The Pragmatics of Questioning in Dialectological Fieldwork: Observations on the Moldovan Linguistic Atlas

Abstract

This article proposes a pragmatic analysis of questioning in dialectological fieldwork, based on material from the Atlasul lingvistic moldovenesc. It argues that the traditional distinction between direct and indirect questions is insufficient to account for the diversity of interrogative structures used in practice. The study develops a reflexive pragmatic perspective focused on the conditions under which responses are produced. Questions are thus treated not as neutral instruments for retrieving pre-existing content, but as pragmatic devices that shape the interactional situation and contribute to the co-production of linguistic data. On this basis, the article proposes a typology of questions (metalinguistic, completion-based, descriptive, situational, multimodal, and translation-based), defined by the way they orient and constrain responses. Finally, it highlights the need to distinguish between two levels of the direct/indirect opposition and to integrate the attentive study of questioning in the analysis of dialectological data.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52505/1857-4300.2026.1(326).02