Use Of Tag Questions Research Articles

Language, Society and Gender: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Linguistic Variation in the Language of Men and Women in the Movie North Country

The present research is the study of linguistic variations in the language of males and females in the movie North Country. By applying Robin Lakoff's deficit theory to the work, the research highlighted the difference based on hedging, tag questions, and intensifiers. Language variation in gender was a common topic in the 1970s, but till now not much empirical evidence is present to support Robin Lakoff’s theory, the research has provided a firm ground for the theory. The research study is a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the discourse of males and females in the movie "North Country." The research study findings in accordance with its objectives show how male and female's language differs from each other by providing empirical evidence, as males and females show different trends in the use of tag questions, hedging, and intensifiers. This is a highly significant study academically it will provide analyzed data with evidence to students of genderlect.

Gender Differences in the Use of Tag Questions in English

This paper investigates whether there are any gender related differences in the use of language by television hosts in American talk shows. It brings a concise overview of gender differences manifested in language usage through different theoretical approaches offered by Otto Jespersen, Labov, Lakoff, Zimmerman and West, Tannen, Coates, Holmes and Cameron, as well as short descriptions of the studies they conducted. The present study analyses the frequency and the most common types of tag questions used by female and male television hosts in American talk shows. Talk shows are one of the most popular and influential forms of television programming that have an effect on society in different ways. They are aired in countries all over the world and there seem to be an amazingly endless number of relevant topics, thus offering interesting corpora for various types of linguistic analysis. The aim of the paper is to investigate whether there are any significant differences between male and female hosts in their use of tag questions.

Pessimistic Strategy in Negative Politeness Study in Thor: Ragnarok Movie

Good communication is the basis of a good relationship. In achieving the appropriate goals, responses, and reciprocities of speech, people tend to apply the value of decency. The pessimistic strategy of negative politeness is analyzed in this study. The data used in this study is taken from the Thor: Ragnarok Movie. This study analyzes the type of pessimistic strategy of negative politeness, such as negative, subjunctive, and remote-possibility makers. Besides, this study analyzed the factors that influence the character who used the pessimistic strategy. Factors are relative force, social distance, and level of imposition. The analysis of types and factors is based on the courtesy theory of Brown and Levinson's book "Politeness Some Universals in Language Usage" (1987). The result showed that all of the three types of pessimistic strategy in negative politeness is found in Thor: Ragnarok Movie. The negative was found in the use of tag questions. The subjunctive could be found in the use of the would, should, and the use of the IF clause. The remote-possibility makers was found in the use of word hope, supposed, though, and perhaps. The most type pessimistic strategy found in this data is the use of the subjunctive and the most factor which influences the characters is the size of imposition.

Attending to child agency in paediatric palliative care consultations: Adults' use of tag questions directed to the child.

Children's agency in their own lives is increasingly recognised as important, including within paediatric health care. The issue of acknowledging child agency is complex in the context of paediatric palliative care, where children have serious and complex conditions that often impact their ability to verbally communicate with others. This study explores how clinicians and parents/guardians direct talk towards a child patient when they are present in a consultation. Conversation analysis methods were used to examine 74 video‐recorded paediatric palliative care consultations. Detailed turn‐by‐turn examination of the recorded consultations identified the recurrent use of a practice described by linguists as a ‘tag question’, which follows some statement (e.g. ‘he loves that, don't ya’). Both clinicians and parents/guardians often directed these tag questions towards the child patient. Analysis demonstrated how these tag questions: (1) validated the child's epistemic authority over what was being said and (2) made a child's response a possible, but not necessary, next action. The findings are discussed in relation to the sociology of child agency and how this agency is acknowledged and displayed within and through social interaction. This research provides direct evidence of children's competence as informants about their own symptoms.

The role of tag questions in classroom discourse in promoting student engagement

ABSTRACT In classroom teaching, where teachers front a large class of students, opportunities for students to talk are limited, with much classroom talk by students involving answering teacher questions. This raises the question of how teachers promote student engagement in their lessons. Using a 394,671-word corpus of recorded teaching in vocational education, this study investigates a discourse feature of classroom discourse, the use of tag questions. Our study compares the use of tag questions in two teaching contexts: teacher-fronted whole-class teaching in the classroom and teaching through interacting with individuals or pairs during skills-teaching in the workshop or construction site. Every tag question (755) in this corpus was analysed for polarity, position in turn, intonation and speech function. The study shows the importance of tag questions in both contexts in involving students in the instructors’ on-going explanations both in silent thought and through brief verbal responses or actions. Instructors also use tag questions to focus students’ attention, to ensure that students are following their explanations, to involve students in problem-solving, to seek information about students’ practical work, to remind them of known information, and to construct them as co-experts who already have some knowledge and judgement related to their vocational field.

Anti-racist Text and Talk: A Critical Discourse Studies Approach to Black Feminism

While racist discourse has received much attention in Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), there is a dearth of scholarship on the anti-racist text and talk. A critical observation is that the anti-racist movement, and hence, discourse, often exclude women. With the goal of contributing to this gap in the CDS literature, the current analysis examines Black women's discourses concerning anti-Black racism in general and Black Feminism in particular. Four YouTube videos that feature both conference talks and news programs surrounding the topic of Black Feminism are analysed for recurring themes using thematic analysis and discourse structures from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal that the primary themes that emerged are the inclusion of Black women, Police brutality and unaccountability, and Black Feminism Defined, with various subthemes. In addition, the discourse structures examined are lexical choice, presupposition, pronominal choice, and the use of tag questions, among others. This study serves to further our understanding of the linguistic manifestation of ideologies through discourse concerning anti-racism and Black Feminism.

About the Use of Tag Questions in Andean Spanish

This paper aims to describe the use of tag questions in the variety of Andean Spanish spoken in Bolivia. In particular, it explores the tag questions that occur in the Corpus oral del español hablado por bilingües de aymara-español. The analysis consists of two levels. On the one hand, it describes the pragmatic functions of tag questions and identifies the correlation between their distribution and their pragmatic functions. On the other hand, it focuses on the impact that social factors (the speakers’ sex, age, and education) have on the frequency of the tags. Along these lines, it displays the lack of a general sociolinguistic trend in the use of tag questions, furthermore, it shows that the higher frequency of tags in a sociolinguistic group rather than in another is tag-dependent.

The Use of Tag Questions in Person-centered Communication

Tag questions are imperative, declarative, exclamative or interrogative statements that have been modified to include a question (e.g.., It is hot out, isn’t it?). Tag questions have been characterized as elderspeak because it suggests an expected response from the person with dementia, thus limiting his/her ability to make a decision independently. However, tag questions serve multiple functions in conversation. There is limited research on the multidimensional nature of tag questions in conversations between formal caregivers and their clients with dementia. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to investigate the functions of tag questions used by formal caregivers in utterances coded as person-centered. Conversations (N= 87) between formal caregivers and a simulated person with dementia were video-recorded during a 5-minute care interaction involving morning care. Caregivers’ utterances were coded for the use of the following types of person-centered communication: recognition, negotiation, facilitation, and validation. During secondary data analysis, the person-centered utterances were analyzed for the use and function of tag questions. Conversational analyses revealed two broad functions of tag questions: gather information and facilitate a desired action. Tag questions used to gather information included the following specific functions: acknowledge response, establish common ground, state fact or opinion, initiate topic, conversational joking, state what is being done and questions. Tag questions that facilitated a desired reaction included the following specific functions: offers, advice and suggestions and requests and commands. Findings from the current study reveal that tag questions are not exclusively elderspeak and can be used to illicit conversation.

Lone pronoun tags in Early Modern English: ProTag constructions in the dramas of Jonson, Marlowe and Shakespeare

Recent research into right-dislocated pronouns has provided details of the form and functions of lone pronoun tag (ProTag) constructions in Present-day British English. In this article, we present the first systematic investigation of ProTag constructions in an earlier variety, Early Modern English. Using as our corpus the dramatic works of Jonson, Marlowe and Shakespeare – writers already known to make use of tag questions in their works – we identified and analysed ProTag constructions. Our findings reveal that ProTag constructions in Early Modern English differ from their Present-day British English equivalents with respect to possible functions: in the earlier variety ProTag constructions could have a ‘Question’ function, the same as tag questions. We also found the relative frequency of demonstrative ProTags compared to personal ProTags to be significantly different: personal ProTags are far more frequently attested than demonstrative ProTags in our corpus of Early Modern English drama texts; this is the reverse of what has been found for Present-day British English. We propose that a key factor in the observed change is extension of the types of referents that demonstrative ProTags can have. This study offers a new perspective on ProTag constructions, their classification and development.

Indian English in political discussions

AbstractThe present paper on ‘verbal disputes’ is a tribute to Professor Braj B. Kachru, who himself had a keen interest in the politics of language. This paper draws its data from three types of political discussions in India: a debate, an interview, and an altercation between the moderator and a guest on three different televised programme. This article analyses various aspects of political argumentation in the Indian context, including such macrolinguistic features as the setting of discussions, the socio‐cultural and political context, and the argumentation of participants, as well as the microlinguistic features of the texts generated in political discussions. Such features include patterns of code‐mixing and code‐switching, lexis, phonology, rhetoric, syntax, and the use of tag questions.

Power, solidarity and tag questions in crisis negotiations

This article examines the use of tag questions in five crisis negotiations to simultaneously minimize power asymmetries and assert influence over subjects. I utilize an Interactional Sociolinguistic approach to identify the discursive functions that different types of tag questions fulfill for the crisis negotiators. I find that facilitative tag questions reinforce a ‘collaborative problem solving’ frame (Tannen & Wallat 1993) and minimize the significance of the subject’s negative actions, while softening tag questions turn orders into requests to influence the subject’s decision-making. The successful use of tag questions for these purposes allows the negotiator to appear empathic while maintaining control of the overall situation. This paper contributes to linguistic and practitioner understandings by 1) operationalizing goals like 'rapport' and 'influence' and 2) identifying the functions that tag questions can serve in this high-stakes interactional context.

The Use Of Tag Questions with Male and Female Speakers of English and Serbian

The paper is a report on research meant to discover the extent to which the speakers of English and Serbian employ tag questions as communicative strategies for ensuring pragmatic agreement and increasing the tentativeness of a speech act regarding the role of gender therein. This small-scale contrastive research project, largely inspired and founded on the specificities of gendered discourse style as identified by R. Lakoff (1975, 2004), and later discussed by Holmes (1986), Romaine (2003), Talbot (2003), Eckert & McConnell-Ginet (2003) and others, is based on analyzing contextualized question-tagging sampled from a corpus of texts within the journalistic register. The corpus encompasses 100 interviews provided by English and Serbian male and female interviewees from on-line newspapers and magazines. The analysis also addresses such issues as how culturally-conditioned or gender-conditioned tag-question usage is, whether a fixed form of question tagging would be less productive a pattern than the variable form, etc.

English

Gender-based research on the language use in blogs has its roots in the long-standing notion that men and women speak and write differently. This paper reports an empirical study on the use of English in a blog context involving Malaysian blog authors. Specifically, the study aimed to identify gender-specific English use among Malaysian blog authors and determine the differences in the language use. Using an ensemble text analysis approach, Malaysian female blog authors are more inclined towards using more verbs, adverbs and pronouns than their male counterpart, with a significant difference, while the males are inclined towards using more adjectives, nouns, determiners and prepositions/subordinating conjunctions than the females, with a significant difference. There are also differences between females and males in terms of the function words, neologisms/blog words as well as use of tag questions and adverbs initiating sentences. However, there are minimal differences between the females and males in terms of length of sentences and that the use of intensifiers, hedges, empty adjectives and emotions, thus concluding that they are not necessarily gender-specific differences. The findings can serve as useful language markers that can benefit the applied linguistics and particularly gender-based and forensic linguistic research. DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2016-1603-02

Syntactic Proficiency of Kuwaiti EFL Learners: A Study of Tag Questions

This study examines the extent to which 70 Kuwaiti EFL learners are aware of the formation rules of tag questions in English. It also investigates whether the English proficiency level of the participants contributes to their correct answers on the test. For this purpose, the researchers used a multiple-choice test to measure the participants’ awareness of the correct form of tag questions. The results show that Kuwaiti EFL learners are not aware of the syntax of tag questions in English (total mean = 47%). The results also reveal that the English proficiency level of the participants plays an important role in their correct answers on the test; there arestatisticallysignificant differences between the results of the Advanced Learners (ALs) and the Intermediate Learners (ILs). The researchers note that the participants encounter difficulties with certain types of tag questions, especially irregular canonical tag questions. The difficulties are ascribed to many reasons such as overgeneralizationof the formation rule, partial application of the formation rule, lack of subject-agreement, wrong verb form and misconception of the polarity rule. Essentially, the non-existence of tag questions in the participants’ first language i.e. Arabic may be the most prominent reason for the participants’ inability to provide accurate answers on the test. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications that may assist teachers of English as a second/foreign language to highlight the correct use of tag questions in English in the classroom.

Italian tag questions and their conversational functions

This study examines the use of tag questions in Italian conversation. We propose a classification of their discourse functions, and provide an account of their syntactic and discourse contexts. The data used are recordings of conversation in several settings: experimental game settings, a reality TV show, and TV and radio talk shows, for a total of 60.4h. The analysis uncovered seven main functions, some of which do not conform to existing classifications in the literature. We explore the relationship between these functions and the conversational settings in which they are used, their placement within the utterance, and their relationship with asymmetries in participants’ leadership roles in specific settings.

A generalized question tag in English

In several (colloquial) varieties of English around the world, the tag question is reduced to a single generalized invariant tag ‘isn't it?’. This is used irrespective of the general structure and semantic content of the matrix or main, superordinate clause that embeds it. Linguists started debating seriously on the actual use of tag questions in English since the early 1960s and 70s. The debates then were particularly focused on the use of tags on (elliptical) imperatives, with many concluding that the auxiliary in the imperative main clause is an elliptical will that serves as the source of input for the tag that is appended (Katz & Postal, 1964; Postal, 1966). Arbini (1969) discussed the putative parallel between tag imperatives and tag questions, and other early discussions on tags include Bolinger (1967), Huddleston (1970), and Klima (1964). The present discussion looks to a different direction. As already implied, it focuses on the emergence of isn't it? as a generalized invariant tag.

A comparative study of tag questions in four Asian Englishes from a corpus-based approach

The purpose of this study was to describe and compare the features and use of tag questions in four Outer Circle Asian Englishes in order to investigate how a variant tag questions system of English has been modified in the process of indigenization. Four Asian Englishes were analyzed using the International Corpus of English, namely, Hong Kong English (ICE-HK), Philippine English (ICE-PHI), Indian English (ICE-IND), and Singapore English (ICE-SIN). The Canadian corpus of ICE was also analyzed in order to enable comparison with an Inner Circle English. A search using concordance software yielded 181 tag questions in ICE-HK, 54 in ICE-PHI, 125 in ICE-IND, 284 in ICE-SIN, and 167 in ICE-CAN. The features of tag questions were statistically analyzed and compared from the following points: frequency of occurrence, text types, polarity, features of tags, and grammatical agreement between anchors and tags. The use of tag questions was then analyzed by classifying tag questions into seven functional categories: informational, confirmatory, facilitative, attitudinal, peremptory, aggressive, and others. Relationships between polarity types and functions were investigated as well. The results indicated that Asian Englishes have characteristic features especially in terms of the polarity and the main use of tag questions. Two potential explanations, namely, the influence of substrate languages and the developmental phases of Englishes, are discussed.

Tag Questions in Hong Kong English: A Corpus-based Study

This corpus-based study reports on a quantitative and qualitative account of the use of tag questions in Hong Kong English. About two hundred instances of question tags were extracted from the Hong Kong component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-HK). Tag questions are more than nine times as frequent in spoken texts as in written texts. Hong Kong speakers of English tend to use disproportionately more positive-positive tag constructions (e.g., It’s pretty, is it?) than native English speakers, yielding a high error rate of tag question production. Is it? is used as a universal question tag. Results concerning pragmatic functions reveal a higher use of ‘confirmatory’ tags encouraging participation of speakers in conversation. The conclusion discusses possible pedagogical implications of the tendencies of tag questions in Hong Kong English.

Language and persuasion: Tag questions as powerless speech or as interpreted in context

Research in impression formation and persuasion has considered use of tag questions as part of a powerless speech style. However, little research has examined how contextual factors, such as characteristics of the communicator, moderates whether tag questions act “powerless”. The present study manipulated source credibility, tag question use, and argument quality. When the source was low in credibility, tag question use decreased persuasion and biased message processing relative to a control message. However, when the source was credible, tag questions increased message processing in a relatively objective manner. Therefore, it appears that tag questions can have different effects on information processing, depending on who uses the tag questions.

The impact of gender and its interaction with role and status on the use of tag questions in meetings

The use of tag questions in speech has been hypothesised to make speech sound uncertain and tentative although Holmes (1984) suggests that there are three different types of tag questions and only one type is linked to uncertainty. Research on the issue of gender differences in tag question usage has produced confusing findings with some research indicating women use more tag questions, other research revealing men use more and some research finding no difference. The research on tag question use has identified role and power as important factors not just gender. The effects of the presence of the opposite sex on speech is a controversial area of study. Past research suggests that the use of tag questions is affected by whether the conversation is between members of the same sex or members of both sexes. The current study aimed to clarify the controversy of whether men or women use more tag questions, any possible effects of group composition and sought to extend research on the relationship of tag question use to role (chairperson or not) and power (highest status or not). The study was conducted at a power station in England. Ten business meetings which were all male, all female or mixed were tape recorded. From these tape recordings the tag questions were identified, transcribed and classified as modal, affective facilitative or affective softener according to the classification provided by Holmes (1984).