Interjectional nani ‘what’ in Confirmation Requests: An Epistemic Stance Marker Used as an Interactional Resource

Abstract

Nani ‘what’ is an interrogative pronoun that is usually used in question-word interrogatives. Nani can however be used in polar questions as well, where it works as an interjection. This study investigates the interjectional use of nani in polar questions in natural conversation. Speakers use the interjectional nani in polar questions when they request confirmation of their understanding of some situation related to what the addressee has not overtly mentioned in the talk-so-far. We argue that, speakers use nani to indicate their epistemic stance that the proffered understanding has been obtained through an inference based on what was mentioned in the prior talk. We then show that marking this epistemic stance with nani embedded in confirmation requests can be used as an interactional resource in a variety of contexts. It is used, for instance, to indicate the speaker's surprise or negative attitude towards what the prior speaker has just said. It is also used to tease an interlocutor or to implement a topic shift in conversation.