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Pragmatic Markers in Irish English
Edited by Carolina P. Amador-Moreno, Kevin McCafferty and Elaine Vaughan
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 258] 2015
► pp. 203–228

“And your wedding is the twenty-second <.> of June is it?”

Tag questions in Irish English

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This chapter addresses the lack of systematic research into the use of tag questions in Irish English on a formal and functional level by conducting an exploratory genre-specific analysis of tag questions in service encounters in Irish English. Tag question usage is compared with previous findings from reference corpora of Irish English, British English and American English. The study points to many similarities between tag questions across genre and variety but also shows features which appear particular to present day Irish English, such as the use of sure-tags a higher frequency of the operator BE, a more frequent canonical use of “is it?” tag questions and a high use of interrogative anchors. In addition, the confirmation-eliciting function was employed particularly frequently in the canonical tag questions recorded in the service encounter data. Further research is required to investigate whether this findings was genre-related or varietyrelated. Finally, non-concordant tag uses were found to be uncommon, a finding which contrasts with previous research on Irish English. The paper closes with a plea for an increase in cross-variational analyses of tag questions.

Published online: 15 July 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.258.09bar
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Cited by

Cited by 11 other publications

Barron, Anne & Irina Pandarova
2016. The Sociolinguistics of Language Use in Ireland. In Sociolinguistics in Ireland, ► pp. 107 ff. DOI logo
Kirk, John M.
2016. The Pragmatic Annotation Scheme of the SPICE-Ireland Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 21:3 ► pp. 299 ff. DOI logo
KIRK, JOHN M.
2017. Developments in the spoken component of ICE corpora. World Englishes 36:3 ► pp. 371 ff. DOI logo
McCafferty, Kevin & Carolina P. Amador-Moreno
2019. Chapter 5. ‘but a[h] Hellen d[ea]r sure you have it more in your power in every respect than I have’ – Discourse marker sure in Irish English. In Processes of Change [Studies in Language Variation, 21], ► pp. 73 ff. DOI logo
Ní Mhurchú, Aoife
2018. What’s Left to Say About Irish English Progressives? “I’m Not Going Having Any Conversation with You”. Corpus Pragmatics 2:3 ► pp. 289 ff. DOI logo
O’Keeffe, Anne
2023. Irish English Corpus Linguistics. In The Oxford Handbook of Irish English, ► pp. 243 ff. DOI logo
P. Amador-Moreno, Carolina
2023. Discourse-Pragmatic Markers in Irish English. In The Oxford Handbook of Irish English, ► pp. 426 ff. DOI logo
Rühlemann, Christoph & Brian Clancy
2018. Corpus linguistics and pragmatics. In Pragmatics and its Interfaces [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 294], ► pp. 241 ff. DOI logo
Westphal, Michael
2020. Question Tags in Philippine English. Corpus Pragmatics 4:4 ► pp. 401 ff. DOI logo
Westphal, Michael
2021. Question tags across New Englishes. World Englishes DOI logo
Westphal, Michael
2022. The Multilingual Pragmatics of New Englishes: An Analysis of Question Tags in Nigerian English. Frontiers in Communication 6 DOI logo

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