Egbert2008

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Egbert2008
BibType ARTICLE
Key Egbert2008
Author(s) Maria Egbert, Monika Vöge
Title Wh-interrogative formats used for questioning and beyond: German warum (why) and wieso (why) and English why
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Business Communication, Interrogatives, Questions, Why, German
Publisher
Year 2008
Language
City
Month
Journal Discourse Studies
Volume 10
Number 1
Pages 17–36
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/1461445607085583
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This article contributes to a critical discussion of how 'question' and `questioning' may be defined in terms of form and function by analyzing the interactional usage of two apparently synonymous `question' words, German warum (why) and wieso (why) and their common English translation why. Warum and why are employed for two different interactional achievements. Wieso marks the utterance as an information request. In this respect, it is affiliative. In contrast, warum points to something wrong and is thus complaint implicative. Recipients orient to warum as disaffiliative. A contrastive analysis of German warum and wieso with English why (Clayman and Heritage, 2002a; Koshik, 2003; Schegloff, 1984) shows that why allows for ambiguity, whereas warum and wieso are unambiguous. While there is a core usage of these lexical items, they are also employed differently with an orientation to institutionality. In business meetings, there is a correlation between the occurrence of the complaint-implicative warum and the leadership status of the speaker in the team.

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