Discourse Strategies

Abstract

How does 'gravy' apply to paralingusitic cues? This refers to a study done by John Gumperz on Indian servers in a British canteen. Whereas in British English, the activity of 'asking' is signaled with rising intonation and 'ordering' is signaled by falling intonation, in Indian English, one word questions do not get such marked rising intonation. When the Indian servers used falling intonation to ask customers if they wanted gravy on their meat, the British customers thought they were being impolite because they interpreted the falling intonation as an 'order' ('I'm giving you gravy whether you like it or not') rather than a question.