Firstly, what is a rhetorical question? A rhetorical question is a question that can be used in conversational English, speeches, presentations and writing. It’s a question asked without the expectation of an answer, and is often used for effect. The answer may be immediately provided by the questioner or it may be obvious.
Rhetorical Questions in Conversations:
These often have implicit meaning, especially as there are some common rhetorical questions that we use in everyday conversation. Let’s look at some examples of these:
What does it matter? Meaning: I don’t think it matters
Do you know what time it is? Meaning: you’re late
Who is the best husband/wife? Meaning: you are the best husband/wife
Are you listening? Meaning: I don’t think you’re listening
Do you think I’m rich? Meaning: I can’t afford to buy that
Where am I going to find a hotel at this time of night? Meaning: all the hotel’s are closed
How would/should I know? Meaning: I don’t know
Sometimes rhetorical questions are based on obvious facts:
Person A: Are you going to the gym tomorrow?
Person B: Is the Pope Catholic? Meaning: yes (although this type of rhetorical question borders on rude)
Rhetorical Questions in Speeches, Presentations and Writing:
First, let’s look at a speech given by a well-respected speaker:
"Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have a chance to get right with the law? Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents' arms? Or are we a nation that values families, and works to keep them together?" Former President of the USA, Barack Obama
Benefits of rhetorical questions
As we can see by the above example, rhetorical questions are not a necessity but they can be valuable. They can be used in many different ways to:
- Engage the audience
- Increase the variety of your presentation
- Influence and persuade the audience
- Subtly draw attention and emphasise specific points
- Introduce topics/ideas
- Make the listeners think about certain topics
Rhetorical questions are a great way to highlight a point, engage an audience or even make a suggestion. We often see rhetorical questions that make a suggestion in advertisements:
You work so hard each day, don’t you deserve a break? Book a Travel Tour today and get a 20% discount!
We also don’t have to use a rhetorical question that we want people to agree with. For example:
Sales have decreased all across the steel industry in the last year, but does the downturn have to affect our company? Actually, we can avoid the same fall in sales by…
Both the above examples invite the audience to actively engage with your speech/essay. When speaking, people often pause for a moment after asking a rhetorical question in order to give the audience a moment to consider the point one is making.
For example: asking "Why are personalised surveys beneficial for customer relations?" would be more effective than saying "Personalised surveys are beneficial for customer relations because..."
We often use persuasive rhetorical questions in conversation (it’s hot today, isn’t it?), but they can also be used when giving presentations/speeches. They are used when we want our audience to agree with us by showing them something we have in common. For example: “We’ve all experienced that moment of shock when we realise we have made a mistake at work, haven’t we?”
We can also ask multiple rhetorical questions in order to increase impact: We had an excellent year in sales, didn’t we? It felt good, didn’t it, to beat our own record from last year? Don’t you want to do the same thing this year?
As we can see from the above examples, rhetorical questions can have a big impact on our English and can make us sound more fluent. Let’s try to use a rhetorical question in our next essay!