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“We don’t normally require that in other contexts, do we”: Interpersonal meanings of tag questions in British university seminars based on the BASE corpus
This study investigates the interpersonal meanings expressed by English tag questions in the context of British university seminars from two dimensions: evidential modification of tags and conduciveness of responses. The data for the study derive from seminars in the British Academic Spoken English...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9871887/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36704696 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1070937 |
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author | Wei, Lifang Leung, Alex Ho-Cheong Sun, Yufeng |
author_facet | Wei, Lifang Leung, Alex Ho-Cheong Sun, Yufeng |
author_sort | Wei, Lifang |
collection | PubMed |
description | This study investigates the interpersonal meanings expressed by English tag questions in the context of British university seminars from two dimensions: evidential modification of tags and conduciveness of responses. The data for the study derive from seminars in the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) Corpus, which is herein both quantitative and qualitative analyzed. The findings reveal that: (1) three-quarters of tag questions in the data are utilized by teachers, and the unmarked form of tag questions in university seminars are generally positive-negative forms, with a few examples of other varieties; (2) regarding evidential modification of tags, depending on the degree of epistemic certainty of the speakers on the proposition of the anchor, the default function of teachers’ tag questions in the data is to convey emphasis, followed by confirmatory function, with only a few cases of informational function; and (3) regarding conduciveness of responses, over 70% of tag questions are followed by no verbal response, while less than 30% are followed by explicit responses. Accordingly, these findings raise the question of whether tag questions can really provide sufficient scope for interactions in classroom. It is hoped that this nuanced, corpus-based analysis of tag question utilization within the context of British university seminars would empirically reveal the interpersonal relations between teachers and students and thereby shed light on more efficient seminar discussions. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9871887 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-98718872023-01-25 “We don’t normally require that in other contexts, do we”: Interpersonal meanings of tag questions in British university seminars based on the BASE corpus Wei, Lifang Leung, Alex Ho-Cheong Sun, Yufeng Front Psychol Psychology This study investigates the interpersonal meanings expressed by English tag questions in the context of British university seminars from two dimensions: evidential modification of tags and conduciveness of responses. The data for the study derive from seminars in the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) Corpus, which is herein both quantitative and qualitative analyzed. The findings reveal that: (1) three-quarters of tag questions in the data are utilized by teachers, and the unmarked form of tag questions in university seminars are generally positive-negative forms, with a few examples of other varieties; (2) regarding evidential modification of tags, depending on the degree of epistemic certainty of the speakers on the proposition of the anchor, the default function of teachers’ tag questions in the data is to convey emphasis, followed by confirmatory function, with only a few cases of informational function; and (3) regarding conduciveness of responses, over 70% of tag questions are followed by no verbal response, while less than 30% are followed by explicit responses. Accordingly, these findings raise the question of whether tag questions can really provide sufficient scope for interactions in classroom. It is hoped that this nuanced, corpus-based analysis of tag question utilization within the context of British university seminars would empirically reveal the interpersonal relations between teachers and students and thereby shed light on more efficient seminar discussions. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-01-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9871887/ /pubmed/36704696 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1070937 Text en Copyright © 2023 Wei, Leung and Sun. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Wei, Lifang Leung, Alex Ho-Cheong Sun, Yufeng “We don’t normally require that in other contexts, do we”: Interpersonal meanings of tag questions in British university seminars based on the BASE corpus |
title | “We don’t normally require that in other contexts, do we”: Interpersonal meanings of tag questions in British university seminars based on the BASE corpus |
title_full | “We don’t normally require that in other contexts, do we”: Interpersonal meanings of tag questions in British university seminars based on the BASE corpus |
title_fullStr | “We don’t normally require that in other contexts, do we”: Interpersonal meanings of tag questions in British university seminars based on the BASE corpus |
title_full_unstemmed | “We don’t normally require that in other contexts, do we”: Interpersonal meanings of tag questions in British university seminars based on the BASE corpus |
title_short | “We don’t normally require that in other contexts, do we”: Interpersonal meanings of tag questions in British university seminars based on the BASE corpus |
title_sort | “we don’t normally require that in other contexts, do we”: interpersonal meanings of tag questions in british university seminars based on the base corpus |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9871887/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36704696 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1070937 |
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