Definition:
A question asked merely for effect with no answer expected. The answer may be obvious or immediately provided by the questioner. See also:
Examples and Observations:
- "Hath not a Jew eyes?
Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
If you prick us, do we not bleed, if you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
(Shylock in William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice) - "Can I ask a rhetorical question? Well, can I?"
(Ambrose Bierce) - "Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?"
(H. L. Mencken) - "Aren't you glad you use Dial?
Don't you wish everybody did?"
(1960s television advertisement for Dial soap) - "To actually see inside your ear canal--it would be fascinating, wouldn't it?"
(Letter from Sonus, a hearing-aid company, quoted in "Rhetorical Questions We'd Rather Not Answer," The New Yorker, March 24, 2003) - "Something [rhetorical] questions all have in common . . . is that they are not asked, and are not understood, as ordinary information-seeking questions, but as making some kind of claim, or assertion, an assertion of the opposite polarity to that of the question."
(Irene Koshik, Beyond Rhetorical Questions. John Benjamins, 2005) - Grandma Simpson and Lisa are singing Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" ("How many roads must a man walk down/Before you call him a man?"). Homer overhears and says, "Eight!"
Lisa: "That was a rhetorical question!"
Homer: "Oh. Then, seven!"
Lisa: "Do you even know what 'rhetorical' means?"
Homer: "Do I know what 'rhetorical' means?"
(The Simpsons, "When Grandma Simpson Returns") - "If practice makes perfect, and no one's perfect, then why practice?"
(Billy Corgan) - "Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do 'practice'?"
(George Carlin)
Pronunciation: ri-TOR-i-kal KWEST-shun
Also Known As: erotesis, erotema, interrogatio, questioner, reversed polarity question (RPQ)
