A Study On Echo Questions

The echo question, frequently used in verbal communication yet often neglected bycommunicators, is a field of study that has received less exploration by linguists than it shouldhave. Among the limited existing studies on this topic, most of them are done by westernscholars; few Chinese linguists have yielded original or influential fruits so far. The echoquestion, in the traditional sense, refers to utterance which repeats the whole or part of its priorutterance as a way of asking for confirmation or explanation from the former speaker. However,different scholars hold different views when it comes to such questions as how far the boundaryof echo questions should extend, how they distinguish themselves from other similar languagephenomena, how they should be classified, what their characteristics are, what they are trying toexpress in addition to their literal meaning, how they come into being and how they should beinterpreted, etc. Moreover, since the linguists tend to focus on the aspects which interest themmost, and the examples cited in their studies are mostly man-made, the conclusions they draware likely to be lacking in power of persuasion and validity. By and large, the current study onthis topic is desperate for unity.By means of discarding the dross and selecting the essential, this thesis aims to synthesizethe existing results that have already been achieved and try to make an in-depth analysis ondifferent aspects of echo questions in a more comprehensive and systematic way. It studies echoquestions with authentic examples excerpted from books about English listening and speakingpublished by authoritative presses, gives the language phenomenon a new definition andclassification, and analyzes their general characteristics, semantic features and pragmaticfunctions more specifically. It hopes to provide a definite and agreed reference for prospectivescholars interested in this topic. To be a step further, the research wishes to provide someimplications for the teaching of listening and speaking of English in China.The thesis is composed of four parts. Part one serves as an introduction to the whole thesis.It puts forward the subject, the purpose and significance of the study, explains the source of datacollection, and finally draws an outline of the organization of the thesis. Part two is the literaturereview of the paper. It gives a brief survey of the previous research into echo questions made bylinguists both at home and abroad. Part three plays the most important role in the thesis. Basedon the pre-existing studies already made by foreign and Chinese scholars, this parts gives a moredetailed analysis on various aspects of echo questions, including a more persuasive definition, amore scientific classification, general characteristics, their semantic features and pragmaticfunctions, etc. The last part draws a conclusion of the study. It states the main contribution andlimitation of the thesis, and looks forward to more efforts from more scholars into this field of study in future.