In:Questioning and Answering Practices across Contexts and Cultures
Edited by Cornelia Ilie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 323] 2021
► pp. 227–254
Devices of alignment
Suoyi- and danshi-prefaced questions in Mandarin Chinese TV news interviews
Published online: 26 July 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.323.08gao
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.323.08gao
Abstract
The Mandarin resultative connective suoyi ‘so’ and adversative connective dan(shi) ‘but’ are found to preface interviewer (IR) questions regularly in Chinese TV news interviews. This study draws on a conversational analysis (CA)-oriented micro-analytical approach and examines the form, placement and function of the two connective-prefaced questions. The findings show that IRs employ, on the one hand, a turn-initial suoyi to preface a declarative, alone or followed by a question tag that invokes a prior interviewee (IE) opinion, and, on the other, a turn-initial dan(shi) to preface either a wh-question or a yes/no question and bring forth a point of contrast and transition for questioning. Both questions not only encode IRs’ epistemic stance, but also display their alignment to IEs’ prior talk in different ways.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Literature review
- 2.1CA studies on QA organization and question design in news interviews
- 2.2CA studies on connectives and connective-prefaced questions
- 3.Data and methods
- 4.Analysis
- 4.1IR questions prefaced by suoyi
- 4.2IR questions prefaced by dan(shi)
- 5.Discussion and concluding remarks
Acknowledgements Notes References Appendix
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