A Study Of The Production Of Tag Questions On The Basis Of The Adaptation Theory

English tag question is composed of a declarative and a tag attached to it. The declarative in a tag question expresses a statement and tags a question. Such a construction seems to be simple, but its forms are rather flexible and the semantic and pragmatic meanings it conveys are rather complicated. They usually do not merely raise questions but convey various intentions of the speaker. So tag questions are a distinctive feature of spoken English and are heavily employed in daily conversations by native speakers of English. However, Chinese EFL learners'oral production of tag questions is characterized by the rare occurrence of tag questions, which results in the low degree of interactivity and solidarity in their discourse. Therefore, the present study is to explore how and why the speaker produces tag questions in natural conversations.The research presents a pragmatic framework for a consistent and systematic analysis of English tag questions. The core is the formulation of a theoretical adaptation model and a detailed analysis of English tag questions, illustrated by examples.Jef Verschueren's Adaptation Theory (1999) claims that the use of language is a process of choices and adaptation and that a general perspective, namely the linguistic, cognitive and socio-cultural perspective, on the analysis of the process is resorted to. Based on this, the theoretical framework is specified by integrating features of English tag questions.English tag questions adapt to the complexity of linguistic, social and cognitive factors. Economy principle, which holds that limited and minimal terms and regularities should be employed to describe unlimited linguistic phenomena, is the linguistic law responsible for English tag questions as a special use of questions rather than another type of questions. English tag questions are indirect to corresponding statements and adapt to politeness factors, producers'social statuses, professions and ages. Behind the production of English tag questions lie various mental worlds such as challenging, negation and emphasis, reproach, suggestion, wonder, creation of consensus and so on.The conclusion is that English tag questions are a special use of questions chosen consciously for social-cultural, cognitive and linguistic factors to be more adaptive than its corresponding statement to achieve more communicative needs, which deserves negotiable interpretation and response in contexts.