Echo questions as a means of building coherence in conversational discourse

The study focuses on the cognitive-communicative characteristics of echo questions in English conversational discourse. Drawing on van Dijk's sociocognitive (mental model) theory and cognitive discourse analysis, the paper suggests viewing echo questions as a means of building/updating a mental...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Strelchenko Natalia
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Sciendo 2017-06-01
Series:Lege Artis. Language yesterday, today, tomorrow
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/lart.2017.2.issue-1/lart-2017-0009/lart-2017-0009.xml?format=INT
Description
Summary:The study focuses on the cognitive-communicative characteristics of echo questions in English conversational discourse. Drawing on van Dijk's sociocognitive (mental model) theory and cognitive discourse analysis, the paper suggests viewing echo questions as a means of building/updating a mental context model of a communicative situation. As discourse comprehension presupposes building its coherent mental model, echo questions resolving misunderstanding are regarded as an instrument for increasing coherence in conversational discourse. Based on the mental model theory, the study offers a typology of misunderstandings corrected by echo questions.
ISSN:2453-8035