Tag: Pragmatics
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Tag Questions — Catty Conversation
As a child, a friend chided me once for ending every sentence with “don’t you think?” It was a habit I had picked up from my mother, who often spoke that way. Today, I recoil at the overuse of tag questions. By tag questions, I refer to those contracted verb phrases that contrast with the…
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The Pragmatics of Greeting Cards
I’m writing this around the holidays, so I wanted to examine a mainstay of the holiday season from a linguistic perspective. The greeting card occupies a peculiar niche in the social fabric of modern society. Why do we buy cards with sentiments written by strangers to no one in particular in order to express personal…
Ezra Vasquez 