提问是一种社会行为，它与传统语法研究中的疑问句紧密相关，却又不同。那么究竟什么是提问，提问与疑问句的关系是什么，提问除了能够执行寻求信息的功能外，还能够执行哪些辅助功能？本文采用会话分析研究方法，以发生在自然情境下的英汉两种语言的言语交际为语料，从知识论的视角出发，对提问进行定义，并探讨交际者之间的“知识差”以及“信息的会话经济”对问题设计的影响和作用。最后我们还分析了提问在寻求信息之外的辅助交际功能。从知识论出发探讨提问是一个新的研究视角，能够让研究者从形式、功能、和交际的角度全面理解并解释提问这一社会行为。

Questioning is a social action, which is closely related to but nonetheless different from interrogatives in the traditional grammar. Then what is questioning in the sense of a social action? What is the relationship between questioning and interrogatives? In addition to seeking for information, are there any other communicative functions that questioning can fulfill? This paper, using Conversation Analysis as its research methodology, studies questioning from the perspective of epistemics proposed by John Heritage. A definition of questioning is given in accordance with the essence of epistemics, then a thorough discussion of the effect of the conversational economy of information and epistemic gradient on the questioner’s questioning design is conducted. Finally, the assistant communicative functions of questioning are touched upon. We think that probing questioning from the epistemic perspective enables us to investigate questioning as a social action from formal, functional and interactional perspectives.