A functional description of questions 958 What did you say?
9 What do you mean?
We can say that they expect the answer to be the supplying of information.
But they are different from questions like ‘What did you do yesterday?’ in
that they invite the addressee to repeat and/or to clarify whatever was said
previously. In other words, these questions take the discourse backwards:
they are about the discourse itself. Coulthard distinguishes them from information-
seeking questions realized by wh-interrogatives by calling those which seek
clarification of the preceding utterance ‘Return’ and those which seek repetition
‘Loop’ (see 1981:21ff).
Consider also the following questions:
10 What time shall we meet?
11 Where shall I meet you?
These questions invite the addressee not only to supply the missing information
signalled by ‘what time’ and ‘where’ but also to commit himself to a
specific time and place of meeting. Take the following piece of data for
example.
12 (B:B:A:3:3)
A: What time?
B: Let’s say about seven.
A: Seven o’clock huh, okay.
Once the ‘information’ supplied by B is endorsed by A, both A and B have
committed themselves to doing something at the specified time. That wh-
questions like the above are not simply information-seeking can be seen
firstly by comparing (13) with (14) and (15).
13 A: What’s the time?
B: Seven.
A: Thanks.
14 A: What time shall we meet?
B: Five o’clock.
→?A: Thanks.
15 A: Where shall we meet?
B: At the Peninsula Hotel.
→?A: Thanks.
Example (13) is a perfectly acceptable exchange whereas (14) and (15) are
not. In (13), speaker A asks for a piece of information, and when B supplies
the information, a thanking from A is in order. By contrast, in (14) and
(15), A’s thanking B is odd because B is not supplying a piece of missing
information.