Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

Mike,

For lurkers who may not recall the original thread, let me recap.  The
thread started with this post:

==== Begin Extended Quote ====
Could someone tell me the name of the following rhetorical device:

A person wants to make an assertion that is a little too extreme to be
acceptable, so to tone down the strength of the assertion, they put it in
the form of a question.

The example which most readily comes to mind is the old TV series "In Search
Of".  The narrator (Leonard Nemoy) would always say things like

"Could it be that aliens visited the earth and built the pyramids?"

If he stated it positively, he would never work as an actor again.  By
putting it as a question, weak minds would forget that it was a question and
accept the inference as truth.
==== End Extended Quote ====

Thanks for doing all of that research work.  (I thought it ironic that one
of those web pages you cited has an image of William Shatner in the
advertisment section, and laughing at that.)

I think the most informative one was
http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/wheeler/lit_terms_E.html
It gives the extended quote of Senator Kennedy.  A key sentence in the
definition is "Often the question is asked in order to get a definite answer
from the reader--usually, "no," as J. A. Cuddon suggests."

It seems to me the forms are substantially different enough that there ought
to be two different words.

Consider Kennedy's erotema "How can the poor feel they have a stake in a
system which says that the rich may have due process but the poor may not?"
etc.

He does not expect an answer, and the statement could be recast "The poor
can not feel. . . ."  Or would you say that he does expect an answer: How
can they feel . . .?  They can't.

The "could it be" genre of question does not really want an answer, it wants
to plant the suggestion without paying the cost of making an assertion.  If
someone were to respond, "that's ridiculous", the questioner could say,
"hey, I'm just asking."

Although in the url's you provided I saw a few cases in which they were
willing to be specific, most of them were either too terse or too vague.
All of the specific sites articulated erotema.  But I did not see the "could
it be" kind.

Let me quote my original source.  It still doesn't satisfy me on this, but
here it is anyway:

from _Figures of Speech Used in the Bible: Explained and Illustrated_ by E.
W. Bullinger, D.D., pp 943,4.

"Erotesis
. . .
This figure is used when a speaker or writer asks animated questions, but
not to obtain information.  Instead of making a plain and direct statement,
he suddenly changes his style, and puts what he was about to say or could
otherwise have said, into the form of a question. . . ."

"The figure is so important that not only is it of frequen occurence, but it
has severl other names."

It goes on to give the names Peusis, Pysma (both from Greek), and
Interrogatio from Latin.

"While these names are all used of the act of interrogation, the question
itself is called Erotema."

page 945
"With regard to the questions themselves, their classification is another
matter altogether.  Some are /searching/, causing the mind to pause, wonder,
and admire.  Some are /revelations/ of the attributes of God and of the
depravity of man."

In those quotes the front slashes indicate italics in the origianl.

Anyway, after all of that, I am still at a loss.  That is why I posted this
question in the first place.

- Paul