A rhetorical question is one that does not demand an answer, a question asked not so as to obtain information, but so as to produce some other effect. A rhetorical question may perfectly well have an answer, of course, it is just that a rhetorical question is not asked so as to demand an answer, not asked so as to close a point in question. It is essential in asking a rhetorical question to make sure that one is not understood to be asking for an answer. Some rhetorical questions are safer than others; there are some sentence-types that are standardly used to ask rhetorical questions, examples being Is the Pope Catholic? and How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? The less formulaic rhetorical questions must be
¹² See Searle 1975 and Levinson 1983, section 5.5. On politeness generally, see Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987.
handled more carefully. In general, there are two kinds of question that a speaker can ask that will normally be understood as rhetorical: those that have no answer, and those whose answers are so well known or obvious that it would be insulting or untoward to ask them so as to get answers. Since one would not normally want answers to unanswerable questions and insultingly obvious questions, one would usually be understood as speaking rhetorically. In general, one who asks a rhetorical question intends to be taken as not wanting an answer.
There are both open and confirmation rhetorical questions. Our appreciation of rhetorical questions has been skewed by the fact that only open rhetorical questions have been attended to. Let’s start with rhetorical questions used so as to imply that they have no satisfactory answers. The speaker of a rhetorical open question uses a sentence-type that is formally incomplete, while intending not to be taken as wanting it to be completed. The speaker of a rhetorical confirmation question fails, in one way or the other, to perform a speech-act complete to the standard of assertion, while intending not to be taken as wanting it completed.
On the wh-question side, I can, so as to indicate that there was nothing that I could do, ask the open question What could I do? Here I use a sentence-type that expresses a proposition that lacks a thing done. If I rightly gauge the circumstances of utterance to be such that I will be taken as asking a question that does not have a satisfactory answer, I may succeed in implying that there was nothing that I could have done. Another almost formulaic case is Who cares? While rhetorical open wh-questions are very common, the rhetorical use of confirmation wh-questions is more limited. Suppose my car has broken down, I am late, and you complain. Feeling unfairly criticized, I might respond I could do what? Build an airplane?, suggesting one of a presumably large number of unsatisfactory completions. To ask I could do what? is to ask my interlocutor to finish the speech-act I have partially performed, my intention being to indicate that there is no satisfactory completion. If I rightly gauge the circumstances of utterance to be such that I am taken as speaking rhetorically, I succeed in implying that my utterance cannot be satisfactorily completed: there was nothing that I could do to prevent my tardiness.
On the yes-no question side, I might, in exasperation, ask the rhetorical open question Is this lecture going to end? All lectures do end, of course, so by using a sentence-type expressing a proposition that lacks the glue between subject and predicate, while gauging the circumstances of utterance correctly, I succeed in implying that there is no knowing whether the predicate ‘going to end’ should be applied to the lecture.
On the other hand, if I utter the rhetorical confirmation question This lecture is going to end? I imply that I lack a belief strong enough to allow me to affirm that the lecture is going to end. In what circumstances might this be useful? Perhaps, during the lecture, you whisper to me that we should get a drink after the lecture, and I respond This lecture is going to end? If I gauge the circumstances
Rhetorical Questions 63 of utterance to be such that you will not take me to be demanding that your belief be confirmed, I succeed in implying that your belief is not so obvious to me.
Now consider questions whose answers are so obvious or well known that they could only normally be asked rhetorically. Suppose you ask Will the Yankees win? and I answer Is the Pope Catholic? Here I use a sentence-type that expresses a proposition in which the glue is missing. But of course the predicate ‘Catholic’ so obviously applies to the Pope that I succeed in implying that the same obviousness must apply to the question you asked me: of course the predicate ‘will win’ applies to the Yankees. Now imagine that I had instead responded The Pope is Catholic? The uninverted confirmation question works far less well. Under this analysis, it is clear why this is so. By uttering The Pope is Catholic?, I intend to be taken as not having a belief sufficiently strong to license the assertion that the Pope is Catholic. To pull this off as a rhetorical confirmation question, the circumstances of utterance must be such that I will be taken to imply that I seek confirmation for the well-known fact that the Pope is Catholic. This is by itself fine, but the effect achieved does not have any analogy to your original question about the Yankees, and so my utterance falls flat. On the other hand, had you originally said The Yankees will win?, responding The Pope is Catholic? would have worked well.
The point of asking a rhetorical question depends on circumstance, and it is not possible to survey each circumstance. But we have reached some tentative generalizations. There are rhetorical questions whose answers are so obvious or well known that one who asks them must be up to something else. And there are rhetorical questions in which the speaker intends to be taken as implying that they have no answer at all. The speaker can use a sentence-type that he intends to be taken as expressing an uncompleteable proposition (the open-question case), or a speaker can, in one way or another, present himself as incapable of completing an assertive speech-act (the confirmation-question case). The point of offering a sentence-type that expresses an incomplete proposition is to indicate that the proposition is uncompleteable. The point of performing a speech-act that is not underwritten by the requisite beliefs is to indicate that the speech-act cannot be completed in a satisfactory way, the utterance is insupportable.
The effects that can be achieved through speaking are practically limitless; the limits are determined by our abilities to compute the implications of what is said. Individuals vary in this respect, and there are, in addition, personal and cultural norms governing such things as degree of directness. But we each are presented with tools that can be wielded so as to request, insult, accuse, crack wise, and so on. We do with them what we can. In this section, only some of the possible questioning speech-acts have been surveyed, hopefully giving a sense of the vastness of the terrain, as well as giving the underappreciated confirmation questions their due. I now turn to another class of questions that stand in contrast with open questions, questions that I call ‘closed’.