Negotiating Information: The Semantics and Grammar of Questions and Answers

Discourse and Negotiation examines the use of questions and answers in English discourse, from a systemic functional perspective. The book examines why people use questions in discourse and how Speech Act and SF theory can be used to highlight the structures of information inherent in question and answer exchanges. Ruqaiya Hasan provides a thorough analysis of the semantics and grammar of such exchanges, to show how questions unconsciously permeate discourse. This impeccably researched monograph by a theorist at the forefront of systemic functional linguistics will be of interest to academics in the fields of discourse analysis, stylistics and pragmatics.