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Rhetorical Question
A rhetorical question is one for which the questioner does not expect a direct answer: in many cases it may be intended to start a discourse, or as a means of displaying or emphasize the speaker's or author's opinion on a topic. A common example is the question "Can't you do anything right?" This question, when posed, is intended not to ask about the listener's ability but rather to insinuate the listener's lack of ability. Forms Negative assertions A rhetorical question may be intended as a challenge. The question is often difficult or impossible to answer. In the example, ''What have the Romans ever done for us?'' ('' Monty Python's Life of Brian'') the question functions as a negative assertion. It is intended to mean ''The Romans have never done anything for us!''. When Shakespeare's Mark Antony exclaims: ''Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?'' it functions as an assertion that Caesar possesses such rare qualities they may never be seen again. (''Julius Caesar'', Act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monty Python's Life Of Brian
''Monty Python's Life of Brian'' (also known as ''Life of Brian'') is a 1979 British comedy film starring and written by the comedy group Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin). It was directed by Jones. The film tells the story of Brian Cohen (played by Chapman), a young Jewish- Roman man who is born on the same day as—and next door to—Jesus, and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah. Following the withdrawal of funding by EMI Films just days before production was scheduled to begin, long-time Python fan and former Beatle George Harrison arranged financing for ''Life of Brian'' through the formation of his company HandMade Films. The film's themes of religious satire were controversial at the time of its release, drawing accusations of blasphemy and protests from some religious groups. Thirty-nine local authorities in the United Kingdom either imposed an outright ban, or imposed an X (18 years) certif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thought Experiment
A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences. History The ancient Greek ''deiknymi'' (), or thought experiment, "was the most ancient pattern of mathematical proof", and existed before Euclidean mathematics, where the emphasis was on the conceptual, rather than on the experimental part of a thought-experiment. Johann Witt-Hansen established that Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the German term ' (lit. thought experiment) circa 1812. Ørsted was also the first to use the equivalent term ' in 1820. By 1883 Ernst Mach used the term ' in a different way, to denote exclusively the conduct of a experiment that would be subsequently performed as a by his students. Physical and mental experimentation could then be contrasted: Mach asked his students to provide him with explanations whenever the results from their subsequent, real, physical experiment differed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pragmatics
In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians. Pragmatics encompasses phenomena including implicature, speech acts, relevance and conversation,Mey, Jacob L. (1993) ''Pragmatics: An Introduction''. Oxford: Blackwell (2nd ed. 2001). as well as nonverbal communication. Theories of pragmatics go hand-in-hand with theories of semantics, which studies aspects of meaning, and syntax which examines sentence structures, principles, and relationships. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called ''pragmatic competence''. Pragmatics emerged as its own subfield in the 1950s after the pioneering work of J.L. Austin and Paul Grice. Origin of the field Pragmatics was a reaction to structural ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Betteridge's Law Of Headlines
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ''no''." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009, although the principle is much older. It is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was ''yes'', they would have presented it as an assertion; by presenting it as a question, they are not accountable for whether it is correct or not. The adage does not apply to questions that are more open-ended than strict yes–no questions. The maxim has been cited by other names since 1991, when a published compilation of Murphy's law variants called it "Davis's law", a name that also appears online without any explanation of who Davis was. It has also been referred to as the "journalistic principle" and in 2007 was referred to in commentary as "an old truism among journalists". History Betteridge's name became associated with th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Performative Contradiction
A performative contradiction (german: performativer Widerspruch) arises when the propositional content of a statement contradicts the presuppositions of asserting it. An example of a performative contradiction is the statement "I am dead" because the very act of proposing it presupposes the actor is alive. Jürgen Habermas points out that statements spoken during justificatory argumentation carry additional presuppositions and so certain statements are performative contradictions in this context. Habermas claims that post-modernism's epistemological relativism suffers from a performative contradiction. Hans-Hermann Hoppe claims in his theory of discourse ethics that arguing against self-ownership results in a performative contradiction. Jaakko Hintikka more rigorously fleshed out the notion of performative contradiction in analyzing Descartes' famous ''cogito ergo sum'' argument, concluding that ''cogito ergo sum'' relies on performance rather than logical inference. See also *L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Implicature
In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly saying everything we want to communicate. The philosopher H. P. Grice coined the term in 1975. Grice distinguished ''conversational'' implicatures, which arise because speakers are expected to respect general rules of conversation, and ''conventional'' ones, which are tied to certain words such as "but" or "therefore". Take for example the following exchange: : A (to passer by): I am out of gas. : B: There is a gas station 'round the corner. Here, B does not say, but ''conversationally implicates'', that the gas station is open, because otherwise his utterance would not be relevant in the context. Conversational implicatures are classically seen as contrasting with entailments: They are not necessary or logical consequences of what is said, b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loaded Question
A loaded question is a form of complex question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt). Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda. The traditional example is the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Whether the respondent answers yes or no, they will admit to having a wife and having beaten her at some time in the past. Thus, these facts are '' presupposed'' by the question, and in this case an entrapment, because it narrows the respondent to a single answer, and the fallacy of many questions has been committed. The fallacy relies upon context for its effect: the fact that a question presupposes something does not in itself make the question fallacious. Only when some of these presuppositions are not necessarily agreed to by the person who is asked the question does the argument containing them become fallacious. Hence, the same question ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Double-barreled Question
A double-barreled question (sometimes, ''double-direct question'') is an informal fallacy. It is committed when someone asks a question that touches upon more than one issue, yet allows only for one answer.Alan Bryman, Emma Bell, ''Business research methods'', Oxford University Press, 2007, Google Print, p.267-268/ref> This may result in inaccuracies in the attitudes being measured for the question, as the respondent can answer only one of the two questions, and cannot indicate which one is being answered.Ranjit Kumar, ''Research methodology: a step-by-step guide for beginners'', SAGE, 2005, Google Print, p.136-137/ref> Many double-barreled questions can be detected by the existence of the grammatical conjunction "and" in them. This is not a foolproof test, as the word "and" can exist in properly constructed questions. A question asking about three items is known as "trible (triple, treble)-barreled". In legal proceedings, a double-barreled question is called a compound question. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Presupposition
In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition (or PSP) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include: * ''Jane no longer writes fiction.'' ** Presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction. * ''Have you stopped eating meat?'' ** Presupposition: you had once eaten meat. * ''Have you talked to Hans?'' ** Presupposition: Hans exists. A presupposition must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context. It will generally remain a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and can be associated with a specific lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance. Crucially, negation of an expression does not change its presuppositions: ''I want to do it again'' and ''I don't want to do it again'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suggestive Question
A suggestive question is one that implies that a certain answer should be given in response, or falsely presents a presupposition in the question as accepted fact. Such a question distorts the memory thereby tricking the person into answering in a specific way that might or might not be true or consistent with their actual feelings, and can be deliberate or unintentional. For example, the phrasing "Don't you think this was wrong?" is more suggestive than "Do you think this was wrong?" despite the difference of only one word. The former may subtly pressure the respondent into responding "yes", whereas the latter is far more direct. Repeated questions can make people think their first answer is wrong and lead them to change their answer, or it can cause people to continuously answer until the interrogator gets the exact response that they desire. The diction used by the interviewer can also be an influencing factor to the response given by the interrogated individual. Experimental ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aporia
In philosophy, an aporia ( grc, ᾰ̓πορῐ́ᾱ, aporíā, literally: "lacking passage", also: "impasse", "difficulty in passage", "puzzlement") is a conundrum or state of puzzlement. In rhetoric, it is a declaration of doubt, made for rhetorical purpose and often feigned. Definitions Definitions of the term ''aporia'' have varied throughout history. ''The Oxford English Dictionary'' includes two forms of the word: the adjective "aporetic", which it defines as "impassable", and "inclined to doubt, or to raise objections"; and the noun form "aporia", which it defines as the "state of the aporetic" and "a perplexity or difficulty". The dictionary entry also includes two early textual uses, which both refer to the term's rhetorical (rather than philosophical) usage. In George Puttenham's ''The Arte of English Poesie'' (1589), aporia is "the Doubtful, ocalled...because often we will seem to caste perils, and make doubts of things when by a plaine manner of speech we might ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
