Tag questions in English and Portuguese monologues: types, features, and functions

Abstract This study investigates the characteristics of variable and invariable tag questions in monologues, comparing their usage in British English and European Portuguese. Through a corpus-based analysis, this paper provides valuable insights into the grammatical and functional properties of these linguistic constructions in spoken monologues in both languages. The findings reveal that tag questions are less frequently used in monologues than in dialogues, reflecting their interactional nature. However, their occurrence is notably higher in European Portuguese than in British English across both monologic and dialogic speech. Furthermore, tag questions in European Portuguese exhibit greater frequency and diversity in monologues, whereas in British English, they are less common and exclusively consist of variable tag questions. While some differences in the functional and grammatical features of variable and invariable tag questions were identified, these variations were not particularly pronounced. The analysis also highlights the limited availability of tag questions in the monologues dataset in English, underlining the need for further research to comprehensively explore these constructions across languages.