Requesting Confirmation or Reconfirmation across Languages: An Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This special issue presents a collection of conversation-analytic and interactional-linguistic studies concerned with the cross-linguistic analysis of requests for confirmation (RfC) and requests for reconfirmation (RfRCs) as two distinct types of polar questions. In this paper, we outline a characterisation of the two actions with reference to their epistemic gradient and their sequential design, which does not take specific linguistic resources as its starting point and thus lends itself to comparative analysis. We review previous research on the linguistic design of RfCs and RfRCs and the responses they invite in different languages before we summarise the main findings of the papers in this issue. The final section discusses perspectives for future research on interactional and epistemic styles across languages.