#3641. Pursuing Common Ground: Nondisaffiliative Rhetorical Questions in Mandarin Conversations

October 2026publication date
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Journal’s subject area:
Linguistics and Language;
Communication;
Social Psychology;
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Abstract:
Rhetorical questions have been regularly observed to implement disaffiliative actions in conversations such as challenging, complaining, or retorting. This article, however, reports on nondisaffiliative uses of rhetorical questions based on a particular structure. Although much less studied, nondisaffiliative uses are by far more frequent in conversations. It examines the sequential contexts in which they are recurrently produced and identifies the interactional clues that make these rhetorical questions recognizable as seeking common ground.
Keywords:
Rhetorical questions; conversations; common ground; Nondisaffiliative

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