A Pragmatic Study Of Question's Funtions In Casual Conversations

As an essential constituent of oral communication, questions are often the concern of researchers from various linguistic fields because of their multifunctional nature and complex function identification. Recent linguists concern themselves much with mapping of questions' forms and their functions and pragmatic study of questions in institutional dialogues. Yet, few attempts have been made to address pragmatic functions of questions in casual conversations. The present enterprise is aimed at providing a panoramic view of the functioning of questions in casual conversations.Verschueren (2000)'s Linguistic Adaptation Theory is employed as the theoretical foundation to account for the adaptive use of questions in casual conversations from several aspects. Question use is a process of choice making and the linguistic choices related to questioning can be used as identification markers of questions' functions. The linguistic identification markers range from phonological markers to lexical, syntactical, conversation-structural and even responsive markers. Linguistic context cannot fully fulfill the task of function identification. However, by incorporating it with other aspects of context, three major categories of functions can be found in casual conversations-information-oriented functions, expression-oriented functions and action-oriented functions. The fulfillment of the pragmatic functions of questions and the achievement of the communicative needs result from the interplay of the linguistic forms and their contexts. Thus, question use is an adaptive process involving the adaptation of linguistic forms to the contextual correlates. Central to discussion are the interpersonal correlates such as the role relation between participants and power distribution among language users, and the situational correlates such as the physical setting and the psychological state of language users. While adapting to these contextual correlates, question users will resort to different linguistic strategies such as politeness strategies to achieve their goals. Both positive politeness strategies and negative politeness strategies are often employed for the establishment of interactional harmony and the redressing of detrimental communicative ends. The study claims that question use in casual conversations is a process of dynamic interadaptation between linguistic forms and context. It involves not only linguistic factors but also an array of extra-linguistic correlates concerning the language users, the social world, the mental world and the physical world. The analysis sheds light on the mechanism of production and interpretation of questions in casual conversations and could help develop the metapragmatic awareness of language learners.