Ask you teacher what she thinks of Deborah Tannen sometime. The answer will either be amusing or cause me to foam at the mouth.
Tannen is a feminist and one of the leading sociolinguists of the age. She's done a lot of studies on power and language, and one her findings is that tag questions usually have two functions: to ask a question more politely or to prompt your conversation partner to keep going. It's only in the West--mainly America--where the linguistically uninformed (and, apparently, your professor) stigmatize tag questions as "weak" or signs of uncertainty. Women are more likely to use tag questions than men in conversation, but then again, we're socialized to use language differently on a pretty basic level.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2005-02-18 04:19 am (UTC)Tannen is a feminist and one of the leading sociolinguists of the age. She's done a lot of studies on power and language, and one her findings is that tag questions usually have two functions: to ask a question more politely or to prompt your conversation partner to keep going. It's only in the West--mainly America--where the linguistically uninformed (and, apparently, your professor) stigmatize tag questions as "weak" or signs of uncertainty. Women are more likely to use tag questions than men in conversation, but then again, we're socialized to use language differently on a pretty basic level.