Additional Information
Example A: a speech
“The Europeans have gone too far. They are now threatening the British sausage. They want to standardise it – by which they mean they’ll force the British people to eat salami and bratwurst and other garlic-ridden greasy foods that are totally alien to the British way of life. Do you want to eat salami for breakfast with your egg and bacon? I don’t. And I won’t!”
(From: Jonathan Lynn & Antony Jay, The Complete Yes Prime Minister, London: BBC Books, 1986, quoted after: The New Top Line. Teacher’s Book, Stuttgart: Klett, 2006, p. 88)
- Having established that salami is “totally alien to the British way of life”, this rhetorical question merely seems to require confirmation.
- But seemingly asking people their opinion is a useful method of creating the impression that you are interested in their attitudes. Even though the answer is obvious, this speaker/politician suggests that while bureaucrats in faraway Brussels may make decisions over their heads, he takes (the British) people seriously.
- The answer implied by that question is “Certainly not“ and this is an attitude the speaker shares with the audience, thus indicating that he is genuinely one of them.
Example B: colloquial usage
In the following quotation from Frank McCourt’s novel Angela’s Ashes the speaker, a boy, is asked to question his behaviour: thus the rhetorical question takes the form of reproof or admonition since these words express strong disapproval:
“[…] laughed so hard a nurse runs in to see if I’m all right. She’s a very stern nurse form the County Kerry and she frightens me. What’s this, Francis? Laughing? What is there to laugh about? Are you and that Madigan girl talking? I’ll report you to Sister Rita. There’s to be no laughing […].” (From: F. McCourt, Angela’s Ashes, New York: Touchstone, 1996, p. 241)
Example C: philosophical or religious discourse
“[…] And what a minute is man’s life in respect of the sun’s, or of a tree? And yet how little of our life is occasion, opportunity to receive good in; and how little of that occasion do we apprehend and lay hold of?” (From: John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, New York: Vintage, 1999, p. 84)
- Frequently rhetorical questions are used as a means of creating a bond between the writer and the reader. But even though the Devotions were clearly intended for publication, these questions do not seem to include the reader but to depict the wanderings of the writer’s mind as he is recovering from severe illness, thus reflecting Donne’s meditations on mortality when lost in contemplation.
- And yet with these questions Donne allows the reader to follow his thoughts as he comes to acknowledge death while simultaneously celebrating life.
