As we discussed last week, the general rule for English tag questions is that a positive statement should be followed by a negative tag, and a negative statement followed by a positive tag: “She’s winning,
isn’t she?” “They’re not conceding,
are they?” “We’ll not get into trouble for this,
would we?”
Owing to certain peculiarities of English grammar, however, some tag questions can’t scrupulously follow that opposite polarity rule. For instance, it’s awkward to say “I’m correct,
amn’t I?” even if “amn’t I” is the evident contracted form of “am I not?”; better to say the more natural-sounding “I’m correct,
aren’t I?” Likewise, we don’t say “This will do,
willen’t it?”—it’s a tag that doesn’t exist in English; instead we say “This will do,
won’t it?” (Conversely, the reverse-polarity statement for “This will do,
won’t it?” is “This won’t do,
will it?”)
Another bewildering exception about tags is this: the opposite polarity rule can actually be pointedly ignored when people want to strongly express sarcasm, disbelief, surprise, concern, shock, or anger. Take these examples: “You think you’re indispensable,
do you?” “Oh, you will really do that,
will you?” “Oh, she really left him,
did she?” “So you’re finally getting married,
are you? That’s great!” (Or the contrary sentiment: “So she’s finally getting married,
is she? The nerve!”) “And you think that’s amusing,
do you?” And then, as a mark of pushy or aggressive politeness, positive tags can also be attached to positive requests: “Come here,
will you?” “Do that,
will you?” “Please hand me that screw driver,
will you?”
When people use negative statements with negative tag questions, on the other hand, it’s not necessarily bad grammar but a sure sign of the breakdown of civility or of downright hostility and combativeness: “So you
don’t love me at all,
don’t you?” “You really
didn’t like the idea,
didn’t you?” “So you
don’t think my school is good enough,
don’t you?” “So you
didn’t want peace after all,
didn’t you?” The negative tags emphasize the negativeness of the main statement to deliberately rile people or to make them feel guilty.
Of course, using negative statements with positive tag questions is the socially acceptable way of asking for information or help when we don’t know the person being addressed. It’s rude, for instance, to simply approach or accost a stranger in the mall and ask him or her pointblank, “Where’s the women’s room?” When addressing people of about the same age or social station as yours, that question can be asked more politely this way: “
Do you know where the women’s room is?” (Don’t use a tag question in such cases.) To people older or of an evidently higher social station than yourself, that question can be asked in this more polite, non-aggressive form: “You
wouldn’t know where the women’s room is,
would you?”
Here are a few more patterns of negative statements with a positive, pleasant, and convivial tag and tone: “You
don’t know of any job openings in your company at this time,
do you?” “You
don’t happen to know where the stock exchange building is,
do you?” “You
haven’t got anything to do with what happened here,
do you?” “You
can’t believe it that the woman’s leading the race,
can you?”
The beauty of negative statements with positive tag questions is that they subtly prime up the listener’s mind either to accept the given idea or to decline it quickly and gracefully; in fact, refusing to answer the positive tag questions at all actually will make the person being addressed look rude and impolite. Whatever the answer might be, nobody should lose face in this classic communication gambit of appealing to the other’s goodness of heart and of cushioning a possible blow to his or her self-esteem.
This essay, 2109th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the July 28, 2022 digital edition of The Manila Times
, ©2022 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.Read this essay online in
The Manila Times:
Notable departures from tag question rules(Next week:
Forming negative sentences correctly) August 4, 2022
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
