Pragmatic functions of question tags in Indian and Sri Lankan English

Abstract

In English, previous research has investigated question tags (QTs) in first-language varieties, in second-language varieties like Indian, Philippine, or Trinidadian English, and in contrastive studies involving other languages. This paper examines speakers' QT choices in Indian and Sri Lankan English compared to their historical input variety, British English (BrE), and breaks new ground regarding QTs in world Englishes by presenting the first empirical study of QTs in Sri Lankan English (SLE). The study considers and models various structural, contextual, and sociobiographic factors using data from the International Corpus of English. Findings indicate that interactions between variety and factors such as context, QT form, the speakers' educational background, and additional languages spoken by the speakers influence pragmatic tag question choices, distinguishing both South Asian varieties from BrE. These results align with broader calls for incorporating sociobiographic variables to better understand pragmatic speaker choices. Moreover, findings suggest the pragmatic nativization of QTs in SLE.