Relevance Theoretic Analysis of the Properties and Understanding Process of Rhetorical Questions
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: The purposes of this paper are to examine the properties of RQs and to discuss how RQs should be distinguished from other types of questions. I will take as a theoretical framework Relevance Theoretic account of interrogative utterances (e.g., Sperber and Wilson 1995), which argues against the traditional Speech Act theory. In the traditional accounts of Speech Act theory (e.g. Searle 1975), RQs are classified as a type of indirect requests. In contrast, there are some authors who claim that the most salient property of RQs is the assertivity of the utterance (e.g. Quirk et al 1985). However, there are a number of cases which do not fit traditional speech-act theoretic accounts. Therefore we can conclude that to classify illocutionary forces is not necessary in the process of understanding utterances; RQs have neither an assertive force nor a directive force of speech act. By using the Relevance Theoretic concept of desirable thoughts, we will be able to explain the variety of interrogative utterances. The speaker's thoughts (or assumptions) are desirable if they achieve some cognitive effects. RQs achieve their cognitive effects as a reminder; the utterance gives a clue to the hearer to access the speaker's assumptions. Therefore, the point of uttering an RQ does not only lie in the answer to the question (i.e. the proposition expressed by the interrogative utterance). The rhetoricity may lie in the hearer's understanding process where the speaker's implicatures can be derived from the proposition expressed by the utterance (i.e. the desirable thought).
Author: リサ 後藤
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1541940094