Questioning

Some questions are blatantly interrogative (‘Where did you leave the key? ’ ), some declarative (‘You appreciate what this will mean? ’ ), while others take an imperative form (‘Tell me more? ’ ). Furthermore, questions can be classed, inter alia, as open, wh-questions, closed, tag, leading, or multiple. More will be said of these later. As far as purpose served in posing a question is concerned, getting information most readily springs to mind. Heritage (2002, p. 1427), for instance, highlighted this usage when he wrote, ‘In its most elemental form, a “question” is a form of social action, designed to seek information and accomplished in a turn at talk by means of interrogative syntax.’ But interrogative intent can also be signalled in other ways. Prosodic questions are ‘declarative sentences containing question cues that may be intonational, or these utterances are marked as questions by means of a variety of contextual cues’ (Woodbury 1984, p. 203). Furthermore, people ask questions to which they already have the detail requested (as when a prosecuting attorney asks the accused in court during cross-examination, ‘Where did you go after leaving 26 Hope Street, that evening? ’). Some may even ask questions to which they know the respondent realises they already possess the answer (e.g. a teacher asks a pupil in class, ‘What’s the capital of Nigeria? ’). Expressive questions are framed, on the other hand, not to get information but, in an oblique way, to give it (e.g. a mother asks her wayward son, following another feeble excuse, ‘Do you expect me to believe that? ’). Adler, Rosenfeld, and Proctor (2001) termed these counterfeit questions in that they are ‘really disguised attempts to send a message, not receive one’.