YEREVAN STATE UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF EUROPEAN LANGUAGES AND COMMUNICATION

Department of English for Cross-Cultural Communication
LINGUISTICS AND CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
(ENGLISH)

TERM PAPER

The Pragmatic Function of Tag Questions

STUDENT: Yana Movsesyan

SUPERVISOR: Naira Martirosyan

YEREVAN 2020
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1 Types of Questions

Syntax is the fundamental part of both written and oral language as it states rules for
using words, phrases and expressions to make speech. In other words syntax is the set of
principles for a right sentence, the sequence of the words to make a grammatically right
sentence. For example, the most popular rule of syntax in most languages is that subject
should come first in the sentence, then object and verb or vice versa. The rule of subject-
verb-object or SOV is used in English as well.

According to structure and purpose of utterance, sentences are classified into four types in
English:

 Declarative sentences, in which an opinion, fact or reality is declared either in an

affirmative or negative form. In a declarative sentence of the English language
there can be only one negativity. As this is a usual sentence nearly without
emotions, the intonation is generally falling.

E.g. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”. –Eleanor
Roosevelt

“You’re not wealthy until you have something money can’t buy”. -Garth Brooks

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step”. –Lao Tzu

 Interrogative sentences are for asking questions. Here the predicate comes before
the subject (if it’s made with a modal verb, only modal comes). In the case the
subject of the sentence is an interrogative pronoun, no inversion is made. In
interrogative sentences intonation is generally rising, except for disjunctive
questions where intonation of the first part of sentence is falling and the second
part is rising.

E.g. Don't you hate it too? (John Boyne, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, 2006, p.36)

“What did the cat say?' asked Gretel, who was making a sandwich in the corner of
the kitchen.” (John Boyne, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, 2006, p. 43)
 “Who would build such a nasty looking place?” (John Boyne, “The Boy in the
Striped Pyjamas”, 2006, p.22)

“You can't imagine what it's like to need food. You've never been hungry, have you?”
(John Boyne, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, 2006, p.39)

 Imperative sentences may express commands, demands, may share wishes,

requests, invitations etc.

Commands usually have a falling intonation, while requests and invitations have a
rising tone.

E.g. Westley: Give us the gate key. (request)

Yellin: I have no gate key.

Inigo Montoya: Fezzik, tear his arms off. (command)

Yellin: Oh, you mean this gate key. (“The Princess Bride”, William Gold)

 Exclamatory sentences are ways of expressing emotions and feeling, they have a
falling intonation and are always expressed in a declarative form.

E.g. “Oh, never mind!” (John Boyne, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, 2006, p.72)

'They're so different. Look!” (John Boyne, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, 2006, p.102)

As it was said above, interrogative sentences are for asking questions and English has four
main types of questions; General, Alternative, Special and Tag Questions.

General questions, sometimes even called yes/no questions, are those that can just be
answered with ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Special intonation rising is very important in General
Questions.

E.g. "Is it still morning?" said Romeo, tossing a stone into the fountain. (Shakespeare,
“Romeo and Juliet” Chapter 1)

Where did you go wrong? Did you teach him to hate little black kids? Did you teach him
how to build bombs?" (John Grisham, “The Chamber”, 1994, p.43)
Special Questions are given to a certain member of the sentence and here the sentence
begins with the special question word; who, what, where, when, why, how, how many
etc.

E.g. What do you do when a big hole suddenly appears in your life? You either fall
into it, or you start to fill it up. (David A. Hill, “A Matter of Chance”, 1999, p. 10)

‘What’s in a name? A rose by any name would smell as sweet.’ (Shakespeare, “Romeo and
Juliet” Act 2, Scene 2)

Why did I believe that some unexpected opportunity would arrive to help me? (David A.
7Hill, “A Matter of Chance”, 1999, p.54)

Alternative Questions, also called choice questions, are those that offer a choice of
answers for the given question with the help of ‘OR’.

E.g. "Let's try it this way. Did you or did you not have someone with you, someone
who placed the explosives, on the night when you bombed the Kramer office?" (John
Grisham:

“The Chamber”, 1994, p. 28)

'So, shall we go to England or not?' . (David A. Hill, “A Matter of Chance”, 1999, p.42)

Chapter 2 Tag Questions

In English besides uttering words native speakers use some linguistic tools to deliver
certain messages. Tag/Tail Questions is one of these tools that is used in everyday
communication. They are asked to confirm the information we believe in, or to get
comments over it. They are grammatical structures where the declarative part is followed
by an interrogative clause attached to the sentence and separated by a comma.

E.g. 'You know how important it is, don't you?' (''The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’' p. 5)

'But there's nothing we can do about it, is there?' (''The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’' p.19)

Tag Question may be expressed by the forms of auxiliary verbs or pronouns.

Examples

"You saw this happen, didn't you?" (John Grisham: “The Chamber”, 1994, p. 51)

Sam took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "You don't want much, do you?" he said
softly. (John Grisham: “The Chamber”, 1994, p. 20)

'He's a lot older than you, isn't he?' I said. (David A. Hill: “A Matter of Chance”, 1999,
p.60)

After all, you would not like anything to happen to Alessandra, would you?' (David A.
Hill: “A Matter of Chance”, 1999, p.71)

An important point about Tag Questions is polarity that is if one part of the sentence is
positive, the other part should be negative, like the examples above. Thus, there are two
types of polarity of tag questions; reversed polarity tags and constant polarity tags. In
reversed polarity tags positive-negative polarity is the reverse of that in the main sentence
while in a constant polarity tag sentence the polarity is the same as in the main sentence.

Bublitz (1979) identifies two kinds of tag questions in the English language: lexical tag
questions such as “right, okay”; and intonational tags “eh”. Cheng and Warren (2001), on
the other hand, adopt a different definition that classifies tag questions into two
categories: canonical tag questions, with both matching and contrasting polarity, e.g., “It
is hot, is it?” and “It is hot, isn’t it?” and invariant tag questions, e.g., “right”.

In general, there are two types of tag questions; traditional and invariant. Traditional tags
(also called Canonical Tag Questions) are those general tags made up of an auxiliary verb
or pronoun. The first part of the sentence should be affirmative, the second part
interrogative or vice versa. The syntactic form of traditional tag questions involves an
auxiliary verb that agrees with the main sentence in tense and number, a pronoun, and
matching or contrasting polarity. The form of the traditional tag question should agree
with the subject and the auxiliary of the preceding main sentence in number, gender and
tense. As Holmes (1982) mentions mastering them requires a high level of proficiency in
English. According to Quirk (1985) there are four rules for traditional tag questions:
1. The auxiliary of the main statement is used in the tag, if the statement doesn't
have an auxiliary, 'do' is used.

E.g. “That's entirely due to me”, broke in Lord Henry. “Isn’t it, Mr. Gray? (Oscar Wilde:
“The Picture of Dorian Gray”, 1890, p.36)

2. The auxiliary of the tag part is followed by the pronoun that is the subject of the
main sentence. If the subject of the main clause is a noun, turn it into a pronoun in the
tag part. '

E.g. "You Jew boys never give up, do you?" he asked. (John Grisham: “The Chamber”,
1994, p. 17)

3. If the statement is affirmative the tag should be negative and vice versa.

E.g. You’re not jealous of material things, are you? (Oscar Wilde: “The Picture of Dorian
Gray”, 1890, p.39)

4. The tone of the tag may be either rising or falling, and occurs on the auxiliary, or
on a full form not when it is present. When it is present 'do' is optional in positive
statements. But the 'do' must appear in the tag. The same applies to Past Simple did.

E.g. "Sam wasn't alone when he bombed the Kramer office, was he?" Adam continued.
(John Grisham: “The Chamber”, 1994, p. 39)

'It does seem bad luck, doesn't it? (Agatha Christie: 1953, “After the Funeral”, Chapter 5)

The second type is invariant Tag Questions which don't have a verb, person, and
negativity. They are used in dialects, in everyday speech, in literature and they are less
formal than traditional tags. Holmes (1982) referred to invariant tags as 'grammatically
simple tags' such as 'right and okay'. Tags can be simple words like “eh”, “okay” and
“yeah” and they don't have to change their forms to agree with gender, number or tense
of the host sentence.

Examples
“Let me guess - you know nothing about it, right?" asked the detective. (John Grisham:
“The Chamber”, 1994, p. 6)

"You stay close, OK? There's some bad things buried in my soul. I'll need some help to get
them out." (John Grisham: “The Chamber”, 1994, p. 80)

"Not ready to die yet, eh?" (Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet” Chapter One)

"Yeah. I guess I need lots of lawyers, huh, Packer?" (John Grisham: “The Chamber”, 1994,
p.23)

Traditional tag questions are referred to reversed polarity Tag Questions as they follow
the rule of thumb (positive-negative and vice-versa) and invariant type refers to constant
polarity of tag questions. Same way tag questions are used to express interest, happiness,
surprise, anger, they can be an indicator of politeness, hedging, consensus seeking and
irony, can be experimental, can express confidence or weakness etc. In general, they are
rhetorical; they are questions but they don't expect an answer. They are not used to make
real questions.
Example

She wants to enter the University, does she? (There is some possibility)

“Now you need to stay sitting there for a few minutes before you walk around on it again,
all right?” (consensus seeking)

“This is understood, yes?” (John Boyne, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, 2006, p.106)
(interest)

Shmuel shook his head. 'That's all, right,' he said. (hedging) (John Boyne, “The Boy in the
Striped Pyjamas”, 2006, p. 121)

So you aren't agree with me, aren't you? (irony)

So you’ve found a new job, have you? (I mean that’s wonderful)

Sociolinguist Janet Holmes (1984) distinguished two types of Tag Questions; Modal Tags
and Affective Tags.
Modal tags are those that request information or confirmation of something that the
speaker is uncertain about.

E.g. ''But you have been writing longer than expected, haven't you?''

Affective ones are used not to signal uncertainty on the speaker part, but to indicate
concern for the addressee.’' Affective tags are subdivided into two types; softener and
facilitative.

E.g. Open the window, could you? (softener)

He will help me, won't he? (facilitative)

But he was murdered, wasn't he?' (Agatha Christie: 1953, “After the Funeral”, Chapter 3)

Turns out that in the category of modal tags -that is, the tags that genuinely express
uncertainty -are much more likely to be used by men, while the affective tags are only
somewhat likely to be used by men. So during her study Holmes finds out that men use
much more tag questions that females. Anyway she mentions that besides the sex effect
more affective tags are used by those who are in cha rge of the conversation, so called
“powerful speakers”.

In contrast to Holmes, American cognitive linguist and philosopher R. Lakoff has also
touched upon this subject in her work ''Language and Women's Place'' and has suggested
that there's a ''linguistic rule'' that woman will use Tag Questions more than men. This
entails that ''Women speech sounds more polite''. And she states that aspects of politeness
are hesitations, qualifiers, empty adjectives that she uses to weaken the force of utterance.
Lakoff's description of female speech style was based on her remembered impressions
rather than on any systematic, quantitative observation. Anyway when subsequent
researchers went out and counted things, they often found it difficult to confirm her
observations. For instance, some studies found that men actually used more tag questions
than women did.

Cameron (1988) looked at tag questions in a 45,000 word sample from a British corpus of
transcribed conversations, called the "Survey of English Usage". There were nine sections
of 5,000 words each; three of all-male conversation, three of all-female conversation, and
three of mixed-sex conversation. In this corpus, there were 60 tag questions used by men,
and only 36 by women.

Bublitz (1979) believes that “only a grammatical theory which either includes a pragmatic
component or is completed by a pragmatic theory has the explanatory power” to explain
the meanings of tag questions. Tag Questions are characterized by diversity of meaning
which makes it difficult to classify tags in terms of their pragmatic functions.

Algeo (1990) classifies the pragmatic functions of English tag questions into five
categories: informational tag, the confirmatory tag, the punctuational tag, the peremptory
tag, and the aggressive tag.

The “informational tag” is often spoken with a rising intonation and is for making a
genuine polite request for information. It often expects a direct response from the
addressee;

E.g., “John is busy, isn’t he?”

A negative main clause followed by a tag signals a higher degree of politeness, and the
speaker doesn’t seem dominant.

E.g. You don’t mind, do you?

2. The “confirmatory tag”, usually spoken with a falling intonation, is considered to be

very polite. It is to get the speaker’s agreement and to elicit a response from the addressee
which will encourage the speaker to continue.

E.g. You are the monitor, aren’t you?”

Informational and confirmatory tags are signals of politeness while the other types, on the
other hand, are signals of impoliteness; the speaker’s intention is to establish superiority
over the listener (Algeo, 1988, p. 188).
3. The ‘aggressive tag’ is spoken with a falling intonation with an intention to be openly
hostile, and is used to accuse the hearer of a “lack of common sense, consideration, or
good will”

e.g. “You’re such an idiot, aren’t you?”

4. The ‘peremptory tag’ is used to end the discussion of a topic. When it is spoken with a
falling intonation, the peremptory tag seeks to end a discussion or a conversation,

e.g., “That’s enough, isn’t it?”

5. The “Punctuational tag’” usually asks the listener to pay attention to the speaker. This is
usually points the listener's carelessness as awkwardness.

e.g., “I’ve just said it, haven’t I?”

Tag questions can be considered the feature of mostly and mainly of spoken language,
where intonation matters and we can say that for lots of beginners tag questions were
proven to be grammatically very complicated and this complexity of the pragmatic
functions of tag questions explains why second language learners avoid using them.

We can change the meaning of a tag question with the musical pitch of our voice. With
rising intonation, it sounds like a real question. But if our intonation falls, it sounds more
like a statement that doesn't require a real answer.

"I want you to stay here. We'll need each other." She hesitated. "I mean, he is going to
die, isn't he?" (rising) (John Grisham: “The Chamber”, 1994, p.14)

"It's not hopeless, is it?" (Falling) (John Grisham: “The Chamber”, 1994, p.14)

The exaggerated intonation, stress, and other aspects of prosodics, as well as with
intensifying modifiers are features of positive politeness;

We ate too many beans tonight, didn't we!

Sometimes we use some tools to draw the listener into the conversation and tag questions
like 'you know?', 'see what I mean?', 'isn't it?' are one of these tools.
According to Holmes, when analyzing the meanings or the functions of tag questions, one
should take into consideration “the relative status or power of the speaker and addressees,
the decree of intimacy or social distance (e.g. the solidarity dimension) between the
speaker and the addressee and the role of the speaker and addressee in the social context”.
Holmes distinguishes three categories of affective meaning;

1. Encouraging tags, meant to express solidarity.

2. Speaker orientated tags used to appeal to solidarity. Main function is to elicit

agreement from the interlocutor.

3. Protective tags solidarity, Tag questions that hedge and soften criticism,
complaints and negative comments fall under this category.

In English tag questions have rising or falling intonation patterns. Falling intonation also
can indicate that the speaker “wants to make sure that the hearer shares the speaker
knowledge, attitudes, and expectations” (Bublitz, 1979, p. 7). When the addressee has
equal knowledge of what you are speaking, tag questions with falling intonation can be
used in some local dialects of British English.

E.g. I had a really hard time entering the Oxford University, didn't I?

Since English yes/no questions have rising patterns tags make a grammatical statement
into a real question:

E.g. You have been in Switzerland, haven’t you?

But when you ask somebody you meet for the first time or when you don't have equal
knowledge, rising intonation is used;

E.g. The Medical University is in the center of the city, isn't it?

In general invariant tags are much more widely used. Intonation is rising when the
degree of certainty is lower and falling, when it is higher.

In English imperative statements can be softened with tags. “Help yourself, won't you”.
This is an example of polite invitation. The negativity of the tag part also matters. For
example, if we say 'Give me, can you?' this is a quite friendly statement, but when we say
'Give me, can't you? here the statement elicits some irritation. When we use negative
main clause, in the tag part we can only use 'will'.

E.g. Don't make a noise, will you?

A tag, in its usage is midway between an outright statement and a yes-no question: it is
less assertive than the former, but more confident than the latter. Therefore it is usable
under certain contextual situations: isn't used in situations in which a statement would be
appropriate, nor in those in which a yes-no question is generally used, but in situations
intermediate between these.

One makes a statement being confident in what (s)he says and one asks a question lacking
knowledge, while Tag Questions, being intermediate between these, are used when the
speaker is stating a claim, but lacks full confidence in the truth of that claim.

E.g. If we ask ''Has she gone?'' we’ll not be surprised being answered ''no'', but when we
ask ''She has gone, hasn't she?'' we are eager to get a positive answer and we expect a
confirmation. I ask a question waiting for an answer like yes/no question but unlike it I
have some knowledge to predict the answer of my question.

Sometimes we can use tags as a legitimate sentence-form. For example if you heard a
voice but you're unsure and you know that your friend has better listening, you may ask
him, ''There was the voice of car approaching, wasn’t there?''

Sometimes people even use Tag Questions when they do not need to get confirmation,
they may say something both of the speakers are sure about. In this case one uses Tag
Questions to start a ''small talk'' or something like engaging your partner into
conversation.

Eg. The weather is extremely wonderful, isn't it?

Tag Questions are also used when you have some certain opinion about something, you
have your own yes or no answer but you are reluctant to state it, or maybe you don’t have
enough statistical evidence so you state a Tag Question.
E.g. The Coronavirus has had serious effects on human lives, hasn't it?

And sometimes people question their own emotions or feelings. This does happen, even if
questioning one's own feelings seems ridiculous.

E.g. I have an earache, don't I?

CONCLUSION
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

 The Realization of Positive Politeness Strategies in Language: The Politeness

Theory of Brown and Levinson
 Imad Al-Nabtiti: The Syntax and Pragmatics of English Tag Questions: A Study of
Adult Arabic Learners of English, 2012
 ROBIN LAKOFF: Language and woman's place,1975 (p. 45-80)

REFERENCES

 PRAGMATICS OF TAG QUESTION, CROSS-CULTURALPERSPECTIVE, 2018

https://www.academia.edu/36912155/PRAGMATICS_OF_TAG_QUESTION_CRO
SS-CULTURAL_PERSPECTIVE
 Two approaches to the analysis of tags; https://www.jstor.org/stable/4175078?
seq=1