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Style, indexicality, and the social meaning of tag questions1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

EMMA MOORE  and
ROBERT PODESVA
EMMA MOORE
Affiliation:
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, U.K., e.moore@sheffield.ac.uk.
ROBERT PODESVA
Affiliation:
Bunn Intercultural Center 479, Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, 37th and O Streets NW, Washington, DC 20057, rjp39@georgetown.edu.
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Abstract

This article illustrates how the notions of style and indexicality can illuminate understanding of the social meaning of a specific linguistic variable, the tag question. Drawing on conversational speech and ethnographic data from a community of high school girls in northwest England, it quantitatively and qualitatively examines the discourse, grammatical, and phonological design of tag questions in this community. Members of four social groups are shown to use tag questions to similar effect, as a means of conducing particular points of view. However, these groups also exhibit striking differences in the stylistic composition of tags, distinctions that indexically construct stances and personas, which may in turn come to represent group identity. These data suggest that the social meaning of tag questions can be best ascertained by examining their internal composition and by situating them in their broader discursive and social stylistic contexts. (Adolescents, ethnography, indexicality, interactional context, quantitative discourse analysis, social meaning, style, tag questions)

Type
Research Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , September 2009 , pp. 447 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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