ABSTRACT

Rhetorical questions have been regularly observed to implement disaffiliative actions in conversations such as challenging, complaining, or retorting. This article, however, reports on nondisaffiliative uses of rhetorical questions based on a particular structure in Mandarin, bushi … ma, which can serve as a conventional question, a disaffiliative rhetorical question, or a nondisaffiliative rhetorical question. Although much less studied, nondisaffiliative uses are by far more frequent in conversations. Integrating discourse-functional linguistics and conversation analysis, this study argues that nondisaffiliative bushi … ma rhetorical questions work to pursue common ground so as to move the activity-in-progress forward. Moreover, it examines the sequential contexts in which they are recurrently produced and identifies the interactional clues—epistemic, sequential, prosodic—that make these rhetorical questions recognizable as seeking common ground. This article contributes to our understanding of the rhetorical question as a grammatical device that maximizes intersubjectivity in conversation, further confirming the mutual influence between grammar and social interaction. Data are in Mandarin Chinese with English translation.

摘要

经常观察到修辞问题以在对话中实施非亲和行为，例如挑战、抱怨或反驳。然而，本文报告了基于普通话、bushi ... ma 中特定结构的修辞问题的非从属关系用法，这些问题可以用作常规问题、非从属修辞问题或非从属修辞问题。尽管研究较少，但在对话中，非歧视性用法却更为频繁。集成话语功能语言学和会话分析，本研究认为，nondisaffiliative武士......马修辞问题旨在寻求共同点，以推动正在进行的活动。此外，它检查了它们反复产生的顺序上下文，并确定了交互线索——认知、顺序、韵律——使这些修辞问题被识别为寻求共同点。这篇文章有助于我们将修辞问题理解为一种语法工具，它最大限度地提高了对话中的主体间性，进一步证实了语法和社会互动之间的相互影响。数据为中文普通话和英文翻译。