33.618, Review: Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics: Ilie (2021)

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Subject: 33.618, Review: Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics: Ilie (2021)

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Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2022 19:39:32
From: Ana-Maria Jerca [ana1993 at my.yorku.ca]
Subject: Questioning and Answering Practices across Contexts and Cultures

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-2666.html

EDITOR: Cornelia  Ilie
TITLE: Questioning and Answering Practices across Contexts and Cultures
SERIES TITLE: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 323
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Ana-Maria Jerca, York University

SUMMARY

“Questioning and Answering Practices across Contexts and Cultures”, edited by
Cornelia Ilie, is the 323rd volume of the Pragmatics & Beyond New Series
published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. The 316-page book showcases
nine papers from the workshop of the same name held at the 2017 International
Pragmatics Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The editor contends that
the contributions in the book “problematize, in different institutional
discourse genres and with different analytical tools, the strategies through
which questioning and answering practices reflect and shape the communities of
practice in which they serve as central interactional strategies” (p. 2). The
volume fills a gap in the existing literature by examining under-explored
discourse genres like “talk shows, news interviews, research interviews,
parliamentary debates, courtroom examinations, police-civilian interactions,
[post-presentation] question-and-answer sessions, and semi-formal academic
interactions” (p. 2). The contributions to the book also span across Europe,
Asia, and North America, reflecting the different cultures therein.  

The book is organized into four parts, prefaced by a foreword/introduction
written by the editor. Each part examines question and answering sequences in
a particular context. Part I focuses on parliamentary discourses (featuring
chapters by Ilie and Tanaka), Part II on the law and the courtroom (featuring
chapters by Gnisci and Guditus), Part III on interviews and TV shows
(featuring chapters by Nakamura, by Kim & Suh, and by Gao), and Part IV on
interpersonal interactions at the interface of public-private discourse
(featuring chapters by Reddington et al. and by Shigemitsu). The last part is
followed by an index; each chapter features its own reference list. A more
detailed summary of each chapter in the book follows below. 

Questions we (inter)act with: Interrelatedness of questions and answers in
discourse — Cornelia Ilie

Though it is not labeled as such, this chapter, written by the editor of the
volume, functions as an introduction in that it sets the stage for the rest of
the book. Ilie begins by reflecting on why we ask questions and what
roles/functions questions play in social interactions. She then surveys the
literature on the interplay between questions and answers, first discussing
historical philosophical perspectives from ancient traditions (e.g., those of
Socrates, Aristotle, and the Chinese Daoists) which held that questions and
answers stimulated critical thinking and acquisition of knowledge. The author
then discusses theoretical perspectives on the forms and structures of
questions (e.g., syntactic/typological, semantic, and pragmatic). Following
this, she shifts to looking at the question-and-answer paradigm in
field-specific studies and communities of practice like courtroom
interrogations, police interviews, doctor-patient interactions, media
interviews, and parliamentary debates. The introduction ends with an overview
of the contributions to the volume. These will be summarized in turn below. 

Evasive answers vs. aggressive questions: Parliamentary confrontational
practices in Prime Minister’s Questions — Cornelia Ilie 

In this chapter, Ilie investigates questioning and answering practices in
various 2018 sessions of UK Parliament called Prime Minister’s Questions
(PQM), where members of parliament (MPs) can ask the Prime Minister (PM)
questions directly, to which the PM is institutionally obligated to respond.
The author notes that although questions are normally used to elicit
information that is unknown to the questioner, “a large number of
parliamentary questions are [instead asked] with the purpose of challenging,
criticizing, and accusing the PM” (p. 44). Early in the chapter, it becomes
clear that questions in PQMs serve a variety of discursive functions related
to their focus, target, and goals, which are specific to adversarial politics.
Through a pragma-rhetorical analysis—that is, “a combination of
pragma-linguistic and rhetorical approaches” (cf. Ilie 2018, 2021)—the chapter
examines how questions are used by the Leader of the Opposition (Jeremy
Corbyn), other opposition MPs, and the PM (Theresa May) to hold one other
accountable to their responsibilities, to perform—and avoid—face threats and
defamatory accusations, and to “persuad[e] the members of the electorate [and
the public while also] inviting their support” (p. 37). Thus, the chapter
shows how the PM and the Leader of the Opposition use questions during PMQs to
pursue both their own political agendas and to fulfill their occupational
expectations. 

Japanese politicians’ questions in parliament: Being polite yet forceful? —
Lidia Tanaka

In this chapter, Lidia Tanaka explores how Japanese politicians in the House
of Representatives manoeuvre making face-threatening acts characteristic of
parliamentary discourse (like those discussed in the previous chapter) and
using Japanese, “a language known for its high level of politeness” (p. 72).
Tanaka begins by highlighting how politicians’ language, regardless of the
country, “operates under its own set of politeness rules” (p. 75) such that
parliament can be considered its own community of practice. The author
illustrates this by examining the role of the ka-question (ka-Q) in Japanese
parliamentary discourse. Ka-Qs, a canonical question type, are direct and
formal questions, so that in the rare cases that they are used outside of
parliament (e.g., in TV interviews) they tend to be mollified by other
grammatical features (p. 82) to mitigate the risk of threatening the
interlocutor’s face. However, Tanaka found that within parliament, ka-Qs are
used extensively by opposition MPs with no mollification, a fact she
attributes to their combative stance (p. 87) and strong illocutionary force,
both of which coincide with the parliamentary setting where there is “a
forceful demand for answers” (p. 84). The chapter establishes that polite
language can indeed be used to behave aggressively and also lays some
groundwork for further research into “sexist discriminatory behaviour in
Japanese politics” (p. 95). 
 
Pragmatic functions of question-answer sequences in Italian legal examinations
and TV interviews with politicians — Augusto Gnisci

This chapter examines how 11 Italian politicians navigate coercive questioning
practices and supply corresponding equivocal answers in two contexts: criminal
trials (CT) and news or political interviews on TV. The author maintains that
these contexts are comparable because they are both “based on question-answer
exchanges” (p. 109-110), but that they are distinct enough (p. 111) to warrant
different degrees of evasiveness in response to coercive questions. In other
words, the author argues that the context of the question-answer exchanges
affects the amount of equivocation in the politicians’ answers, although,
interestingly, not the amount of coercion present in the questions. The
results of the study, completed through a sequential analysis (SA) approach,
show that in CT a coercive question is likely to elicit an evasive answer, but
that the more evasive the witness’s initial answer is, the more coercive the
questioner’s following inquiries become (so that they can solicit the
information they desire). Thus, politicians equivocate less overall when they
are on the stand than when they are on TV. Additionally, on TV, the
interviewer’s next question does not depend so much on the politician’s
previous answer. Furthermore, an extremely coercive question is likely to
yield a pertinent (non-evasive) answer, while less coercive questions are
likely to yield equivocation. 

“You were resisting the whole time!” Assumption of guilt in police-civilian
question-response interactions — Casey L. Guditus 

Guditus’s chapter examines four question-response interactions from body cam
footage between white police officers and black male civilians in the United
States. In three of these interactions, the officer used force against the
civilians, thus exemplifying the way in which black men are disproportionately
targeted by police officers (e.g., Eberhardt, 2016). The fourth interaction
contrasts the violent ones, displaying disparate interactional approaches. The
author begins by establishing a connection between coercive questions and
assumptions of guilt. For instance, questions containing presuppositions are
seen as coercive because they take certain facts for granted (e.g., Heritage
and Clayman, 2011). These presuppositions may relate to the civilian’s
behaviour, but they can also reveal an officer’s assumption that the civilian
is guilty. Because of their use of coercive questions, Guditus concludes that
the officers conduct these interactions under the assumption of civilian
guilt, thereby approaching them as arrests. On the other hand, “the ways the
civilians ask questions of the officers and react to the officers’
accusations”— like becoming upset when they do not receive answers to their
questions— “[suggest] that they frame [the] interactions as information
exchanges” (p. 146). But because of this discrepancy, especially how the
civilians attempt to correct the officers’ presuppositions, the officers
interpret the actions of the civilians as “resistance”, thus providing
“justification” for their use of force. 

Constructing interrupting inquiries as cooperative interactions:
Question-response-hai ‘yes’ sequences in Japanese interviews — Momoko Nakamura

This chapter focuses on interruptions in question-answer sequences in the
context of interviews with Japanese women, where the same interviewer
interrupts different interviewee’s response narratives with confirmation
questions. The analysis shows that, although the interruptions are not
instances of cooperative overlap (see Tannen, 1983), the interview
participants construct the sequences involving interruption as co-operative
interactions rather than disruptive turn-taking rule violations. Specifically,
Nakamura shows how the interviewees establish the new sequence initiated by
the interruption as a side activity that sustains the status of their
narrative as the main activity, while simultaneously turning the side activity
into a crucial contribution to the interaction “by acknowledging and referring
to the [interrupting] question” in their next turns (p. 187). She also
analyzes the way the interviewers use ‘hai’ (‘yes’ in Japanese, though it
functions more like ‘go ahead’ (p. 172)) not just as cooperative overlap, but
also to transfer the conversational floor back to the interviewee after
receiving an answer to their interrupting confirmation questions, thereby
upholding the co-operative nature of the talk. Nakamura posits that the
interviewer uses interruption to ensure her understanding of the conversation
and to display “active listenership and discursive involvement in the
interviewee’s talk” (p. 168). The chapter ends with a call to examine other
linguistic resources that function similarly to ‘hai’ in Japanese and in other
languages. 

Formulation questions and responses in Korean TV talk show interactions —
Kyu-hyun Kim and Kyung-Hee Suh

In this chapter, Kim and Suh look at interactions between talk show hosts and
guests on Korean television. The focus is on formulation questions (e.g.,
Heritage, 1985), which are “produced as [part of] the host’s receipt work of
‘re-presenting’ the gist or upshot of the guest’s response on [their] own
terms” (p. 193). Formulation questions, acting as “‘follow-up’ responsive
action[s]” (p. 194), normally advance talk by highlighting a point in the
prior sequence for the interviewee to focus on in their next turn. Here,
however, the authors find that these questions serve as a transition between
an ‘information-oriented’ sequence (i.e., the guest’s narrative) towards an
‘affectively loaded’ assessment sequence beginning with the host issuing a
challenge, tease, praise, or a request for a ‘show and tell’ type of action,
where the viewers “can evaluate the guest on the terms proposed by the host”
(p. 200). Ultimately, the authors argue that the host’s formulation practice
is a “sequentially-motivated and setting-specific” act “geared to enhancing
the inherently fun-creating aspect of the entertainment talk-show format” (p.
198). But even though the preferred response to the host’s questions is
confirmation, the guests, for their part, can resist them. The authors posit
that resisting this transition indexes the guests’ intent to maintain claim of
their master narrative by forestalling or disallowing the affective sequence,
pointing to the “inherently co-constructional character of the host-guest
interactions” (p. 217).  

Devices of alignment: Suoyi- and danshi-prefaced questions in Mandarin Chinese
TV news interviews — Hua Gao 

Gao’s work looks at how interviewers on a Chinese TV news program (Jinri
Guanzhu ‘Focus Today’) use the Mandarin connectives “suoyi” (‘so’) and
“danshi” (‘but’) to preface questions directed at their interviewees. Taking a
conversation analytic approach, the author examines the interactional
functions of these discourse markers. The analysis shows that “suoyi” is
employed in formulation questions to confirm the interviewer’s understanding
of the interviewee’s prior talk or to request the interviewee’s opinion on the
matter at hand. Positionally, “suoyi” is found turn-initially prefacing a
declarative, alone, or followed by a question tag. While the author’s findings
overlap with those of other researchers on English ‘so’ (e.g., Heritage and
Roth 1995; Bolden 2006, 2008), one distinctive function of “suoyi” that Gao
finds is that it can also signal the end of an ongoing topic (p. 238).
Contrastively, “danshi” tends to preface a wh- or polar question, signaling
that the interviewer’s upcoming question is “based on a point of contrast” (p.
247) between the interviewee’s current and prior talk. “Danshi” can also be
used to transition back to a topic on the interviewer’s agenda, should the
interviewee have digressed from it in their responses, thereby signaling that
the interviewer’s question “has not been adequately answered or addressed” (p.
248). The chapter ends with a discussion of how both question types encode
information about the interviewers’ alignment to the interviewees’ talk and
how these Chinese TV interviews differ from talk in other languages and
institutional settings. 

“Doing being collegial”: Participants’ positioning work in Q&A sessions —
Elizabeth Reddington, Ignasi Clemente, Hansun Zhang Waring, and Di Yu

Reddington et al.’s contribution offers insight into the discursive functions
of question-and-answer sequences in a familiar venue for academics:
post-presentation question-and-answer (Q&A) sessions. Focusing on interactions
between presenters from an American foundation that funds health-related
research and audience members interested in health issues (e.g., researchers,
educators, and students), the authors use a conversation analysis approach to
determine how foundation and audience members “do collegiality” and tackle the
institutional asymmetries in their identities as experts and laypeople. Partly
because of the turn-taking rules particular to Q&A sessions, the results of
the study indicate that “audience members use their turns to do more than
‘simply’ produce questions” (p. 261). Specifically, questions tend to consist
of “elaborate, multi-unit turns” (that is, turns consisting of more than one
turn constructional unit) in which participants may—in addition to asking
their question—identify themselves, express appreciation for and affiliate
themselves with the presenter, or reveal the thinking behind their questions
(p. 262). All of these are means through which the audience members subtly
assert their identities as knowledgeable peers. Similarly, presenters respond
to audience members’ questions with multi-unit turns which may also include
affiliation (like positively evaluating the question), thereby treating the
audience members as colleagues who are entitled to certain knowledge about the
foundation’s inner workings (p. 275). The authors argue that constructing
these kinds of multi-unit turns is the key to “doing collegiality”, as they
are a means through which both audience members and presenters “position
themselves and their interlocutors as knowledgeable colleagues with shared
concerns” (p. 263), thus minimizing the institutional asymmetry between them.

Question-answer sequences in Japanese first encounters: Wishing to get to know
new persons vs. dispreferred behavior of asking questions — Yuka Shigemitsu 

Shigemitsu’s study examines a paradox particular to Japanese culture: getting
to know someone new without committing the face-threatening act of asking them
questions that are too personal. In Japan, personal questions are dispreferred
verbal behaviour because they may force the recipient to speak against their
will, invade their personal territory, reveal conflict between the
interlocutors, interrupt the recipient’s ongoing talk, or reveal the
recipient’s inability to answer (p. 292). So how do Japanese people learn
about their interlocutors while still being polite? Shigemitsu’s study
suggests that, to mitigate the risks outlined above, speakers use unfinished
sentences or fragments more often than traditional question forms to elicit
information. In addition, they do not develop topics that are considered
sensitive (like family, deep personal feelings, but also one’s school name and
current job) or topics that their interlocutor may not know about. When they
do ask questions explicitly, they do so using hesitation markers like pauses
and fillers, or they surround the question with pre- and post-sequences
explaining their reasons or apologizing for asking it. However, Shigemitsu
also shows how minimizing the risk of being impolite by avoiding personal
questions has other, perhaps unintended, consequences for the interaction,
like misunderstandings or near breakdown of the conversation. Finally, another
topic that is explored in the paper is the consequences of these discursive
strategies for cross-cultural communication between Japanese and English
speakers. 

EVALUATION

The nine contributions to this volume are well-researched and accessible
studies adding to the existing body of literature on questioning and answering
practices. The volume is organized in a logical way such that the chapters
flow thematically from one to the next, even across the different parts of the
book. While this volume could serve as a university-level textbook, several
chapters in it could also stand alone as weekly readings. For example, in only
25 pages, Cornelia Ilie’s introduction manages to highlight many relevant
aspects of question-and-answer research and give the reader the resources to
find out more about a particular field that they find interesting. Reddington
et al.’s chapter could also stand alone as a course reading for a Discourse
Analysis and Pragmatics class: students could read it as a way to build on
Austin’s (1962) work, as it specifically focuses on how questions “do” actions
in the real world. The chapters on non-English languages could also be added
to syllabi for undergraduate or graduate discourse analysis and pragmatics
courses in order to expand the purview of the courses outside of the
English-speaking world. Indeed, the biggest strength of the volume, in my
view, is the fact that the studies focus on understudied racial, ethnic, and
cultural contexts, specifically Asian languages like Mandarin, Japanese, and
Korean, and inter-racial communication between white police officers and black
male civilians. 

Furthermore, the volume showcases some interesting approaches to data analysis
which yield novel conclusions. For example, while some of the authors use
tools from conversation analysis to approach their data, Gnisci employs
sequential analysis, a quantitative method that contrasts with conversation
analysis in that it “preserves […] information on the occurrence,
co-occurrence, duration and […] succession of social behaviours among
participants in the interaction” (p. 115). Thus, Gnisci is able to argue that
certain types of answers are contingent on the coerciveness of questions,
rather than merely correlated with them. In a similar vein, Kim and Suh’s
chapter displays the merits of classifying interactions outside of the
traditional binary division into institutional or non-institutional discourse.
Looking at talk show discourse as semi-institutional talk leaves room for an
interesting discussion regarding speakers’ identities as guest and host.
Finally, Nakamura compellingly dismantles the dichotomy between simultaneously
occurring speech as either supportive overlap or interruption; she shows how
even non-supportive overlap can be cooperative while still being interruptive.

However, despite the quality of the papers in the volume, there are some
interesting topics that remain unexplored. For instance, section 4.1 of Ilie’s
introduction to the volume could have looked into language and law literature
showing that witnesses besides defendants can also resist and challenge
cross-examining attorneys’ questions (e.g., Matoesian & Gilbert, 2018; Drew,
1992). Similarly, Guditus’s paper could have provided an overview of what
critical discourse analysis (CDA) is and what its aims are, in addition to
exploring van Dijk’s CDA work on ideologies pertaining to racism, which is
thematically relevant. Finally, Shigemitsu’s work could have reviewed some of
the literature on politeness theory and the notions of positive and negative
face (e.g., Brown & Levinson 1987; Goffman, 1967), as these seem directly
related to the study but were not mentioned in the chapter. Further to this
point, parts of Shigemitsu’s chapter were reminiscent of Bailey’s (2000) work
on inter-cultural communication between African-American customers and Korean
retailers in LA, with which I believe an interesting connection might have
been established.

There are also a few technical terms used in some of the chapters that could
use more explanation for readers who are not familiar with the authors’
previous work. If this volume is ever revised for a second edition,
explanations of “pragma-linguistic” as opposed to “pragmatic” (Ilie’s chapter,
p. 41) and “CA-oriented micro-analytic approach” in contrast to traditional
conversation analysis (Gao’s chapter, p. 230) would be welcome. 

Finally, there are a few editing issues that readers should be aware of,
mainly pertaining to typos and typesetting inconsistencies from chapter to
chapter. A notable example is the inconsistent capitalization of racial
categories like Black and White; an explanation of each author’s preferences
might have been useful. It would also have helped legibility to have a
consistent format for transcript data from non-English languages. (I found
Gao’s transcriptions the easiest to parse.)

In general, however, the few hiccups mentioned above should not detract from
what is truly a compelling collection of studies in questioning and answering
practices in a refreshingly diverse array of contexts and cultures. This
volume provides an introduction to topics that may be unfamiliar to junior
scholars, while also laying the groundwork for future work in pragmatics in
the variety of contexts and cultures it surveys. 

REFERENCES 

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford University Press.

Bailey, B. (2000). Communicative behavior and conflict between
African-American customers and Korean immigrant retailers in Los Angeles.
Discourse & Society 11(1), 86-108. 

Bolden, G. (2010). Articulating the unsaid via and-prefaced formulations of
others’ talk. Discourse Studies 12(1), 5-32. 

Bolden, G. (2008). “So, what’s up?” Using the discourse marker ‘so’ to launch
conversational business. Research on Language and Social Interaction 41(3),
302-337. 

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language
usage. Cambridge University Press.

Drew, P. (1992). Contested evidence in courtroom examination: The case of a
trial for rape. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in
institutional settings (pp. 470–520). Cambridge University Press.

Eberhardt, J. L. (2016). Strategies for change: Research initiatives and
recommendations to improve police-community relations in Oakland, Calif.
Social Psychological Answers to Real-world Questions (SPARQ).
http://www2.oaklandnet.com/oakca1/groups/police/documents/webcontent/oak059292
.pdf

Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays in face-to-face behavior.
Transaction Publishers.

Heritage, J. (1985). Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of
talk for an overhearing audience. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Handbook of
Discourse Analysis (Vol. 3, pp. 95–117). Academic Press.

Heritage, J., & Clayman, S. (2011). Talk in action: Interactions, identities,
and institutions. Wiley-Blackwell.

Heritage, J. & Roth, A. L. (1995). Grammar and intuition: Question and
questioning in the broadcast news interview. Research on Language and Social
Interaction 28(1), 1-60. 

 Ilie, C. (2018). Pragmatics vs rhetoric: Political discourse at the
pragmatics-rhetoric interface. In C. Ilie & N. R. Norrick (Eds.), Pragmatics
and its interfaces (pp. 85–119). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Ilie, C. (2021). Discussion, dispute or controversy? Paradigms of
conflict-driven parliamentary practices. Journal of Language Aggression and
Conflict 9(2), 237-270. 

Matoesian, G., & Gilbert, K. E. (2018). Multimodal conduct in the law:
Language, gesture and materiality in legal interaction. Cambridge University
Press.

Tannen, D. (1983). When is an overlap not an interruption? One component of
conversational style. In R. J. Di Pierto, W. Frawley, and A. Wedel (Eds.) The
First Delaware Symposium on Language Studies (pp. 119-129). University of
Delaware Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Ana-Maria Jerca is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at York University in
Canada. She is also the co-founder and editor of the department's student
e-journal, Working papers in Applied Linguistics and Linguistics at York
(WALLY). Ana-Maria's main research interest is discourse analysis in the legal
sphere. Her dissertation focuses on discursive practices within criminal
trials dealing with gender and sexual violence in the Anglo-American (common
law) system as well as the International Criminal Court in The Hague,
Netherlands. She has published on this and other topics (like the semiotics of
kneeling during the national anthem prior to American football games).





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