Questioning and Answering Practices across Contexts and Cultures
Editor
This book showcases innovative research about the multi-functional and dynamic interrelatedness of questioning and answering practices in institution- and culture-specific interactions ranging from under-explored to extensively researched ones: South-Korean talk shows, Japanese interviews, Chinese news interviews, police-civilian interactions in the USA, Italian interviews and courtroom examinations, Japanese parliamentary debates and Prime Minister’s Questions in the UK Parliament.
Challenging the view that questions are asked with the purpose of seeking information and eliciting answers, these studies open up new research avenues through insightful investigations and critical scrutiny that problematize the question-answer paradigm, through which meanings are conveyed, negotiated and/or contested, and through which relationships are established, maintained and/or challenged. Significant findings show that questioning and answering strategies are shaped by the specific norms and constraints of particular communities of practice, while at the same time they are shaping the very same communities of practice. This book will appeal to interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners across the linguistic, media, political, legal and social sciences.
Challenging the view that questions are asked with the purpose of seeking information and eliciting answers, these studies open up new research avenues through insightful investigations and critical scrutiny that problematize the question-answer paradigm, through which meanings are conveyed, negotiated and/or contested, and through which relationships are established, maintained and/or challenged. Significant findings show that questioning and answering strategies are shaped by the specific norms and constraints of particular communities of practice, while at the same time they are shaping the very same communities of practice. This book will appeal to interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners across the linguistic, media, political, legal and social sciences.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 323] 2021. vi, 316 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 5 July 2021
Published online on 5 July 2021
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
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Questions we (inter)act with: Interrelatedness of questions and answers in discourseCornelia Ilie | pp. 1–32
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Part I. Questioning and answering strategies in parliamentary discourses
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Evasive answers vs. aggressive questions: Parliamentary confrontational practices in Prime Minister’s QuestionsCornelia Ilie | pp. 35–70
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Japanese politicians’ questions in parliament: Being polite yet forceful?Lidia Tanaka | pp. 71–106
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Part II. Questioning and answering strategies in legal and police discourses
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Pragmatic functions of question-answer sequences in Italian legal examinations and TV interviews with politiciansAugusto Gnisci | pp. 109–144
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“You were resisting the whole time!”: Assumption of guilt in police-civilian question-response interactionsL. Guditus Casey | pp. 145–164
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Part III. Questioning and answering strategies in interview and TV-show discourses
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Constructing interrupting inquiries as cooperative interactions: Question-response-hai ‘yes’ sequences in Japanese interviewsMomoko Nakamura | pp. 167–192
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Formulation questions and responses in Korean TV talk show interactionsKyu-hyun Kim and Kyung-Hee Suh | pp. 193–226
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Devices of alignment: Suoyi- and danshi-prefaced questions in Mandarin Chinese TV news interviewsHua Gao | pp. 227–254
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Part IV. Questioning and answering as strategies of interpersonal interaction at the public-private discourse interface
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“Doing being collegial”: Participants’ positioning work in Q&A sessionsElizabeth Reddington, Ignasi Clemente, Hansun Zhang Waring and Di Yu | pp. 257–284
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Question–answer sequences in Japanese first encounters: Wishing to get to know new persons vs. dispreferred behavior of asking questionsYuka Shigemitsu | pp. 285–312
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Index | pp. 313–316
“This engaging book bears the mark of Professor Cornelia Ilie’s long-standing expertise in the analysis of questions and answers. It both enhances and sharpens our understanding of the ways in which the acts of asking and answering questions can reinforce, as well as challenge, socio-cultural discourse styles. Undoubtedly, this volume will become a benchmark for the ongoing research literature.”
Peter Bull, Universities of York and Salford
“Questioning is one of the most pervasive and significant forms of social interaction in all the contexts of our social and civic lives. This volume offers a rich set of studies of language- and culture-specific questioning practices. An impressive and insightful, culturally eclectic, collection, guided by Cornelia Ilie’s immense experience and scholarship in this field.”
Paul Drew, University of York
“How and why questioning and answering patterns vary across cultures is a perennial topic for the language sciences. This volume makes an important contribution to this task. It offers innovative explorations of a considerable range of question-answer patterns in institutional genres through empirically diverse and theoretically cutting-edge studies. A most welcome addition to the literature, opening new research avenues.”
John Heritage, University of California at Los Angeles
“Why should you definitely read this book? Here is the answer: It is a compelling collection of theoretically and empirically very interesting studies that reveal how question-answer sequences work similarly/differently in various institutions across many cultures.”
Manfred Kienpointner, University of Innsbruck
“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. [...] 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.”
Ana-Maria Jerca, York University, Canada, on Linguist List 33.618 (17 February 2022).
“This engaging and insightful volume edited by Cornelia Ilie presents a diverse collection of contributions to the studies of questioning and answering practices in talk. [...] This timely volume enriches our understanding of questions and answers by offering studies from different perspectives, languages, and contexts, and opens up possibilities for further collaborations. It empirically shows that the interplay of questioning and answering should be understood as a dynamic process, one that needs to be approached with a multitude of considerations such as context, roles played by the participants, etc. This volume is highly recommended for all scholars and researchers interested in the topic of the questioning and answering practices in naturally occurring talk.”
Stephanie Hyeri Kim, California State University Northridge, in Journal of Pragmatics 218 (2023).
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Yoon, Kyung-Eun
2023. Questioning Practices and Speech Style Shifting in Korean Entertainment Talk Shows. Languages 8:4 ► pp. 286 ff. 
Ilie, Cornelia
2022. How to Argue with Questions and Answers: Argumentation Strategies in Parliamentary Deliberation. Languages 7:3 ► pp. 205 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Communication Studies
Main BIC Subject
CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009030: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Pragmatics