queclarative

Definition:

An utterance that has the form of a question (an interrogative sentence) but the force of a statement (a declarative sentence). See also:

• Erotesis
• Polarity
• Tag Question

Etymology

Term (a blend of question and declarative) introduced by Jerrold M. Saddock in Toward a Linguistic Theory of Speech Acts (1974)

Examples and Observations:

• Crapgame: Are you nuts? What's more important than 16 million bucks?
  Oddball: You come around tonight, Crapgame, and we'll show you.
  (Kelly's Heroes, 1970)



• ""Hello? What number are you calling? You've dialed the wrong number! Sorry? What good is that? How can you ever repay the last thirty seconds you have stolen from my life? I hate you, your husband, your children, and your relatives!"
  (Mink Stole as Peggy Gravel in Desperate Living, 1977)



• Michael: Are you serious?
  Wayne Jarvis: Almost always.
  (Arrested Development, 2006)



• "It is not the claim that intonation always directly conveys the illocutionary force of an utterance; it is also possible for the force of an utterance to be interpreted indirectly with respect to its intonation. This is exemplified in 'queclaratives,' which Saddock (1974) describes as 'questions . . . used with the force of assertions of opposite polarity' (p. 79). The following are two examples from Saddock:
  • Does anyone study Aristotle anymore?
  • Haven't I been good to you?
  These, he points out, have the same illocutionary force, respectively, as
  • No one studies Aristotle anymore.
  • I have been good to you.
  Having both the syntax and intonation of yes/no questions, queclaratives function indirectly as assertions in cases where the speaker already knows the answer to the question to be the opposite of the proposition."
  (Ann K. Wennerstrom, The Music of Everyday Speech: Prosody and Discourse Analysis. Oxford Univ. Press, 2001)

Pronunciation: kwuh-KLAR-eh-tiv