Questions and Interrogatives

Conversation analysts distinguish between the terms “interrogative” and “question.” Interrogative is a grammatical term describing the syntactic form of a turn at talk. “Question” describes the type of action - requesting information - that a speaker can do. From a conversation analytic perspective, questions project a relevant next action in the form of a response, for which the answerer is accountable. The design of a question can set an agenda and embody presuppositions and assumptions about the states of affairs referenced by the question. Question design can also encode the relative states of knowledge of questioner and questioned parties. The grammatical form of questions can project or “prefer” an expected kind of response, sometimes irrespective of the action preference carried by the question.