CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Object of the Present Study
Questions are commonly used as a vehicle for doing other actions, for example invitations: “Why don’t you come and see me sometimes.” (Schegloff, 1984), offers: “Would you like a cup of coffee?” (Schegloff, 1995), complaints: “Why is it that we have to go there.” (Schegloff, 1984), and requests: “Kin I hev yer light?” and “Is Judy here?” (Schegloff, 1995). In order to perform these actions successfully, participants can design their turns by various verbal and non-verbal resources in the question-response sequence. Thus, the dissertation examines some of the ways in which question and its response characters contribute to the accomplishment of question-response sequences and the implementation of other social actions in mandarin Chinese conversations. In this thesis, the episodes of question-response have been collected out of five hundred minutes telephone calls in daily conversation recordings. Through close observation and analysis of the natural interaction, the present study aims to carry out a comprehensive research of question-response sequence in mandarin Chinese, using the method of Conversation Analysis (hereafter abbreviated as CA).
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1.2 The Rationale of the Present Research
Guided by the above observations, the present research is to examine a systematic study on question and response sequence in Chinese daily conversation from a conversation analytical perspective. The following are the main forces which drive the present study to probe into the question and response sequence in Mandarin Chinese.
Firstly, the use of question and response is prevalent that serves as a key resource to organize our social lives. The previous research on question and response in Chinese has been largely conducted from multiple perspectives. For instance, focus on categorizing the question types in terms of different functions attempts to associate the syntactic structures with various functions of questions. Linguists employ a pragmatic point of view in question and responses examining speech acts hidden behind question and response. Whereas the above research on question and response in Chinese are based on the respects of structure and functions, little attention has been given to dynamic and social nature lying behind this language phenomenon. In addition, the data used in previous research are not natural interaction in daily life, which might be an obstacle to draw a universal practice. The fact that question and response in a natural and authentic circumstance stirs up the interest in investigating it in every detail and particular.
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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Introduction
Question and its response have played a central role in social interaction, and have long been studied from different perspectives at home and abroad. In terms of language use, there are comparative projects on question-response sequence in various languages. In terms of methodology, the previous research on questions and their responses are mainly approached from syntax, pragmatics, language teaching and conversation analysis. This chapter presents a review of the previous studies from the above fields.
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2.2 The Syntactic Approach to Questions
In the philosophy of language, questioning as the contrast with declarative makes a way of exploring presupposition and seeking information. In traditional grammar, questioning is often marked sentence types, and the operations of transforming declarative into interrogative underlie the syntactic machinery of language.
2.2.1 Classification of questions
On the basis of modal verb, Ma Jianzhong (1898) divides the interrogatives into two categories, viz. delivering message and delivering doubts. Lv Shuxiang (1942) makes a more comprehensive study of interrogative sentences in respect of grammar. Lv first proposes that the scope of “doubt” and “asking” are not completely consistent. He argues that a sentence can be doubtful and undoubtful. The former does questioning and the latter is a rhetorical question. Lv divides interrogative sentences into two categories, that is, wh-question and yes-no question and yes-no question is further divided into alternative question and V-not-V question. Zhu Dexi (1982), Hu Yushu (1995) and Xing Fuyi (2002) categorize interrogative as wh-question, yes-no question and alternative question. Huang Borong (1984) makes a comparative analysis of structural features and then divides the interrogative sentences into four types, that is yes-no question, wh-question, alternative question and V-not-V question. Lin Yuwen (1985) discusses the classification criteria of interrogative sentences and argues that the pattern of interrogative sentence is used as the main basis for classifying, and both form and meaning should be closely combined when referring to the classification of the sentences pattern. By contrast, Shao Jingmin (1996) holds that interrogative sentences provide two different choices, that is, yes-no choice and specific content choice. The essential difference is that the former gets a positive or negative answer while the latter receives specific content answer.
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CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ......................... 23
3.1 An Introduction to Conversation Analysis .................................. 23
3.2 Relevant Tools of CA in This Study .............................. 25
CHAPER FOUR QUESTION DESIGN ....................................... 38
4.1 Introduction ....................................... 38
4.2 Question Types ................................... 39
CHAPTER FIVE SOCIAL ACTIONS PERFORMED THROUGH QUESTIONS .. 64
5.1 Introduction ............................ 64
5.2 Seeking Information ............................. 65
CHAPTER 6 RESPONSE DESIGN
6.1 Introduction
In response to questions, respondents may design their turn with answers, or, alternatively, non-answer responses; or they may not produce a response at all in Chinese daily conversation. Table 5 shows that 91 percent of questions in the corpus receive a response whether it is in an answer form or a non-answer response such as “I don’t know”. Thus, question is regarded as an action after which a response is legitimate. Table 6, however, shows that the percentage of response type vary considerably depending on the question type. All alternative questions receive a response, whereas only 89 percent of Q-word questions do. Meanwhile, 70 percent of polar questions and 67 percent of alternative one get the most of a proper answer, compared to 63 percent Q-word questions. It is also be noted that the reasons why questions get a non-answer response or do not receive an answer are accountable and can go from not interpreting the question at all to the difficulty in providing a response or the dispreferred responsive action.
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CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION
7.1 Introduction
reeference(omitted)