A study of ‘shenme'-type rhetorical questions from an interactional perspective

This paper, based on an interactive perspective, examines ‘shenme'-type rhetorical questions in the TV series I Love My Family from three aspects: lexical and syntactic features, prosodic features, and physical activity cues. These questions often include negative lexical items and appear in response positions, although the presence of negativity is not a strict criterion but serves as an auxiliary feature. Prosodically, ‘shenme’ exhibits shorter duration, faster speech rate, and is usually unstressed, with a preference for falling intonation despite variation in sentence-final patterns. Additionally, physical cues such as gaze shifts and head lifts are occasionally observed but are inconsistent, serving as secondary interpretative aids. These findings highlight the interplay between prosody and physical cues in interpreting the rhetorical function of ‘shenme’-type questions, offering insights into their unique role in conversational dynamics.