COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES IN INSTITUTIONAL DISCOURSE (THE ENGLISH TAG-QUESTION)

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Abstract. The English tag question has been the object of interest for several decades. Research into this field has made it possible to describe the structural and functional diversity of tags, their pragmatic potential, as well as some sociolinguistic factors that condition their usage in discourse. Previous research gave understanding of the need to find new approaches to the study of tags, since their functional description does not reflect their discursive diversity. The present paper attempts to consider the English tag question as a universal grammatical structure whose communicative potential extends to satisfy a wide range of communicative tasks from hedging to persuasion. Communication is viewed in the paper as strategically planned socio-psychological activity aimed at achieving goals set by the speaker through the use effective tools. From the point of view of cognitive science, the main function of language is not to transmit information, but to create an area of interaction between interlocutors. Affected by received messages the listener creates information themselves to reduce the uncertainty in their own cognitive area, which determines their behavior. The present paper aims to consider the communicative potential of the English tag question in two types of institutional discourse: courtroom discourse and business communication. In institutional communication, goal setting and efficiency are prime since they are directly related to the effectiveness of doing business. Attaining goals is the speaker’s priority, whereas solutions to this task can be different, they are adjusted to the setting.

Tag questions are viewed as hedging strategies, strategies of politeness and strategies of persuasion. The author seeks to understand whether tag questions perform similar communicative tasks in the two discourse types and aims to compare their relevant frequencies. For the purpose of the analysis 2500 instances of tag questions have been collected and subjected to contextual, qualitative, quantitative and comparative statistical analyses. The research has proved the feasibility of the author’s approach to the treatment of tags and laid the foundation for further research.

Keywords: communication, communicative strategy, hedging, persuasion, politeness, tag question

Irina S. Lebedeva

Moscow State Linguistic University Moscow, Russia
e-mail: i.lebedeva@linguanet.ru ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2482-2004

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