Questioning Questions in Language, Culture and Cognition

Abstract

The motivation for questioning questions arose in the research group Language, Culture and Cognition in 2018 when several members were working on material that included questions. In this work, a series of problems appeared, including: How do we classify questions based on their functions? What is the cognitive basis for questions? How do we account for the specific functions that questions serve in activity types? The problems led to consideration as to whether there was a basis for a broader discussion of questions, and when the group invited to the open symposium Questioning Questions in Language, Culture and Cognition, it turned out that there was a widespread interest within the international linguistic research community. At the symposium held at Roskilde University on November 15, 2018, 14 papers were presented, and following the research group’s call for papers for a special issue, several new proposals came along - each contributing to the classification, analysis and characteriation of questions. This indicates not only that there is a lively interest in questions, but also that there is a need to discuss and add to the existing classifications, analyses and characterisations of questions. In this issue we have gathered the 11 most relevant contributions.