Affirmation and Denial Interjections, Exclamations, and Direct Address

- 265 - If the “oh” indicates the unexpectedness of the information, the “no” registers the dismay; the “no” is a denial with the meaning “surely it can’t be true”

6.5.2 Affirmation and Denial

Many of our examples of “yes” are simple responses to direct questions which Halliday and Hasan 1976 claim are “readily interpretable as elliptical forms. They just express the polarity option in the clause…leaving the remainder to be presupposed” p. 138. But as Schiffrin 1987 notes, “a polarity term such as yeh [or yes] can become” a marker “of other discourse components” p. 329. In our first example from Shvinder’s Story F, “yes” is an acknowledgement marker, where the questioner is checking whether he heard the unfamiliar expression “arctic roll” correctly: 256 “I WONder if you CAN MA-AKE ARCtic RO-OLL?” 27 he [Mr. Wong] said. 28 “ARCtic RO-OLL?” said the ESKimo. 29 “YES, ARCtic roll - ICE-cream.” The second example is from Fariba’s Story E: 39 And he [Ben] said, 401 “THERE’S a GAME and YOU can COME 423 and let’s SEE if you WIN TWO PRIZes.” 44 And DID Billy win TWO PRIZes? 45 YES, he DID Here Fariba is using a rhetorical question and answer pair to highlight Billy’s achievement and reward as a clowning cowboy: one prize for his clowning and one for his horse’s skill in keeping him on his back. Schiffrin states that “yes-no questions are propositions whose polarity is unspecified…Completion of the proposition…fixes the polarity” pp. 84–85, and Fariba does this in a dramatic manner. The question is certainly evaluative, for although rhetorical, it is “asked directly of the listener”; the “yes” is an emphatic affirmative coupled with an emphatic assertion “he did” which has been analysed as an exclamation in its own right. So in this way Fariba is indicating overtly to her hearer that this is the main point of her story. The story ends with Billy boasting of his achievements, making Ben cross, and the two of them starting to fight. - 266 - The third example is from Fariba’s Story B: 2021 And WHEN Father Christmas went DOWN he TOLD, 22 “Do - DID you WON the GAME?” 23 And he [the ‘girl’s’ son] SAID, 24 “NO, I DIDn’t.” This is the negative, first person counterpart to the positive assertion of the previous example; however, the exclamatory force is missing and so is the rhetorical usage of the yes-no question. Nevertheless, the “no” is evaluative as a dramatized first person denial. If 24 were expressed in indirect speech it would be something like, “And he said that he didn’t” or “he said that, no, he didn’t” but the immediate impact of the denial would be lost.

6.5.3 “Please”, “Now”, “Well”, and “O.K.”