Acceso usuarios
Hassan Belhiah
This study analyses question–answer (QA) sequences in second language tutorial interaction. Using conversation analysis methodology as an analytical tool, the study demonstrates how the act of questioning is a dominant form of interaction in tutoring discourse. The doing of questioning is accomplished through a myriad of forms other than interrogative questions, such as declaratively formatted utterances, and-prefacing, b-event questions, and embodied practices. QA sequences are fundamentally remedial in nature in that they revolve around tutees’ linguistic needs. In this regard, questions that do not address tutees’ linguistic needs are framed as being somewhat disjunctive or ‘out of order’. Through the fine-grained analysis of the QA sequences in four videotaped tutoring sessions, this study contributes to the line of scholarship that seeks to demonstrate how the investigation of questions as interactional products has a bearing on our understanding of the connection between grammar and social organization.
