Posing Questions without Asking
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Bartholomäus Nowak
Summary
The paper deals with the specific use of rhetorical questions in a particular, national type of parliamentary discourse. After a discussion about rhetorical questions in general, the specifics of the Polish parliamentary discourse are described. The data comes from a part of a parliamentary debate on an emergency topic. This mostly conflictual subgenre is named “issue specific question time”. Based on numerous samples, this analysis reveals three main characteristics within the parliamentary use of rhetorical questions in the Sejm: firstly, the Members of Parliament mostly waive self-answering to rhetorical questions; secondly they treat rhetorical questions as an appropriate tool to formulate statements with question syntax. Both findings are based on the specific parliamentary turn taking rules, viz the right to speak is institutionally linked with the requirement to pose at least one question. The third major characteristic is that rhetorical questions were posed in sequences with other standard or non-standard questions. Thus, the clarity of the unspoken answers in the hearer’s minds can often be conveyed to the other non-rhetorical questions in the sequence.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Aufsätze
- Preface
- Linguistic Violence in Contemporary Russian Public Discourses
- Objections Proffering Choices: Negation in the Co-Construction of Political Identity by Rival Partisans in the Russian State Duma
- Posing Questions without Asking
- Patriotyzm genetyczny, półka kulturowa and Palikotyzacja X-a – blends as catchwords in Polish political discourse
- Hashtag Poetics: Political humour on Russian Twitter
- Quotations, intertextual references, models and myths in the presidential debate of the Czech Parliament
- Interdiscursive strategies of metaphor-driven rhetoric in Romanian discourses on a political crisis
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Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Aufsätze
- Preface
- Linguistic Violence in Contemporary Russian Public Discourses
- Objections Proffering Choices: Negation in the Co-Construction of Political Identity by Rival Partisans in the Russian State Duma
- Posing Questions without Asking
- Patriotyzm genetyczny, półka kulturowa and Palikotyzacja X-a – blends as catchwords in Polish political discourse
- Hashtag Poetics: Political humour on Russian Twitter
- Quotations, intertextual references, models and myths in the presidential debate of the Czech Parliament
- Interdiscursive strategies of metaphor-driven rhetoric in Romanian discourses on a political crisis
- Intertextual references in British, German and Russian political interviews and blogs
- Types and functions of intertextual references in the Russian State Duma
