Gender - Holmes Tag Questions

Holmes (1984) found that men and women used roughly the same number of tag questions in her matched samples of male and female speech.

Tag questions serve two functions:

Speaker Orientated ( epistemic modal tags and challenging tags )

Addressee Orientated ( affective tags - softeners and facilitative )

SO = Epistemic Modal tags request information or confirmation when the speaker is uncertain. e.g. But you took the train to college today, didn’t you?

SO = Challenging tags are confrontational and may boost the force of an utterance or force addressees into replying e.g. You will have to attend workshops, if you don’t do your homework, ok?

Affective tags indicate concern for the addressee. These are further divided into:

Softeners → Mitigate impolite demands e.g. Pass me the book, would you please ?

Facilitative tags → Invite conversation turn on speakers assertion e.g. The election will be interesting, wont it ?