Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Fictional Fights and Rhetorical Questions

Chris V asks,

"who would win in a fiction character fight, Tyler Durden or The Man With No Name?"
I would put my money on the man with no name. Durden is the Heracles character whose rage is his strength, but against one who knows him well will lead him into error.

Peter LC asks,
"who would win this fictional character fight: James Bond or Jason Bourne?"
I would put my money on Bond, unless it's Pierce Brosnan.

YKW asks,
"Are rhetorical questions asked mainly to demonstrate the cleverness of the person posting the question?"
The only thing more rhetorically obvious and self-serving is when an academic cites one of his or her own works in support of a rhetorical question...something I point out only to raise the question as to whether or not you have read the article I published with Hanno in the journal Pragmatics and Cognition a decade ago that clearly explicates the linguistic mechanism at play behind such pseudo-questions.