Overlapping reactions during tag questions

Kimps, Ditte and O'Grady, Gerard ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1730-9074 2022. Overlapping reactions during tag questions. Word 68 (3) , pp. 253-276. 10.1080/00437956.2021.2003539

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Abstract

This article examines the form and the functions of what we label overlapping reactions. These are premature responses which overlap utterances containing a variable interrogative tag, e.g., It’s nice, isn’t it. They are orientated towards the proposition contained in the tag question. Our research is grounded in a corpus of spoken British English and, employs methods and insights from corpus linguistics, conversation analysis and phonetics. Based on the clustering of observed grammatical, discoursal and prosodic features we propose a typology of the interactional functions of overlapping responses, i.e., acknowledgements, continuers, disagreements, non-committals and turn-competitive early responses. We show that such responses are not errors but rather function as part of the well-oiled machinery of spontaneous dialogue. We show that the typology of overlaps proposed by Jefferson ([1983]. “Two Explorations of the Organization of Overlapping Talk in Conversation.” Language and Literature 28: 1–33) is unable to fully distinguish between the functional categories identified in our data. Hence we suggest that a taxonomy of overlaps must be based on the patterning of formal and functional features. Our data provide evidence that tag questions are responded to a syntagmatic wholes rather than as a sequence of two parts: anchor and tag.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
ISSN:	0043-7956
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	4 November 2021
Date of Acceptance:	4 November 2021
Last Modified:	13 Jun 2025 09:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/145291

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