Exploring the use of rhetorical questions in editorial discourse: a case study of Arabic editorials

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of rhetorical questions in the editorial discourse of the London-based Arabic-language daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. A corpus of 150 editorial rhetorical questions is analyzed by drawing on the theories of Bakhtin, Althusser, and Vološinov. These rhetorical questions are characterized by their aggressive and polemical content in which two hostile voices are dialogically opposed, and by their recurrence in editorials dealing with politically controversial and volatile issues such as the role of the United States in the region. These questions serve four main functions: conferring a dialogic quality upon the text; launching a hidden polemic against the United States and its allies; questioning the very foundation upon which US and Western discourse is built; and speaking for and creating “identification” with the reader. Collectively, they are exploited to voice and double voice the United States and the West by taking an opposing stance toward their discourse on democracy and human rights. Through them, US and Western discourse is challenged and even disparaged and its legitimacy is called into question. By utilizing these rhetorical questions, readers are interpellated into a position where they are called upon to choose between the “hegemonic” policy of the United States and the “emancipationist” position of the newspaper.