Kim, Kyu-hyun. (2023). “Question Tags in Korean Conversation: Displaying and Soliciting Empathy for Managing Delicate Action”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea, 31(4), 149-173. From the perspective of conversation analysis, this study analyzes utterances formatted with a question tag constructed as the tag-type clause kuci, “Isn’t it?.” Based on an examination of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction, it is argued that question tags, though generally intended to be a recipiency-mobilizing resource, serve primarily as a resource for empathy display and are geared toward retroactively managing the various “delicate” actions that their host utterance implements. Formulated as post-predicate elements, their use indicates the speaker’s trust that the recipient will provide an affiliative response by sharing the empathic stance exhibited in their host utterance. The kuci-speaker’s orientation toward soliciting the recipient’s affiliative uptake is frequently reciprocated by the recipient, who registers the “delicate character” of the kuci-marked utterance’s action by producing variously “nuanced” responses, for example, in a way that is empathically other-attentive, obliquely affiliative, or mildly resistant.

1. INTRODUCTION
2. PURSUING JOINT UNDERSTANDING AS A PRACTICE
3. MANAGING DELICATE ACTION
    3.1. Enticing Affiliative Response
    3.2. Displaying Empathy Towards the Other
    3.3. Managing Irony as Delicate Action
4. CONCLUSION

• Kyu-hyun Kim(Professor, Dept. of Applied English Linguistics & Translation Studies, Kyung Hee University; 26 Kyungheedae-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Korea)