Advances in research on questions in monologic discourse: introduction to the special issue on questions in monologic discourse

Abstract This article is an introduction to a special issue titled “Questions in Monologic Discourse”. While non-canonical questions have received a lot of attention recently, most studies have taken dialogue as a discourse benchmark for analysis. This special issue gathers articles that do not assume communication to be restricted to information exchange. More specifically, this special issue focuses on questions that do not necessarily lead to an issue resolution from an addressee, either because these questions are reflective in nature or because the addressee is not assumed to know the answer. The aim of this special issue is to investigate the nature, role, and communicative functions of questions in monologic discourse across different genres and theoretical frameworks and in a crosslinguistic perspective.