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(see, for example, Danet, Hoffman, Kermish, Rafn, & Stayman, 1980; Danet & Kermish, 1978).
Questions are found to be coercive in that they set constraints on the kinds and length of responses
elicited (Danet & Kermish, 1978; Danet et al., 1980; Dunstan, 1980). Some forms of questioning are
more coercive than others. In the order of descending coerciveness, five types of question forms are
identified by Danet et al. (1980): 1) declaratives; 2) interrogative yes/no questions; 3) interrogative wh-
questions; 4) requestions
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; 5) imperatives. Besides setting constraints on responses, questioning also
plays such functions as information-getting (Danet & Kermish, 1978) or as strategic means to weaken and
rebut witnesses’ testimonies (Danet et al., 1980; Drew, 1990) in the American courtroom.
In addition to these communicative functions, questioning was found to play the cultural function
of representing power differences between questioners and respondents in the American courtroom
(Philips, 1984). Philips, who studied questions and answers in an Arizona court, found that people of
higher status were more likely to use the more coercive forms of questioning in order to control and
dictate the form of responses. In contrast, people in lower status would use more indirect questions to
show respect to the superior answerers. Therefore, social status and authority are enacted through the
forms of questioning.
A brief literature review reveals some limitations of questioning research. First, the previous
studies examined questioning outside its sociocultural contexts. What has been overlooked by these
studies is the fact that questioning is culturally situated that possesses culture-specific forms and plays
culture-specific functions. Secondly, instead of examining questioning as sequences of talk, most studies
were interested in looking at questions as single utterances. Finally, the previous studies approached
questioning mainly from a legal or sociolinguistic perspective. The questioning discourse has not been
inspected from a communicative perspective. As an effort to remedy the above limitations, this paper will
investigate, from a communicative point of view, questioning as sequences of talk in its social and
cultural context.
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Requestions are questions that convey two meanings at the same time—a request and a question. An example of
requestion is “Can you describe …?” Requestions are categorized as noncoercive by Danet et al. (1980).
Convention