Rhetorical Question Research Articles

Some Functions of Rhetorical Questions in Lysias’ Forensic Orations

Abstract The rhetorical question, often assumed to have been favoured by the sophist Gorgias, became a fundamental feature of ancient rhetoric in both Greek and Latin. By the time of Senecan tragedy, an accumulation of as many as seventeen serial rhetorical questions can be found expressing extremes of emotion, especially indignation or despair. Rhetorical questions in some archaic and classical Greek authors have received limited attention, for example, in the Iliad those delivered by Thersites in exciting indignation (2.225–233) and by the authorial voice to create pathos in asking Patroclus about the Trojans he has killed (16.692–693); the string of questions Aphrodite humorously asks in Sappho 1; the ritual queries in the Derveni Papyrus; the series of two to three questions found (often near the beginning of speeches) in the agōns of some tragedies. But the increasing variety and sophistication of the deployment of the rhetorical question in the Greek orators has been surprisingly neglected. This article analyses some of the different uses to which Lysias puts rhetorical questions especially in relation to characterisation in his orations and argues that they represent a considerable advance on the practice of any predecessor in any genre.

EXPRESSIVE SYNTAX IN PRESIDENTIAL DISCOURSE VLADIMIR ZELENSKY

The article is devoted to the analysis of figures of expressive syntax presented in public speeches of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky. The texts of presidential rhetoric, which was transformed during the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, are considered. The peculiarities of presidential speeches, implemented at the syntactic level, are traced. Figures of expressive syntax are analyzed: syntactic repetition, syntactic anaphora, syntactic epiphora, syntactic parallelism, period. The material of the research was the texts of presidential speeches, represented in the daily video addresses of Volodymyr Zelensky to the Ukrainian people. The object of research was the Ukrainian presidential discourse, and the subject - the syntactic features of the political speeches of V. Zelensky. The purpose of the study is to identify and qualify the main means of expressive syntax used in the presidential rhetoric of V. Zelensky, which have influential potential. The material for the analysis was the speeches and addresses of V. Zelensky, presented on the official website of the President of Ukraine, starting from February 24, 2022. Both the texts of daily video appeals to the people of Ukraine and official speeches addressed to foreign leaders and communities are considered. It is proved that during the Russian-Ukrainian war a relatively new speech genre of political discourse, presented in the presidential rhetoric of V. Zelensky, became widespread - video appeals. The dynamic nature of this genre and its interactivity, enhanced by video and audio tools, required the actualization of linguistic means of influencing the addressee, among which the priority is the means of expressive syntax. V. Zelensky’s presidential discourse mostly presents syntactic repetitions (anaphora, epiphora, epanaphora), syntactic parallelism, antithesis, period and rhetorical questions.

Dissecting the types and functions of religious humor in Nasreddin Hoja short-stories

Humor is a significant element in funny stories. This study aims to analyze the types and functions of humor in selected Nasreddin’s short stories from the book Nasreddin’s Funniest Stories (2011) by Yusup Priyasudiarja and Y. Sri Purwaningsih. By using the descriptive qualitative method, the study adopts textual analysis to examine the materials. Based on the analysis result, the types of humor applied in the stories are that joke, sarcasm, satire, replies to rhetorical question, clever replies, and double entendres. However, these writings lack some other typical types of spontaneous conversational humor used in short stories’ texts: puns and self-deprecation. Meanwhile, unintentional humor is also not found in the Nasreddin short stories because it is raised from the speaker’s misspellings, mispronunciations, errors in logic, and Freudian slips. Further reading shows that the underlying usage of humor in these stories is for social management: to control and mediate readers.

Rhetorical Devices Used by Simon Sinek When Delivering an Inspirational Speech

This study focuses on finding out the rhetorical devices used by Simon Sinek when delivering an inspirational speech and how they affect Simon Sinek’s inspirational speech. In this study, the writer used Harris’ (2018) theory of rhetorical question and Gregory’s (2018) theory of general purposes of speech to analyze the data. The writer employed a descriptive qualitative approach. The findings showed that Simon Sinek uses alliteration, parallelism, antithesis, and simile when delivering his speech. The missing device is metaphor because metaphor allows different interpretations, decreases the level of clarity in a speech. Each rhetorical devices affects the speech differently. Alliteration affects the speech using melody; parallelism with repetition and rhythm; antithesis with contrast, complexity, balance, and emphasis; and simile with vivid image, sense of familiarity, and clarity. Ultimately, rhetorical devices affect the inspirational speech in a positive way as they help amplify the meaning of the speech.

Persuasive Speech Acts in Selected Short Surahs of the Glorious Quran

This study delves into illocutionary speech acts and their pragmatic functions in standard Arabic religious discourse. It aims to examine illocutionary speech acts specifically and their pragmatic functions in Surah Al-Balad and Surah At-teen, which are short Surahs of the Glorious Quran, from a persuasive perspective. The significance of this study is to show the role of speech acts and their pragmatic functions as persuasive strategies used in the Holy Quran to convince people. Data for this study have been selected on the basis that they involve different types of direct and indirect illocutionary speech acts and different pragmatic functions, in addition, they seem to have not been tackled before from the perspective of persuasion. Furthermore, exegetical books like Al Shirazi, Qutb and Al Tabatabaei have been consulted for the interpretation of the previously mentioned Surahs on which the analysis depends. In this study, a qualitative method has been used to analyze the data and only twenty three examples have been examined. The conclusions of this study are that different illocutionary speech acts like representatives, directives, commissives and expressive and different pragmatic functions such as asserting, censuring, ordering, threatening, promising and blaming were used in the said Surahs for persuasion. Moreover, indirect illocutionary speech acts and their pragmatic functions in both Surahs were heavily used and several of them were performed in the form of a rhetorical question for a persuasive purpose in which people are involved in communication and an effect is created on their minds and hearts to make them reform themselves. Direct illocutionary speech acts and their pragmatic functions were also persuasively used in both Surahs to assert truths and to make people accept them and behave accordingly.

The prosodic marking of rhetorical questions in Standard Chinese

The present study investigates the prosody of information-seeking (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs) in Standard Chinese, in polar and wh-questions. Like in other languages, ISQs and RQs in Standard Chinese can have the same surface structure, allowing for a direct prosodic comparison between illocution types (ISQ vs RQ). Since Standard Chinese has lexical tone, the use of f0 as a cue to illocution type may be restricted. We investigate the prosodic differences between ISQs and RQs as well as the interplay of prosodic cues to RQs. In terms of f0, results showed that RQs were lower in f0, with the f0 range on the first word being expanded followed by f0 compression. RQs were further longer in duration and more often realized with non-modal voice quality (glottalized voice) as compared to ISQs. These prosodic cues were largely manipulated in tandem (illocutionary pairs with larger durational differences also showed larger differences in mean f0; voice quality, in turn, seemed to be an additional cue). We suggest three possible explanations (assertive force, focus, speaker attitude) that unite the present findings on RQs in Standard Chinese with the findings on RQs in other, non-tonal languages.

COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES ANALYSIS OF HUMOR IN INSIDE NO. 9

Pragmatics offers several perspectives in discussing humor, including cooperative principles. Cooperative principles offer options for researchers in discussing how listeners will generate an implied meaning, thus creating the humorous potential in an utterance (Cutting, 2002; Grice, 1989). Despite there are studies on cooperative principles of humor using various media, there is still a lack of studies discussing cooperative principles in British comedy television shows. Therefore, to fill this gap, this paper attempts to analyze the cooperative principles found in a BBC 2 comedy television show, Inside No. 9. Furthermore, the paper also reveals how the flouting of the principles creates multiple forms of humor, adapting the categories of humor by Martin and Ford (2018). This descriptive qualitative research chooses the Series Four of Inside No. 9 as its subject, with the consideration of the critically-acclaimed receptions, diverse themes, and language aspects of the show. To obtain the data, the researchers use an open-coding technique to categorize the data according to the four flouting of the maxims (flouting of the maxim of quality, quantity, relation, and manner) and the forms of humor (irony, satire, sarcasm, overstatement and understatement, self-deprecation, teasing, replies to rhetorical questions, clever replies to serious statements, double entendre, transformation of frozen expression, and pun). The data are taken from the episodes and scripts of six episodes in the fourth series in Inside No. 9. Results show that all of the types of flouting of cooperative principles were found in the selected season, which covers the flouting of the maxim of quality, quantity, relation, and manner. Based on the findings in most episodes, the flouting created by the characters diverges the serious conversation into a more humorous atmosphere. However, several types of humor are not found in the maxims' flouting due to the storyline and British comedic style aspects.

Who’s speaking for whom?

AbstractThis paper deals with rhetorically intended questions in theZhuangzi, a foundational text of Daoism (fourth centurybc). Such questions are generally meant to evoke silent answers in the addressee’s mind, thereby involving a fictive type of interaction (Pascual 2006,2014). We analyse rhetorical questions as constructions of intersubjectivity (seeVerhagen 2005,2008), involving not just a conceptual integration of question and assertion but also a viewpoint blend (Dancygier and Sweetser [eds] 2012). They involve fusing the perspectives of the writer, the assumed prospective readers, and possibly also that of the discourse characters (in the case of rhetorical questions ascribed to a discourse character but meant to represent the writer’s voice). In this highly influential text with abundant mixed viewpoint scenarios, the interpretation of rhetorical questions involves the resolution of different viewpoints, which are set up and shifted in a multi-layered manner for particular argumentative purposes.

Constructionalized rhetorical questions from negatively biased to negation polarity

AbstractHow does a rhetorical question become an adverbialnpidown-toner? This paper focusses on a specific type of grammaticalization process: the grammaticalization of a rhetorical constructionà laGoldberg (1995), namely, a “constructionalized rhetorical question” (Bardenstein 2018) which turns into a down-toning adverbial. The particular focus of this paper is on the Hebrewlo mi yodea ma(‘not who knows what’; i.e., ‘not of high quality/quantity’) which has developed from the constructionalization of two earlier constructions. Initially, the biblical question-phrasemi yodea(‘who knows’) constructionalized as “negatively biased” (Ladusaw 1996). This is a rhetorical question, to which the obvious answer is negative, and in our casemi yodeacan be interpreted as ‘nobody knows’. Most often, it is the case of “not knowing” what the future holds. Then, once a direct objectma(‘what’) was added, it constructionalized once again into a strengthening/ intensification constructionmi yodea ma(‘who knows what’), conveying high quantity/quality. This happened since “not knowing what is to happen” can be interpreted as “anything can happen” and this interpretation was used rhetorically to strengthen one‘s utterance. Lastly,mi yodea ma(‘who knows what’) constructionalized under the scope of the negation operatorlo(‘not’), into a versatile down-toning adverbial:lo mi yodea ma. Since it is very difficult to negate a strongly positive construction without implying that a less positive one is to some extent true, this negated construction became a versatile down-toner.

Verbal Irony in a TV Series The Office (US) Season 2

Verbal irony as a figurative language has been conceived in everyday life as its use is common when people communicate with each other. It enables the speaker to express negative intention towards the hearer as well as producing humor elements. This study aims to analyze verbal irony in the sitcom The Office (US) from Pragmatics perspective, which focuses on the identification of its forms and their manifestations in arousing humor. The data of this study were collected from season 2 of The Office (US) that consists of 22 episodes. They were observed, transcribed, analyzed, and classified into the category proposed by Gibbs (2000). The utterances that contain humor were marked and analyzed by applying the theory proposed by Garmendia (2007). The result shows that from 97 occurrences that were identified, all five types of verbal irony (sarcasm, jocularity, rhetorical question, hyperbole, and understatement) were found, with sarcasm as the most frequently used type. The analysis also revealed that the disparity that emerges from verbal irony leads to humor creation.

Les caractéristiques fonctionnelles et stylistiques du discours publicitaire français dans les médias économiques et politiques modernes

The article examines the functional and stylistic features of French advertising discourse in modern economic and political media. The relevance of this issue stems from the fact that advertising texts are closest to the impact pole on the conditional message-impact scale. The advertising discourse is analyzed using the material of advertisements, articles, notes, interviews, and extended announcements in the French media of economic and political focus, and drawing on the example of contextual and media advertising retrieved from French economic and political websites. The paper attempts to comprehensively study advertising discourse with due consideration of the determining role of the functional and stylistic factors, analyze the main functions of advertising discourse, and highlight the main directions of research on advertising. Special attention is paid to the pragmatic orientation of advertising, which manifests itself in specific linguistic categories. The analysis of the linguistic material shows that modern advertising discourse in the French media of economic and political focus makes ample use of expressive means designed to exert an efficient impact on the recipient. Among the most commonly used means, metaphor, metonymy, anaphora, hyperbole and antithesis are at the top of the list. Figures of higher expressiveness and emotional coloring are shown to demonstrate a high frequency of use in advertising. These include rhetorical questions, rhetorical addresses and rhetorical exclamations. Figures of double meaning, such as language games based on linguistic ambiguity, are also successfully used in French advertising discourse.

Is it time? Reflections on the experience of finding an ethical way to write a personal story for an audience

How can I tell a personal story which finally feels ready to emerge and be written about? Can the composing of a reflexive, autoethnographic account help me to better understand my own experience? In this article I describe how I feel impelled to listen to my embodied feelings and to pause in my research writing to allow this need to be met. Responding to those urgings leads me to write a poem, The Kite, which becomes the reflexive core of my writing. Sharing the poem with my daughter results in challenging conversations which cause me to reflect on my motivation and to doubt whether I can consider writing this article. I explore my ethical position as a mother and a gran who needs to tell her story before continuing with her research study while remaining constantly aware of those things which are not mine to tell. I make use of reflexive, rhetorical questions to consider the dilemmas involved in obtaining consent and respecting the wishes of all those involved. I develop in the process a greater awareness of the ongoing effects of the serious illness of a child on a family, and I reflect on the many hidden voices of those undergoing the same experience. The creative telling of my story, incorporating both poetic writing and reconstructed dialogue, changes and deepens my understanding of what it means to write reflexively. And leads to an unexpected and deeply moving creative response.

Analysis on the linguistic features of conflict discourse in mathematical cooperation problem solving in China.

Classroom teaching is a kind of social activity system. Thus, as a form of classroom learning, collaborative problem solving has a strong social attribute. It is extremely common to choose the conflict discourse in the context of cooperation. The verbal characteristics of the conflicting discourse level in cooperative mathematics problem solving directly affects the cooperative learning between students and the classroom teaching of teachers. This article focuses on the overall linguistic characteristics of conflict discourse in solving cooperative problems and the discourse style and language characteristics of the three stages of conflict discourse. The main research conclusions are as follows: (1) The classification of language features of conflict discourse includes extreme summaries, negation, discourse markers, and so on. Among them, the frequency of Indexical 2nd-person pronouns is the highest. (2) The language expressions at the “initial stage of conflict” include Explanatory statement Negative response, instruct refuse and Seditious inquiry Confrontational answer. The language shows the characteristics of using emphatic words or phrases, negative words, imperative sentences and so on. Meanwhile, rebuttal questions, direct responses, explanations, and negative avoidance are the main forms language expressions at the “conflict stage.” It also exhibits the verbal characteristics of rhetorical questions, negative comments, and direct negation. Lastly, topic-shifting, compromise, third-party intervention, and one-sided wins are the linguistic expressions at the “end of conflict.” The language features are the appearance of tone relaxation and language easing, and the conflict ending utterances reflect cooperation.

REALIZATION OF FLOUTING MAXIM OF HUMOR IN AMERICAN MOVIE THE UPSIDE

ABSTRACT The aim of this research was to find out the realization of flouting maxim of humor uttered by the characters in the movie The Upside. The research was conducted in descriptive qualitative research design. The script and the subtitle of The Upside movie has become the source of data which represent the flouting maxims of Cooperative Principle by Grice. Then the data were analyzed by read and write technique or attentive observation since the data in the form of utterances. The data also analyzed by choosing the funny utterances only since this research focusing in flouting maxim of humor. The result of this study found the realization of flouting maxim were nine points, that called as overstatement (giving too much information), understatement (giving too little information), metaphor, irony, banter, irrelevant statement, ambiguous statement, tautology and rhetorical question. The most used flouting maxim realized in overstatement, and the lowest rank of flouting maxim were realized in the form of tautology. It was zero data in tautology.

The oppressions of ‘creativity’? Equity and power in emergent global discourses of the Creative Writing (SL) field

ABSTRACT In previous papers, I have sought to usher Creative Writing in English into Literary Studies contexts in Korea by responding to rhetorical questions, such as “[h]ow to begin to feel like ourselves in a language we do not quite feel at home in?” (Disney 2011: 7) and, erroneously, “how might [students] do something materially akin to [western] canonical texts set before them” (Disney 2014: 3). On reflection, and after more than a decade in Korea, it is wholly apparent just how uncritically these questions centralize English and, therein, my own unchecked entitlement. Both questions remain as if ethically indifferent to the inherent inter-linguistic, trans-cultural power relations at play within Creative Writing in Non-Native Language contexts (herewith, “CW[SL]”). When calling our attention to the fact that “there is something amoral about teaching English Creative Writing in Asia” (52), writer, researcher, and educator Xu Xi issues a direct challenge: how are native-speaking English-language writer-scholars to be more than unwitting avatars of privilege, performing vectors of dominance (Ritzer 204) in a first language among non-native language-learning writer-students? One suspects answers may well be located inside languages other than English.

SOCIO-STYLISTICS OF GUS BAHA’S SERMONS

As a result of this realization, a new study of Gus Baha's preaching discourse, particularly on Java, is required. This study serves a strategic purpose as a foundation for future research and, more broadly, as a reference for preaching knowledge. There are three approaches in examining sermons, according to past expert research: language, socio-culture, and religiosity or religion. As a result, the goal of this study is to describe Gus Baha's sermon presented on Java Island as a discourse, as well as its stylistics features in relation to its rules environment and how the language choice of Gus Baha send his sermon to audiences. This study applied. This is study applied qualitative method with a real-life context that describes qualitatively in words rather than numbers or statistics, using content analysis as research design. For the analysis of the data, specific finding have been made. The contextual features show that the audience of Gus Baha’s sermons are two kind namely lay society and intellectual or government offices, so that in the application of the contextual features also different. In the context of lay society which describe in ‘Toleransi Terhadap Non Muslim Menurut Gus Dur’ sermon Gus Baha in fact dominantly used Javanese language and also Pesantren culture, but on the contrary in ‘Haul K.H. Wahab Hasbullah ke-49’ sermon Gus Baha dominantly used Bahasa Indonesia and formal language, it is because the audience is in the kind of overment office and intellectual society, although there some santri there, but Gus Baha prefer choose formal language so that can be understood by all of the audiences. In the context of the application of lexyco sintaxtical choice Gus Baha applied climax, Cynicism and paradox and in the context of the application of lexico syntaxtical pattern Gus Baha applied repetition, enumeration, anaphora, and rhetorical question. in Both of sermons Gus Baha dominantly used enumeration as the general strategy to give clear understanding to audiences by sole some crucial problem in society through his clever sermon.

Counter-discourse

Abstract Since independence, the ethnic Chinese community in Malaysia has lamented its marginalization by the Malay-Bumiputra elite, a theme that is often reflected in writings by ethnically Chinese Malaysian authors. This article, however, examines how ethnic Chinese authors depict other ethnic minorities, focusing on four approaches to forging counter-discourses used in the literary representation of minorities: binary opposition, rhetorical questions, paradoxical statements, and bystander narration. The discussion of each narrative strategy is supported by examples from works by writers from different eras, regions, genders, and generations. These modes of counter-discourse foreground minority voices and create a meaningful dialogue between the Sinophone community and other ethnic groups. Through these counter-discursive explorations, Mahua authors portray the Chinese in Malaysia in relation to other ethnic minorities. In some cases, we can also observe how Mahua authors employ this counter-discourse structure as a form of resistance against hegemonic state power.

On the syntax of rhetorical questions: evidence from Cantonese

On the syntax of rhetorical questions: evidence from Cantonese

Rhetorical Questions in Political Speech

The article analyses the main functions of rhetorical questions in political speech. The author uses politician Heydar Aliyev's speeches as linguistic material. As Heydar Aliyev's speeches were mostly in the Azerbaijani language, the issue is considered based on the Azerbaijani language, which is very relevant for Azerbaijani linguistics. Heydar Aliyev's speech was rich in rhetorical questions. The article mentions that one of the syntactic means used in polemics is the rhetorical question used to make the address emotional and critical, thus paving the way for the rise of intonation. The author, summing up, writes that rhetorical questions increase the impact of speech on the audience, evoke emotion, and carry significant meaning and emotional load.

Şeyhülislam Yahya Divanı’ndaki Takrirî İstifham İfadelerinin Anlam ve Üslup Açısından İncelenmesi

Şeyhülislam Yahya klasik şiirimizin en önemli temsilcilerinden biridir. O, klasik tarzda yazdığı şiirlerinde sade ve fasih bir dil kullanmış, söz sanatlarına çok fazla rağbet etmeden sözünü daha doğal ve Türkçenin yapısına daha uygun farklı tasarruflarla etkili kılmaya çalışmıştır. Bu tasarruflardan birisi de şiirdeki inşa (tasarlama) ifadelerinin fazlaca kullanılmasıdır. Gerek dil bilgisi gerek belagat kitaplarında söz, temel olarak haber (bildirme) ve inşa (tasarlama) olarak ikiye ayrılmaktadır. Belagat ilmine göre inşanın kısımlarından olan istifham da Şeyhülislam Yahya’nın şiirlerinde bir üslup ve sanat unsuru olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Üslubun ve edanın muhtevadan çoğu kez daha önde olduğu klasik Türk şiirinde her türlü dil kullanımının ayrıntılı bir biçimde tahlil edilmesi önem arz etmektedir. Bu çalışmada Şeyhülislam Yahya Divanı’nda geçen bütün takrirî istifhamlar bu düşünceyle anlam açısından tasnife tabi tutulacak ve üslup, şiirsellik ve sözün tesiri noktasında bu soruların ifadeye kattığı değerler incelenecektir. Bahsi geçen bu sorular cevap alma isteği ile sorulmuş gerçek sorular değildir. Nihayetinde kurmaca bir metin olan şiir dilinde bu tür mecazi/retorik soruların anlam ve amacının tespiti, dilin diğer kullanım alanlarında ortaya çıkan soruların anlam ve amacını tespitten daha zordur. Bu sebeple çalışmada belagat kitaplarındaki müktesebat ile klasik şiirin kendine özgü dili ve kavram dünyası mezcedilerek daha sağlıklı sonuçlara ulaşılmaya çalışılmıştır.