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This volume explores a model of epistemic stance, according to which speakers can communicate each single piece of information either as known/certain or uncertain or unknown. It presents a qualitative analysis of extracts from the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 to support the idea that questions come from two distinct epistemic positions: the Unknowing and the Uncertain; this latter ranges along two poles: Not Knowing Whether and Believing.In the epistemic continuum, Unknowing questions express a lack of knowledge and range from open to closed and dual wh-questions. On the other hand, Uncertain questions express a lack of certainty and range from maximum uncertainty (Not Knowing Whether-questions advancing a doubt) to minimum uncertainty (Believing-questions advancing a supposition). Both Unknowing and Uncertain questions can be directed either at the answerer's Knowing or Believing position, depending on their aim. The volume will appeal to scholars concerned with the topic of question design and epistemic stance from a theoretical and analytical perspective, as well as those interested in applying these findings in their teaching practice.

This book is intended to address students, researchers and teachers of spoken language. It presents an empirical study of task-oriented language data in which coparticipants display levels of recipiency through reactive tokens. An in-depth investigation of displaying recipiency is of interest primarily to conversation analysts and pragmaticians involved in the research on talk-in-interaction in general and Mandarin Chinese conversations in particular. The communicative aspect makes this book relevant to the areas of language use. While previous research has shown that one single reactive token has different discourse functions in different conversational environments, this study shows that participants'collaborative orientation to each other's status of displayed recipiency seems decisive for the selection of reactive tokens, rather than one specific reactive token being employed for specific conversational purposes in varying interactional contexts. This book also contributes to fields in linguistics, pragmatics, and sociology which specialize in the investigation of spontaneous human communication.

This book examines turn-taking in English and Japanese conversations and political news interviews to investigate the relationship between language and interaction.

This innovative work provides the first comprehensive account of general extenders ('or something,''and stuff,''or whatever'). Combining insights from linguistics, cognitive psychology, and interactional sociolinguistics, the author demonstrates that these small phrases are not simply vague expressions, but have a powerful role in making interpersonal communication work. The audience for this book includes linguists, scholars of English, teachers of English as a first and a second language, sociolinguists, psycholinguists, and communications researchers.