Interrogatives that seek no answers: exploring the expressiveness of rhetorical interrogatives in Japanese

The expressive effects of rhetorical interrogatives (RI) in Japanese are identified & their interpretive sources are traced to the informational & interactional contexts in which they are placed. It is argued that these RIs express different kinds of emotions & attitudes. Based on exampl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Linguistics 1995, Vol.33 (3), p.501-530
Main Author: MAYNARD, S. K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Discourse semiotics
Discourse studies
Japan
Japanese language
Language
Linguistics
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Summary:The expressive effects of rhetorical interrogatives (RI) in Japanese are identified & their interpretive sources are traced to the informational & interactional contexts in which they are placed. It is argued that these RIs express different kinds of emotions & attitudes. Based on examples from spoken & written Japanese, various expressive effects that RIs create in discourse are discussed. Sources for these meanings & functions are sought by concentrating on the context of information statuses - known, assumed, or unknown - with which they are associated, & the question-answer interactional relationship. As RIs do not seek answers but express the speaker's attitude, the nonparallel interpretation between form & meaning/function is an important theoretical concern. A framework is proposed in which different interpretations of RIs are motivated by information statuses regarding the potential answers. It is suggested that the concept of hidden dialogicality serves as a source for the interpretation of RI expressions. 31 References. Adapted from the source document
ISSN:0024-3949
1613-396X
DOI:10.1515/ling.1995.33.3.501