Introduction
This chapter will analyse the prosodic devices used in everyday moralizing. The focus will be on reproach activities in ‘why’ - formats, as encountered in a data collection of informal talk (dinner conversations in the family, breakfast interactions, coffee chats, telephone calls between friends) and media conversation (talk-shows on TV and radio phone-ins). An analysis of my data reveals that a great number of reproaches in German are packaged in warum- or wieso- (‘why’ -) formats. This applies to reproaches which are produced in situ, that is, in the ongoing communication:
(1) warum lä:sch se au immer rei:.
why do you always let her in
well as to those which appear as reconstructions of past reproaches:
(2) ich hab der Katharina jetzt auch gesagt warum steht das ni:cht im and so I told Katharina why isn't it in the
Kulturanzeiger.
Kulturanzeiger
Even self-reproaches may be constructed with ‘why’ -formats:
(3) ich hab mir da Vorwurfe gemacht. warum hab ich ihr das gesacht.
I reproached myself, why did I tell her about it
This chapter, however, will concentrate primarily on in situ reproaches constructed in ongoing interaction.
‘Why’ -constructions are of great interest for linguistic analysis because they can represent ‘real’ questions asking for a reason:
(4) warum magst du Stuttgart nich?
why don't you like Stuttgart?
as well as reproaches focussing on another's misdeeds and demanding a ‘remedial reply’:
(5) warum zum Teufel fra:gsch se dann net direkt
why the hell don't you ask her directly then
The analytic questions then are: how do participants differentiate between a ‘why’ -question and a ‘why’ -reproach?