The Use Of Question Forms And Functions In English Academic Seminars

The study of academic spoken discourse has gained popularity over recent years.Scholars have systematically investigated the features and pragmatic functions of communication in diverse academic spoken genres.Although significant achievements in the study of genres in academic spoken discourse have been acquired,some gaps still need to be filled.Questioning is a vital linguistic device to facilitate teaching interaction and instructional communication in academic seminars.However,most previous studies concentrate on the interdisciplinary differences and genre influence in professors’ question use,and few studies have been conducted to explore the questioning in a specific academic spoken genre comprehensively.Therefore,the study attempts to fill the gap by investigating the types of professors’ questions and distinguishing their pragmatic features through a detailed analysis in the use of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies based on the data of seven English academic seminars collected in the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English.The study dedicates to answering three questions:(1)What are the forms of questions proposed by professors in English academic seminars?(2)What are the functions of questions proposed by professors in English academic seminars?(3)What are the correspondences between question forms and functions?By further synthesizing the results pertaining to the question use,the following findings can be concluded:Firstly,concerning the question forms,professors use seven types of questions in all to unfold a series of academic interactions in seminars,including Yes/no question,Wh-question,Declarative question,Alternative question,Incomplete question,Tag question,and Rhetorical question.Professors commonly employ three patterns of questions to facilitate teaching effectiveness and advance teaching flow,namely Yes/no question,Wh-question,and Declarative/imperative + word tag question.Secondly,as for the question functions,professors use three types of questions to perform various pragmatic functions to achieve academic goals: audience-oriented,content-oriented,and procedure-oriented.Of these three question types,the audienceoriented question is used most frequently for eliciting response,checking comprehension/memorization,soliciting agreement,and requesting confirmation/clarification.Finally,regarding the correspondence between question forms and functions,they do not directly correspond.The results confirm the corresponding relationships of oneto-many and many-to-one between them.In other words,one type of question form can be applied to accomplish more than one pragmatic function,and likewise,one pragmatic function can be reflected by using multiple question forms.This study provides new insights into the role of professors’ question use in academic communication,exerting some implications for the further study of academic spoken discourse.Theoretically,this study makes an investigation into the question use with the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods,demonstrating question forms used by professors and typical realizations of question functions.Furthermore,the study enriches the current taxonomies of question forms and functions.Pedagogically,the study provides some suggestions for English teachers to utilize questions efficiently in academic communication.Moreover,the research on questioning will be conducive to raising students’ awareness of questioning and consequently to animate interactions in educational settings.