SYNTACTIC AND PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH TAG QUESTION

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY LÊ THỊ TỐ UYÊN SYNTACTIC AND PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH TAG QUESTION ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ DỤNG HỌC CỦA CÂU HỎI TÁCH BIỆ

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

LÊ THỊ TỐ UYÊN

SYNTACTIC AND PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH TAG

QUESTION

(ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ DỤNG HỌC CỦA CÂU HỎI TÁCH BIỆT

TRONG TIẾNG ANH)

M.A THESIS Field: English Language

Hanoi, 2019

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS Field: English Language

Code: 8220201

SYNTACTIC AND PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH TAG

QUESTION

(ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ DỤNG HỌC CỦA CÂU HỎI TÁCH BIỆT

TRONG TIẾNG ANH)

LÊ THỊ TỐ UYÊN Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Vo Dai Quang

Hanoi, 2019

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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled

“The syntactic and pragmatic features of English tag question” submitted in

partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This thesis could not have been completed without the help and support from a

number of people I would like, hereby, to express my profound gratitude to my

supervisor Assoc Prof Dr Vo Dai Quang who has patiently and constantly supported

me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher Also, I am very grateful to all the teachers at the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies of Hanoi Open University for their interesting and useful lectures which have built in me

a firm foundation with immense ideas for the fulfillment of this paper

In conducting this research, I have benefited a lot of ideas from the research work:

“The Syntax and Pragmatics o f English Tag Questions: A Study o f Adult Arabic Learners of English” by Imad Al-Nabtiti”

Last but not least, I should also express my heartfelt thanks to my family who have supported me a lot during my studies and my research work as well

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ABSTRACT

In English, tag questions play an important part in communicative process People are not able to communicate well without making and answering questions In reality, people make tag question for confirmation or checking information It is obvious that tag questions cannot be missed in communication However, there are several problems when using tag questions Therefore, the purpose of this study is to describe the syntactic and pragmatic features of English tag questions This study used both quantitative and qualitative methods as the main ones In addition, a descriptive method was also used to shed light into the features of these English structures in terms of syntax and pragmatic Finally, some other methods and techniques such as statistical technique and error method were also used by the writer of this paper to measure the chosen participants‟ ability to respond to a written test and an oral test In the previous research, the syntactic and pragmatic features were shown However, this study‟s contributions are: describing the syntactic and pragmatic features of English tag question and pointing out the commonly errors committed by students at Nguyen Thi Minh Khai high school and the solutions to the errors will be recommended These findings will be useful

written test

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Table 6 Rhetorical tag question 41

Table 7 Verb tenses in English tag question 46 Table 8 Intonation of English tag questions based on pragmatic

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES iv

LIST OF FIGURES iv

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the Study 1

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study 2

1.2.1 Aims of the study 2

1.2.2 Objectives of the study 2

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 Methods of the study 2

1.5 Scope of the study 2

1.6 Significance of the study 3

1.6.1 Theoretical significance 3

1.6.2 Practical significance 3

1.7 Design of the study 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Previous studies 4

2.2 Theoretical background 5

2.2.1 An overview of syntactic features 5

2.2.2 An overview of pragmatic features 12

2.2.3 Summary 19

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 20

3.1 Approaches 20

3.2 Methods 25

3.3 Data collection instruments 26

3.4 Data analysis technique 27

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 28

4.1 Syntactic features of tag question in English 28

4.2 Pragmatic features of tag question in English 37

4.3 The possible solutions for learning and teaching English tag question at

Nguyen Thi Minh Khai high school 43

4.4 Summary 47

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION 48

5.1 Recapitulation 48

5.2 Concluding remarks 48

5.2 Limitations of the current research 50

5.3 Recommendations/Suggestions for further study 50

REFERENCES 51

Book 51

Website 52

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Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale for the Study

Tag Questions are important devices in the English language and are used very often by native speakers Almost all languages have tag questions; however, Canonical Tag Questions are unique to the English language (Bublitz, 1979) and mastering them requires a high level of proficiency in English (Holmes, 1982) In terms of formal properties, canonical English tag questions are sensitive to three main factors: the choice of auxiliary and pronoun, polarity (negation), and intonation pattern Even though the general uses of tag questions follow the described constraints, their actual use in real life appears to be much more complex (Ann, 2011,

p 6)

Students over the world find learning question tags in English confusing and difficulty because some Asian languages don‟t have question tags The results of the survey in Vietnamese students' classrooms are also given the fact that English tag questions is still limited because of commonly mistakes To overcoming these obstacles is probably a big challenge for students This is also the reason why students lack confidence in using English tag questions to communicate

This study investigates to find out what are the syntactic and pragmatic features of English tag questions The results of the study reveal that non-native speakers cannot use Canonical Tag Questions appropriately because of the syntactic complexity of these kinds of questions, but because of their pragmatic requirements The results also show possible solutions to mistakes commonly committed by students at Nguyen Thi Minh khai high school

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1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study

1.2.1 Aims of the study

This research is aimed at helping students to have an insightful look at the syntactic and pragmatic features of English tag question

The findings of this research are expected to improve the ability to use English tag question effectively; particularly, in the teaching and learning of English tag question

1.2.2 Objectives of the study

To achieve the aims mentioned above, following objectives are put forward:

(1) Describing the syntactic and pragmatics features of English tag questions;

(2) Pointing out possible solutions for mistakes commonly committed by students at Nguyen Thi Minh khai high school when they use English tag question

1.3 Research questions

The paper will attempt to answer three following questions:

• What are the syntactic and pragmatic features of tag question?

• What are the mistakes commonly committed by students at Nguyen Thi Minh Khai high school?

• What are the possible solutions to the mistakes?

1.4 Methods of the study

The thesis is conducted by combining the main research approaches which are mixed method, quantitative method , qualitative method which are carried out with the following orientations

- Various sources of printed publications as books, articles, journals will be used as

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The participants of the study are students in class 12A1 at Nguyen Thi Minh Khai high school The level of the students is good They have studied about English tag question

1.6 Significance of the study

of learning English question

1.7 Design of the study

With the purpose of creating an easy-understanding research, this paper is divided into five chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Introduction of the thesis in which rationale of the study, aims of the study, scope of the study, method of the study, design of the study is introduced to give the background of the study

Chapter 2: Literature review

This part refers to the overview of some studies on English tag questions, provides the basic knowledge about the tag questions in English

In Vietnam, Nguyen Thi Ngan (2016) indicates the features of tag questions

in English with their Vietnamese equivalents in terms of syntactic and semantic features The author makes comparison of tag questions between English and Vietnamese and points out the similarities and differences between the two languages (Ngan, 2016)

In over the world, Imad Al-Nabtiti (2012) reveals that non-native speakers cannot use Canonical Tag Questions appropriately not because of the syntactic complexity of these kinds of questions, but because of their pragmatic requirements The results also show the importance of incorporating a pragmatic theory and the social contexts in which discourses take place in ESL curricula

Besides, Gunnel Tottie and Sebastian Hoffmann (2009) states that Canonical tag questions in Present-day English (PDE) have received ample coverage in the literature, but their historical development has so far been given little attention

Furthermore, enka Vondrus ov (2007) shows how the English question tags are translated into Czech It points out the frequency and types of question tags encountered by translators of fiction, the meanings and communicative functions they convey, and the means of expression used to translate them The thesis provides an overview of existing translations and at least partly clarify their foundation, thus outlining translation equivalence of the English and Czech structures (Vondrus ov , 2017)

Finally, Qiyun Zhang (2010) points out that questioning or being questioned is

a necessity in communicative activities The tag question plays an important role in everyday communication In the tag mechanism of those questions, the

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tags are not formed in accordance with the general forming rules So, learners often commit errors This paper studies the types and causes of errors of the tag question By analyzing these error sources, the learner can avoid and benefit from errors Thus, they can understand tag questions better (Qiyun, 2010)

2.2 Theoretical background

2.2.1 An overview of syntactic features

Syntax refers to the ways symbols may be combined to create formed programs in the language It defines the formal relations between the constituents of a language, thereby providing a structural description of the various expressions that make up legal strings in the language

well-According to Peter Svenonius (2017), the theory of features in syntax derives from earlier work in morphology and phonology, especially the foundational work in the first half of the twentieth century by Jakobson and Trubetzkoy and others (e.g., Jakobson 1990 [1942], Jakobson et al 1951; see Clements and Hume 1995, Halle et al 2000 for discussion) In phonology the term feature is normally used in the restrictive sense of

“distinctive features” of phonemes—all and only the properties that are necessary to uniquely distinguish each item in the phoneme inventory of a language These properties are normally assumed to be phonetically (or ar- ticulatorily) grounded They define natural classes For example, a distinctive feature distinguishes /p/ from /b/ in English, as demonstrated by the ex- istence of minimal pairs such as pray and bray In contrast, no distinctive feature distinguishes the aspirated /p/ ([ph]) in pat from the unaspirated one in spat or ape (Svenonius, 2017 , p 2)

In Syntactic Structures, Chomsky lays down the foundation of transformational grammar and tries to construct a formalized theory of linguistic structure He begins by focusing on the grammar of a language, stating that the grammar of a language is the device that generates all sensical and nonsensical sequences of words for a language Afterwards, Chomsky argues that the fundamental aim of linguistic analysis of a

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language is to separate grammatical sequences from ungrammatical sequences of a language and to study the structure of the grammatical sequences From there he concludes that grammar is autonomous and independent of meaning For the rest of his book Chomsky argues that language utilizes a transformational grammar that has a natural tripartite arrangement consisting of: phrase structure rules, transformational rules, and morphophonemic rules Syntactic Structures is regarded as one of the most influential pieces on current linguistic theory From there on out, Chomsky

co

ntinued to prove that he is an academic intellectual His later linguistic and philosophical works assert that most of grammar is innate knowledge and has been termed universal grammar This has had strong support in the field

of psychology and has directly challenged many behaviorist theories and prior theories that have attempted to explain how children learn language and gain the ability to use language (Keller, 2012)

Other scholar such as Leonard Bloomfield (1939) considered syntax was the study of free forms that were composed entirely of free forms Central to his theory of syntax were the notions of form classes and constituentstructure (These notions were also relevant, though less central, in the theory of morphology.) Bloomfield defined form classes, rather imprecisely, in terms

of some common “recognizable phonetic or grammatical feature” shared by all the members He gave as examples the form class consisting of

“personal substantive expressions” in English (defined as “the forms that, when spoken with exclamatory final pitch, are calls for a person‟s presence

or attention”—e.g., “John,” “Boy,” “Mr Smith”); the form class consisting

of “infinitive expressions” (defined as “forms which, when spoken with exclamatory final pitch, have the meaning of a command”—e.g., “run,”

“jump,” “come here”); the form class of “nominative substantive expressions” (e.g., “John,” “the boys”); and so on It should be clear from these examples that form classes are similar to, though not identical with, the traditional parts of speech and that one and the same form can belong to

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more than one form class What Bloomfield had in mind as the criterion for form class membership (and therefore of syntactic equivalence) may best be expressed in terms of substitutability Form classes are sets of forms (whether simple or complex, free or bound), any one of which may be substituted for any other in a given construction or set of constructions throughout the sentences of the language (Brittanica, 1995)

Question tags are formed in several ways, and many languages give a choice of formation In some languages the most common is a single word or fixed phrase, whereas in others it is formed by a regular grammatical construction

Word order of English tag question:

According to Luke Maurits, basic word order is essentially grounded on properties of a certain kind of sentence The kind of sentence we are interested

in is the declarative sentence, that is, a sentence which makes a statement about something, rather than being asking a question or issuing a command Furthermore, it is a declarative sentence which states, very loosely, that something has done something to something else Examples of the sort of sentence we are interested in, in English, are:

(1) The dog bit the man

(2) John kissed Mary

(3) A fire destroyed the town

Note that we are not interested in declarative sentences involving more than two items (or two noun phrases), such as “John gave Mary the book” An underlying assumption in trying to define basic word order is that all languages contain sentences of the kind described above

The sentences we are interested can typically be analysed as having three constituents: a subject (S), a verb (V) and an object (O) For instance, in “the dog bit the man”, the subject is “the dog”, the verb is “bit” and the object is

“the man” As a matter of logical necessity, any such sentence must place these three constituents in some linear order, for example SVO in the case of “the dog bit the man” (or, indeed, all of the three example sentences above) There

(4) Inu ga otoko o kamimashita

Dog (subj) man (acc) bit

“The dog bit the man”

As a first approximation to a definition, then, we can say that the basic word order of a language is the ordering of subject, verb and object which best characterizes declarative sentences in that language In many cases, assigning a basic word order to a language is quite straightforward and this sort of informal definition is arguably entirely adequate For example, speakers of English should have little trouble in convincing themselves that English has a basic word order of SVO However, if we wish to assign a single basic word order, with confidence, to every language in the world, we rapidly run into a number

of complications and suddenly things are not so straightforward The following section deals with the major sources of this trouble (Maurits, 2011, p 10) English tag questions are shown in the table below, with either reversed or

constant polarity in the main clause, henceforth called the anchor, and in the tag The subject of the anchor can be any noun, a pronoun, or there The verb

of English tag question can be of any type, but in the tag, the subject must be

either a personal pronoun, one, or there, and the operator can only be a form of have, be, or do, or a modal verb Besides, tag questions with truncated

anchors—normally deletion of subject and verb—as well as imperatives can have either Positive-Negative or Negative-Positive polarity (Hoffmann, 2009,

p 131)

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(1) Makes you really

Table 1: Word order in English tag questions

Types of English tag question:

The different varieties o f tag questions make it difficult to set up a clear and systematic categorization of them; however, there is a sort of agreement among scholars who dealt with tag questions on dividing them into two categories: canonical tag questions and invariant tag questions

Bublitz (1979) mentions that there are two kinds of tag questions in the English language: lexical tag questions such as “right, okay”; and the intonational tag

“eh” Cheng and Warren (2001), on the other hand, adopt a different definition that classifies tag questions into two categories: canonical tag questions, with both matching and contrasting polarity, e.g., “It is hot, is it?” and “It is hot, isn‟t it?” and invariant tag questions, e.g., “right” The canonical tag question with contrastive polarity is referred to as a “checking tag” and the one with matching polarity is referred to as a copy tag “Word tags”, according to Cheng and W arren (2001), refer to invariant tags

Holmes (1982) also argues that tag questions in the English language can

be classified into two categories One is “the grammatically complex tag forms” (Holmes, 9

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1982, p 41) which also can be referred to as canonical tag questions, e.g., “It

is going to rain tomorrow, isn‟t it?” and the other type is “grammatically simple tags” (Holmes,

1982, p 41) which can be refereed to as invariant tag questions such as “right and okay” The syntactic form o f canonical tag questions involves an auxiliary verb that agrees with the host sentence in tense and number, a pronoun, and matching or contrasting polarity The form ofthe canonical tag question should agree with the subject and the auxiliary of the preceding host sentence in number, gender and tense On the other hand, the invariant tag question involves words, such as “right”, “eh”, “okay” and “yeah” and does not have to change its form to agree with gender, number or tense o f the host sentence The invariant tag question is less formal than the canonical tag question Sometimes these invariant tag questions are referred to as response elicitors or response getters because they aim to elicit a response from the listener or promote interaction in the conversation (Biber et al., 2002)

This study adopts Holmes‟s (1982) categorization o f tag questions So, in this study canonical tag question will be used to refer to the grammatically complex tag forms and invariant tag question will be used to refer to tag words such as “right and okay” (Al-Nabtiti, 2013, p 9)

Typical intonation of English tag question

The term intonation refers to a means for conveying information in speech which is independent of the words and their sounds Central to intonation is the modulation of pitch, and intonation is often thought of as the use of pitch over the domain of the utterance However, the patterning of pitch in speech is so closely bound to patterns of timing and loudness, and sometimes voice quality, that we cannot consider pitch in isolation from these other dimensions The interaction of intonation and stress — the patterns of relative prominence which characterise an utterance — is particularly close in many languages, including English For those who prefer to reserve „intonation‟ for pitch effects

in speech, the word „prosody‟ is convenient as a more general term to include patterns of pitch, timing, loudness, and (sometimes) voice quality In this

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Chapter, however, intonation will be used to refer to the collaboration of all these dimensions, and, where necessary, the term „melody‟ will be used to refer specifically to the pitch-based component

Intonation is used to carry a variety of different kinds of information It signals grammatical structure, though not in a one-to-one way; whilst the end of a complete intonation pattern will normally coincide with the end of a grammatical structure such as a sentence or clause, even quite major grammatical boundaries may lack intonational marking, particularly if the speech is fast Intonation can reflect the information structure of an utterance, highlighting constituents of importance Intonation can indicate discourse function; for instance most people are aware that saying „This is the eeds train‟ with one intonation

constitutes a statement, but, with another, a question Intonation can be used by

a speaker to convey an attitude such as friendliness, enthusiasm, or hostility; and listeners can use intonation-related phenomena in the voice to make inferences about a speaker‟s state, including excitement, depression, and tiredness Intonation can also, for instance, help to regulate turn-taking in conversation, since there are intonational mechanisms speakers can use to indicate that they have had their say, or, conversely, that they are in full flow and don‟t want to be interrupted

Intonation is not the only linguistic device for which pitch is recruited by languages; many languages use pitch to distinguish words In languages around the world as diverse as Thai, Hausa (Nigeria), and Mixtec (Mexico), words are distinguished not only by vowels and consonants but also by the use of one of a limited set of distinctive pitch patterns or heights on each syllable Such languages are called tone languages A number of other languages, such as Swedish and Japanese, make a more limited use of pitch to distinguish words These languages might best be called lexical accent languages All tone languages and lexical accent languages also have intonation, but in general the greater a language‟s use of pitch for distinguishing words, the less scope it has

to develop an elaborate intonation system English, on the other hand, is not a

have rising patterns (e.g Are you coming?), these tags make a grammatical

statement into a real question:

Ex:

You're coming, aren't you?

The falling pattern is used to underline a statement The statement itself ends with a falling pattern, and the tag sounds like an echo, strengthening the pattern Most English tag questions have this falling pattern

Ex:

He doesn't know what he's doing, does he?

The meaning of a tag question can be changed with the pitch of our voice With rising intonation, it sounds like a real question But if our intonation falls, it sounds more like a statement that doesn't require a real answer

2.2.2 An overview of pragmatic features

According to Pininta Veronika Silalahi, pragmatics is a relatively late comer in linguistics It enters the linguistic scene at the end of the 1970s However, to many people, this is a rather new area Pragmatics was a reaction to structural linguistics as outlined by Ferdinand de Saussure In many cases, it expanded upon his idea that language has an analyzable structure, composed of parts that can be defined in relation to others Pragmatics first engaged only in synchronic study, as opposed to examining the historical development of language However, it rejected the notion that all meaning comes from signs existing purely in the abstract space of langue

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Pragmatics deals with utterances, by which we will mean specific events, the intentional acts of speakers at times and places, typically involving language Logic and semantics traditionally deal with properties of types of expressions, and not with properties that differ from token to token, or use to use, or, as we shall say, from utterance to utterance, and vary with the particular properties that differentiate them Pragmatics is sometimes characterized as dealing with the effects of context This is equivalent to saying it deals with utterances, if one collectively refers to all the facts that can vary from utterance to utterance

as „context.‟ One must be careful, however, for the term is often used with more limited meanings (Silalahi, 1945, p 83)

There are many definitions of pragmatics, because this field of linguistics has been so charming and appealing to so many people that each one of them seems to claim an interest in it and define it from different perspective According to Leech (1983: X), pragmatics can be usefully defined as the study

of how utterances have meanings in situations In a way, through this definition, Leech is clearing up the differences between semantics, syntax, and pragmatics What he is trying to say here is like this: Sentences are for syntax, while utterances for pragmatics; sentence meanings free from situations are for semantics, while utterance meanings bound with situations are for pragmatics Crystal (1987: 120) says that pragmatics studies the factors that govern our choice of language in social interaction and the effects of our choice on others This definition emphasizes the absolute roles that context and language users (speaker and hear) play The former is instrumental in framing language users‟ choices of linguistic means for optimal communication outcomes, while the later are solely responsible for the awareness of context or speech environment

in which they are to perform certain functions via language or fulfill specific objectives by utilizing available linguistic means within their capability

eech (1983:6) defines pragmatics as “the study of meaning in relation to speech situations” The speech situation enables the speaker use language to achieve a particular effect on the mind of the hearer.” Thus the speech is goal-oriented (i.e the meaning which the speaker or writer intends to communicate)

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evinson (1983:9) defines pragmatics as “the study of those aspects of the relationship between language and context that are relevant to the writing of grammars.” In this definition that interest is mainly in the interrelation of language and principles of language use that are context dependent While Yule (1996:127), pragmatics is “the study of intended speaker meaning” This definition is in accord with Crystal (1997, p 301) who says that pragmatics is

“the study of language from the point of view of users, especially of the choices they make, the constraints they encounter in using language in social interaction and the effects their use of language has on other participants in the act of communication Mey (1993:42) states that pragmatics is the study of the condition of human language uses as this is determined by the context of society Pragmatic is needed if we want a fuller, deeper, and generally more reasonable account of human language behavior (Silalahi, 1945, p 84)

Principles of Pragmatics is a general map of the terrain It cannot give a

detailed view of every square inch In particular, Leech's treatment of the Textual Rhetoric is not fully worked out, as he himself states There is need for further formalization and testing, analysis of corpus data, cross-cultural studies, and the extension of the discussion to whole texts or discourses, as opposed to individual utterances or small exchanges These are necessary limitations, in the present state of the art We are better off with a general map, since detailed predictions (weak or strong) must await consensus on the outlines (C, G N

L E E, 1983, p 123)

Pragmatic axis of English tag question

In linguistics, information structure, also called information packaging, describes the way in which information is formally packaged within a sentence This generally includes only those aspects of information that “respond to the temporary state of the addressee‟s mind”, and excludes other aspects of linguistic information such as references to background knowledge, choice of style, politeness, and so forth For example, the difference between an active clause (e.g., the police want him) and a corresponding passive (e.g., he is

For example: He is a student, isn‟t he?

The given information is “he is a student” and the unknown information is the confirmation or the denial to the given one The unknown information will be stated by answer the tag “isn‟t it?”

Pragmatic function of English tag questions

According to M.V Tomaselli, A Gatt (2015), depending on discourse context, TQs with the same form can have different functions Most research

on TQ functions has focused on English, though this section will also deal with related work on other languages

In line with the distinction between the speaker‟s stance on a proposition and the interactional impact of a TQ, Holmes (1995) divides TQs into

„epistemic modal‟ and „affective‟ types Epistemic modal TQs „„express genuine speaker uncertainty rather than politeness‟‟ (p 80), as in (1) below Examples (1) to (5) come from Holmes (1995), where a downward slash indicates falling intonation, and an upward slash rising intonation

Ex1: Fay Weldon‟s lecture is at eight /isn‟t it?

Affective TQs are subdivided into „facilitative‟, „softening‟, and

„challenging‟ Facilitative TQs‟‟ are examples of hedges

which serve as positive politeness devices They invite the addressee to contribute to the discourse‟‟ (Holmes, 1995, p 81):

Ex2: You‟ve got a new job Tom \haven‟t you?

Softening TQs, on the other hand, serve a negative politeness function and are used to attenuate the force of negatively affective utterances, for example, directives and criticisms (Holmes, 1995, p 81):

Ex3: Make a cup of tea /would you?

Ex4: That was a really dumb thing to do \wasn‟t it?

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Challenging TQs are „„confrontational strategies [which] may pressure a reluctant addressee to reply or aggressively boost the force of a negative speech act‟‟ (Holmes, 1995, p 80):

Ex5:

A: you‟ll probably find yourself in front of the Chief Constable, /okay?

B: Yes, Sir, yes, understood

A: Now you er fully understand that, \don‟t you? B: Yes, Sir, indeed, yeah

Algeo (1990, 2006) proposes a different classification, and divides TQs into

„informational‟, „confirmatory‟, „punctuational‟, „peremptory‟, and

„aggressive‟ (renamed „antagonistic‟ in Algeo, 2006) When using informational TQs, „„the speaker has an idea about something (the statement preceding the tag), but asks for information without presuming to know what the answerer will say‟‟ (1990, p 445) In fact, in (6) the speaker‟s presupposition turns out to be false

Ex9: I wasn‟t born yesterday, was I?

58 M.V Tomaselli, A Gatt / Journal of Pragmatics 84 (2015) 54 82

The use of an aggressive/antagonistic TQ does something very similar, except that the TQ follows a statement that is not obvious and couldn ‟t possibly be known to the addressee Algeo (1990, p 447) argues that this is insulting and provocative, because it implies that addressees ought to know something they cannot actually know, as in (10)

Ex10:

A: I rang you up this morning, but you didn‟t answer

Q: Well, I was having a bath, wasn‟t I?

There is much overlap between Holmes‟s (1995) and Algeo‟s (1990, 2006) classifications: Informational TQs correspond to epistemic modal TQs, as they demand verification of an assumption Confirmatory TQs correspond to facilitative TQs, drawing the hearer into the conversation (although in the case of confirmatory TQs, the hearer‟s contribution is usually limited to a minimal response, without taking necessarily taking the turn) There is no equivalent of Holmes‟s softening TQs in Algeo‟s classification, and there is

no equivalent of Algeo‟s punctuational TQs in Holmes‟s Algeo‟s remaining categories (peremptory and antagonistic TQs) are subsumed in Holmes‟s challenging tag, all sharing the purpose of putting down the hearer in some way Punctuational TQs can in certain cases be challenging in their pointing

up what the speaker has said, but they are not restricted to that use

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Tottie and Hoffmann (2006) propose their own classification based on corpora of British and American English, which includes all the functions covered so far except softening TQs Like Holmes (1995), they distinguish between confirmatory and facilitative uses, with the further addition of an

„attitudinal‟ category that broadly coincides with Algeo‟s (1990, 2006) punctuational tag, and is also claimed to be a sub-class of Holmes‟s challenging type Interestingly, they observe that confirmatory, attitudinal and facilitative TQs account for around 90% of occurrences in their corpora, with a much lower percentage (3%) of informational uses Roesle (2001) also adds categories: „Involving‟ TQs, roughly coinciding with Holmes‟s facilitative uses, and „hoping/fearing‟ and „conspiracy‟, under the affective macro-category The conspiracy category accounts for cases in which both speaker and listener are aware of the truth of a proposition, and are using the

TQ for the benefit of a third party By contrast, hoping/fearing uses express

a speaker‟s hope or fear that the proposition carried by the anchor might be true, for example: I didn‟t offend you, did I?

The table below summarizes the primary functions discussed so far (Maria Vittoria Tomaselli *, 2015, p 57)

Algeo (1990) Holmes (1995) Roesle (2001) Tottie and

Hoffmann (2006) Informational

Challenging Challenging Challenging Softening

Confirmatory Involving Punctuational Peremptory Aggressive Informational Hopeful/fearful:

Conspiracy

Confirmatory Facilitating Attitudinal Peremptory Aggressive Informational Other types Other types

Table 2: Canonical TQs identified in English by various authors Genuine tag question

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Genuine means "real" or "not fake So seeking information is usually conducted by genuine question

Tag question is used to check information or to ask for agreement If we use

a rising intonation in the tag, we do not know or are not quite sure of the answer If we use a falling intonation in the tag, we are seeking the agreement of the person we are talking to

We can reply to tag questions either with simple yes/no answers (negative tags normally expect a yes answer and positive tags normally expect a no answer)

or by using yes/no + auxiliary verb

Rhetorical tag question

Rhetorical tag question is by forming a question right after a statement to mean the opposite of what you said Except the purpose of seeking information, its

aims are also confirmation, and affective tag questions, which perform various discourse functions such as expressing speaker opinion or attitude (attitudinal tag questions), challenging or putting down an addressee (peremptory and aggressive tag questions), or involving the interlocutor in conversation (facilitative tag questions)

On the level of pragmatic study, we focus on the pragmatic axis of English tag question, Pragmatic function of English tag question, genuine tag question, and rhetorical tag question

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Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this chapter is to give an in-depth account on the research methodology used in the study First, the author will provide a detailed presentation on the subjects of the study, including the information about who they were, the number of subjects willing for the participation of the test, and finally the reason why they were chosen as the valid and reliable sample of the study Next, the instrumentation that the writer of this paper used to collect the database for a thorough investigation of English tag question and the procedures that she followed in order to achieve that will be clearly presented Finally, the statistical analysis will also be described All the data collected will

be sources for the next chapter

3.1 Approaches

This research will be investigated base on four approaches: mixed methods approach, qualitative approach, and quantitative approach

The term “mixed methods” refers to an emergent methodology of research

that advances the systematic integration, or “mixing,” of quantitative and qualitative data within a single investigation or sustained program of inquiry The basic premise of this methodology is that such integration permits a more complete and synergistic utilization of data than do separate quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis

Mixed methods research originated in the social sciences and has recently expanded into the health and medical sciences including fields such as nursing, family medicine, social work, mental health, pharmacy, allied health, and others In the last decade, its procedures have been developed and refined to suit a wide variety of research questions (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2011) Using a mixed methods study has several advantages, which we discuss below Compares quantitative and qualitative data Mixed methods are especially useful in understanding contradictions between quantitative results and qualitative findings

Reflects participants‟ point of view Mixed methods give a voice to study participants and ensure that study findings are grounded in participants‟ experiences

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Fosters scholarly interaction Such studies add breadth to multidisciplinary team research by encouraging the interaction of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods scholars

Provides methodological flexibility Mixed methods have great flexibility and are adaptable to many study designs, such as observational studies and randomized trials, to elucidate more information than can be obtained in only quantitative research

Collects rich, comprehensive data Mixed methods also mirror the way individuals naturally collect information—by integrating quantitative and qualitative data For example, sports stories frequently integrate quantitative data (scores or number of errors) with qualitative data (descriptions and images of highlights) to provide a more complete story than either method would alone

Mixed methods studies are challenging to implement, especially when they are used to evaluate complex interventions

Increases the complexity of evaluations Mixed methods studies are complex to plan and conduct They require careful planning to describe all aspects of research, including the study sample for qualitative and quantitative portions (identical, embedded, or parallel); timing (the sequence of qualitative and quantitative portions); and the plan for integrating data Integrating qualitative and quantitative data during analysis is often a challenging phase for many researchers

Relies on a multidisciplinary team of researchers Conducting high-quality mixed methods studies requires a multidisciplinary team of researchers who, in the service of the larger study, must be open to methods that may not be their area of expertise Finding qualitative experts who are also comfortable discussing quantitative analyses and vice versa can be challenging in many environments Given that each method must adhere to its own standards for rigor, ensuring appropriate quality of each component of a mixed methods study can be difficult (Wisdom, Cavaleri, Onwuegbuzie, et al., 2011) For example, quantitative analyses require much larger sample sizes to obtain statistical significance than do qualitative analyses, which require meeting goals of saturation (not uncovering new information from conducting more

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interviews) and relevance Embedded samples, in which a qualitative subsample is embedded within a larger quantitative sample, can be useful in cases of inadequate statistical power

Requires increased resources Finally, mixed methods studies are labor intensive and require greater resources and time than those needed to conduct a single method study (Cresswell, 2013)

Qualitative research:

Qualitative research is a type of social science research that collects and works with non-numerical data and that seeks to interpret meaning from these data that help us understand social life through the study of targeted populations or places People often frame it in opposition to quantitative research, which uses numerical data to identify large-scale trends and employs statistical operations to determine causal and correlative relationships between variables

Within sociology, qualitative research is typically focused on the micro-level of social interaction that composes everyday life, whereas quantitative research typically focuses on macro-level trends and phenomena

Methods of qualitative research include observation and immersion, interviews, open-ended surveys, focus groups, content analysis of visual and textual materials, and oral history

Qualitative research is designed to reveal the meaning that informs the action

or outcomes that are typically measured by quantitative research So, qualitative researchers investigate meanings, interpretations, symbols, and the processes and relations of social life What this type of research produces is descriptive data that the researcher must then interpret using rigorous and systematic methods of transcribing, coding, and analysis of trends and themes Because its focus is everyday life and people's experiences, qualitative research lends itself well to creating new theories using the inductive method, which can then be tested with further research

Methods of Qualitative Research

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Qualitative researchers use their own eyes, ears, and intelligence to collect depth perceptions and descriptions of targeted populations, places, and events Their findings are collected through a variety of methods, and often, a researcher will use at least two or several of the following while conducting a qualitative study

of methods also has the benefit of being flexible and easily adaptable to changes in the research environment and can be conducted with minimal cost

in many cases

The downsides of qualitative research are that its scope is fairly limited so its findings are not always widely generalizable Researchers also have to use caution with these methods to ensure that they themselves do not influence the data in ways that significantly change it and that they do not bring undue personal bias to their interpretation of the findings Fortunately, qualitative researchers receive rigorous training designed to eliminate or reduce these types of research bias (Ashley Crossman, 2018)

Quantitative Research Definition: Quantitative research, in marketing, is a

stimulating and highly educational technique to gather information from existing and potential customers using sampling methods and sending