Le rôle de l'altérité dans les propositions interro-négatives en anglais
Résumé
This article examines the contribution of otherness to the process of constructing a message made up of negative interrogatives in English. The corpus used is a compilation of extracts from the dialogues of Raymond Car– ver’s short stories. Once the negative interrogatives are described, they are classified according to syntactic criteria: we first examine yes–no questions or closed questions, i.e. not introduced by a wh– word, so as to focus on the ques– tion proper, and argue that the negative interrogative enables the speaker to express their point of view. Secondly, open questions are analysed – mostly those introduced by “why” as they are very productive in contemporary English – to highlight their value of subtle suggestion. Thirdly, negative tag questions allow us to regard otherness as the final decision–making position, responsible for validating the message being constructed. It is thus duly inte– grated into the process of constructing a message. Speakers and co–speakers turn out to be mutually–dependent and complementary roles presiding over the English system.