W1A-012 Tag questions-0.txt
TAG QUESTIONS AS IN SPOKEN NORTHERN IRELAND INTERVIEWS

STEP BY STEP ACCOUNT OF THE PROJECT.

1. DECIDING THE TOPIC

In order to get some ideas of what topic I could use for my project, I went throught my course text books and class notes from the areas we had covered in class. These gave rise to several ideas eg. The Four Maxims of Speech, or the use of and difference between "between" and "through". However, the subject of tag questions has always interested me and so I have used this opportunity to study the topic further.

2. EXPANDING THE IDEA

I took my ideas to my tutor, Dr J Kirk, who made various suggestions which we discussed together. One of these was that I could consider the topic of questions as a whole, that is including all types of questions (yes/no questions, wh- questions, declarative questions, and tag questions.) However I decided that in the time space available, it would not be either practical or possible to do an adequately detailed analysis of the subject.

3. THE DATA

The next thing to consider was data - what type of data I wanted, how I could get it, how much I should collect. I decided to use Northern Irish media as a source for my unrecorded data and Dr Kirk suggested the Northern Ireland Corpus of Transcribed Speech for my already recorded data. He volunteered to make a concordance for me from his computer files of possible tag questions, and provided me with this in both computer print out and cassette tapes.

4. RECORDING AND USING THE DATA

I researched into the names of the Northern Irish TV and radio presenters and the times of their shows and proceeded to tape the following programs: Gerry Anderson 10.12.92, 14.12.92 George Jones 9.12.92, 10.12.92, 14.12.92, 15.12.92, 23.12.92 John Kelly 10.12.92, 15.18.92, 18.12.92 Rose Neill 10.12.92, 15.12.92 Sean Rafferty 10.12.92, 15.12.92 It was at this point that I decided not to record any more TV programs, because I had no TV in my flat in Belfast and could only record on weekends when I went home.

After listening to the recordings I decided to concentrate ononly one presenter rather than on all five. I chose George Jones because: 1. he had a wide ranges of guests on his program, ranging from eight year old school children to AA traffic reporters. So a whole range of sex, age and social background was covered. 2. His was the only program to have a majority of interviews with N. Ireland people. The others eg. Sean Rafferty had English or Southern Irish celebrities. 3. He also had more tag questions on his program compared to the others.

I then transcribed the five George Jones tapes - tapes 1 and 2 I transcribed fully to give an idea of the frequency of occurances of tag questions in conversation. Tapes 3, 4 and 5, I only gave a short paragraph to identify context.

I then listed 50 tag questions found in these tapes. (The amount had been predecided on the advice of Dr Kirk.)

I then went through the NITC (Northern Ireland Transcribed Corpus of Speech) concordance and listed the 16 tag questions found in it.

5. RECORDING INTONATION
I went through my own five tapes of George Jones programs and a further fifteen tapes from the NITC and recorded the intonation patterns of the tag questions, that whether they rose (marked and refered to as /) or whether they fell (marked and <{> refered to as \).
6. RESEARCH INTO ARTICLES WRITTEN ON THE SUBJECT

I read the following articles on tag questions: (1) John Algeo, It's a myth innit? Politeness and the English Tag Question. (2) S. Greenbaum, R. Quirk, A Student's Grammar of the English Language, pp.234-235, Tag Questions. 11.6. (Longman, 1990). (3) Siv Nasslin, The English Tag Question: A Study of Sentences Containing Tags of the Type Isn't it?, Is it?. Pp. 21-25, 26-35, 36-37, 47-62. (4) University of Ulster, Belfast Working Papers in Language and Linguistics. John M. Kirk, Tag Questions, Pragmatics, and the Expression of Solidarity in Dramatic Texts, pp 228-266. (5) Richard A. Hudson, The Meaning of Questions pp 1-29

The following are brief summaries of (1)- (4).

(1) JOHN ALGEO

Algeo's rather humorous article was to undermine the belief that tag questions used by the British people as a whole were not a polite device, but rather the opposite. He highlights the following five uses of tag questions: 1. Informal Tags; used mainly to ask for information. The speaker values the person to whom he is talking more than at any other time. Speaker asks for information without presuming to know what the hearer will say. It will have a rising intonation.

2. Confirmatory Tags; to draw the person addressed into the conversation, the speaker assumes the hearer will agree with the truth of the statement. Is an invitation to express agreement, usually with a falling tone.

3. Punctuational Tags; to emphasize the point which the speaker has just made, and asks the hearer to pay attention to the speaker rather than actually participate.

4. Peremptory Tags; usually used in response to a statement the speaker does not want to hear or a question he does not want to answer. It usually follows a statement of obvious truth, and tends to be condescending and impatient. The effect of it is to leave the hearer speechless. It is a signal the speaker wants to avoid the subject and considers the conversation at an end.

5. Aggressive Tags; follows a statement that is by no means obvious and that the addressee cannot be reasonably expected to know. It is insulting and provocative. Eg. (his example) A I rang this morning but you didn't answer. B Well, I was having a bath, wasn't I?

4. and 5. are part of a response to a question, or an implied question, or a suggestion for action. They are both antagonistic (of two extremes) and oppose cooperative communication.

(2) R. QUIRK

The most common type of tag question is one with reversed polarity, in the form of a yes/no question. It consists of an operator and a subject pronoun, a choice of operator and a pronoun, and can have either a rising or falling intonation. Thus there are four main types of tag question sentences; (a) negative statement, positive tag, falling tone (b) negative statement, positive tag, rising tone (c) positive statement, negative tag, falling tone (d) positive statement, negative tag, rising tone

The meaning of the tag question involved a statement and a question, that is, it asserts something and then invites a response.

There are two factors involved - ASSUMPTION and EXPECTATION. The first expressed by the statement, the latter by a question. it It is therefore possible to distinguish four types 1) Positive assumption, neutral expectation + - 2) Negative assumption, neutral expectation - + 3) Positive assumption, positive expectation + - 4) Negative assumption, negative expectation - +

A tag with a rising tone invites verification, while one with a falling tone invites confirmation of the statement. The latter tends to be an exclamation rather than a genuine question, and sometimes the truth is self-evident and no answer is needed.

The least common type has a positive statement and question, usually with a rising tone and is used sometimes with a tone of sarcastic suspicion. The statement itself is usually proceeded by "oh" or "so", indicating the speaker's arrival at the conclusion by inference or by recalling what has already been said.

3) SIV NASSLIN

In chapter 2, Nasslin uses two analyses by Cattell and Ogawa to discuss Semantic Underlying Structure and Analyses.

Cattell discusses how APTS (tag sentences) differ because of the different points of view of the speaker. If, he says the tone is falling, the speaker has a confident viewpoint and is inviting agreement; if on the other hand the tone is rising, we see a more tentative advancement of the speaker's view. He also deals with <{> th truth value of the proposition, expressed by the speaker in the RC (reference clause).

In chapter 3 he deals with SC (sincerity conditions), and modifies and develops Rishard Hudson's article. He lists 4 SC's 1) The speaker believes the propositions is true. 2) The speaker believes that the hearer knows at least as well as he he himself does that/whether the proposition is true or false. 3) The speaker does not express any personal opinion as to the truth of the proposition, he merely reports what other people say. The speaker has only reasons to believe that the hearer/other people or the hearer and other people believe the proposition is true. 4) The speaker wants the proposition, which is that the interlocutor is going to do something, to be true. In the fourth chapter he gives a summary of the discussion of SC's, which is as follows; 1) The rp (reversed polarity) and cp (constant polarity) APTS's have different SC's in their RC's: rp APTS's normally have SC 1) CP APTS's normally have SC 3)

2) In a strict interpretation of syntax in the rp De-APST (a declarative with tag) and rp Ex-APTS opposing SC's are arrived at leading to conduciveness, but only as one possible interpretation among others.

3) There is ambiguity as to whose opinion is expressed (ie. The interoculator's

or other people's) in the RC of the cp APTS as long as pragmatis factors are not considered. (The basic or at least most frequent meaning is that the interlocutors opinion that the proposition is true is expressed. It is also possible that the proposition is both the opinion of the others and the <{> onterlocutor.)

4) The exhortations, especially the Im-APTS (imperative with tag) differ from cp APTS's with other functions in not having SC's. (It is proposed in present study that the exhortations have an implied RC to which the tag belongs.) The Im-APTS is in reality an Im-De-APTS, whether tag is positive or negative.
5) In interrogatives (whether in APTS or independent sentences used as an exclamation.) function of n't means to tell us the speaker believes the interlocutor thinks the propositon

is true. Prosody tells us that the interrogative is an exclamation.
6) An interrogative used as an exhortation gets a tag due to the new SC (SC1. instead of SC2.). This results in a negative cp APTS functioning as a rp APTS.

7) Difference between what the negative interrogative (untagged) and the rp APTS express is not due to their having different SC's. It is a result of how the SC's are in balanced relation to each other, ie. which of the SC's is focused on.
8) A speaker can pretend that he believes a proposition to be true (SC1), or he can pretend that he is neutral to a proposition (SC 3), and he can pretend that he believes the interlocutor knows at least as well as he himself does whether the proposition is ture

or not (SC 2). The difference in what the speaker pretends leads to different types of iriny being used.
He discusses speaker attitudes and included are the two functions - conduciveness and softening, which are the two basic attitudes of the speaker and whose varieties include impatience, rudeness and assertiveness.

4) JOHN KIRK

The purpose of Dr. Kirk's article which he based on the Miller and Brown Corpus (MB), was to "substantiate their claim that, in discourse, tag questions have indeed an interactional value". He takes the 8 pragmatic categories which MB proposed and among other things shows the wide range of illocutionary functions of tag questions.(p. 228) The eight categories are as follows;

CATEGORY A

Proposition-factual Speaker proposition-speaker is uncertain of truth of propostion Hearer proposition-hearer believes proposition might be true but is less sure Interrogative force-weakly conducive Speaker expectation-to let hearer verify/falsify truth of factual proposition for speaker Effect-hearer may or may not comply Polarity-reversed Intonation-falling

CATEGORY B

Proposition-factual Speaker proposition-speaker uncertain of truth of proposition Hearer proposition-hearer believes proposition might be true but is less sure Interrogative force-weakly conducive Speaker expectation-to let the hearer verify or falsify truth of proposition Effect-hearer may or may not comply Polarity-reversed or constant Intonation-rising

CATEGORY C

Proposition-nonfactual Speaker proposition-speaker sure of truth of proposition Hearer proposition-hearer believes proposition to be true and/or is prepared to believe it probably is true Interrogative force-strongly conducive Speaker expectation-to inform hearer of his opinion and let hearer express corroboration Effect-hearer may or may nor express agreement Intonation-falling Polarity-reversed

AN EXPLANATION OF THE QNA ANALYSIS TABLE 1.1

Table 1.1 is an accumulation of the three articles which go together to make up Analysis 1, that is, Quirk, Nasslin, and Algeo. There are 6 headings in the table, and I will now go through each one explaining (1) which article it came from and (2) a brief summary of what it means.

(a) NAME OF TAG

I took these 5 types of tags from Algeo's article pp.445-447. To Algeo, tag questions are "devices by which people relate to one another in the process of a conversation" and the 5 categories are the 5 main uses of the tag question in conversation. They go from one side of the politeness scale to the other, 1 being very polite, and 5 being extremely impolite.

(b) INTONATION

Intonation is dealt with in all 3 articles; Quirk p234, Nasslin p21 and Algeo pp445-446. However, there is only a specific intonation given by Algeo to 1 and 2. The other categories appear to be able to have either a rising or a falling tone.

(c) MODALITY TYPE

Nasslin deals with modality in Section 6.3 of his book. The term covers "both the view on the proposition and attitudes". Basically there are 3 types of modality; (1) cognitive - the speaker's view on the truth of the proposition eg. certainty, uncertainty. (2) volitive - the speaker's wish to influence the interoculator. (3) emotive - this includes softening, reinforcement, surprise, expectation agreement, and others such as interruption or objection.(p60)
