publication year:2018