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A rhetorical question seeks to encourage reflection within the listener as to what the answer to the question (at least, the answer implied by the questioner) must be. When a speaker declaims, "How much longer must our people endure this injustice?" or "Will our company grow or shrink?", no formal answer is expected. Rather, it is a device used by the speaker to assert or deny something.


EXAMPLES

  • "How can people have hope when we tell them that they have no recourse, if they run afoul of the state justice system?" Edward Kennedy , ''Senate debate on the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act'', 1968.

  • "Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
    When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
    Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
    Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
    And Brutus is an honourable man.
    You all did see that on the Lupercal
    I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
    Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?" William Shakespeare 's '' Julius Caesar '', Act 3, scene 2.


Some rhetorical questions become Idiom atic English expressions:

  • "What's the matter with you?"

  • "Don't you know any better?"

  • "Have you no shame?"

  • "Is the Pope Catholic?" and "Does a bear Shit in the Woods ?"

  • "Do fish swim?"

  • "Are you crazy?"

  • "Who cares?"

  • "How should I know?"

  • "Are you kidding me?"

  • "Should Rocky Rodriquez have sent out that email?"


Additional examples are available at : http://forums.officer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46113&page=3&pp=25

Some TV shows have had rhetorical questions as titles, such as '' Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? '' and '' Whose Line Is It Anyway? ''.

Bob Dylan 's song " Blowin' In The Wind " contains a series of rhetorical questions. This is spoofed in an episode of '' The Simpsons '', in which Homer attempts to quantitatively answer "How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man?"


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