Exploring The Use of RQ in Editorials

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

Arabic editorials*
MUHAMMAD A. BADARNEH
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 rhetor-
ical 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 foun-
dation 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 oppos-
ing 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.
Keywords: rhetorical questions; editorials; dialogicality; double voicing;

hidden polemic; interpellation.
1. Introduction
Rhetorical questions have been traditionally considered an important

rhetorical device used to present an assertion in the form of an interroga-
tive statement. This paper explores the use of rhetorical questions in an
1860–7330/09/0029–0639 Text & Talk 29–6 (2009), pp. 639–659

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640 Muhammad A. Badarneh
inherently argumentative genre, namely newspaper editorials, through ex-

amining how such questions are exploited in the editorials of the London-
based Arabic-language daily newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. The analysis
aims to show how rhetorical questions are employed in the newspaper’s
editorial discourse to present the newspaper’s stance toward current polit-
ical events in the Middle East. Given the generally acknowledged persua-
sive utility of rhetorical questions (Roskos-Ewoldsen 2003), this article is
situated within the broader study of linguistic features in various genres,
with the specific purpose of identifying the di¤erent linguistic forms used
in persuasively oriented genres, such as print advertisements and news-
paper editorials (Halmari and Virtanen 2005). Throughout this study,
argumentation is defined as the use of language to justify or refute a
political standpoint, with the aim of securing agreement in views, while
persuasion is meant as appealing to reason, values, beliefs, and emotions
to convince the reader to think or act in a particular way.
Editorials present the newspaper’s position on current events as an
opinion ‘‘concealed and addressed to the recipient as fact’’ (Reah 2002:
45) and constructed ‘‘according to the stylistic and ideological conven-
tions’’ of the newspaper (Fowler 1991: 39). Through editorials news-
papers ‘‘consciously seek to legitimize particular constructions of the
social and political world over others’’ by using a variety of rhetorical
strategies such as ‘‘appeals to authority, commonsense presuppositions,
particular rationalizations, and morally evaluative lexical choices’’
(Phelan 2007: 9).
Editorials typically reflect the assumption that the newspaper reader-
ship is a homogeneous group of people with shared beliefs and values.
Their language is therefore ‘‘designed to evoke one particular response,’’
with the aim of ‘‘establishing a set of shared values, usually in opposition
to another group who do not share, or who attack these values’’ (Reah
2002: 40). The role of readers in interpreting these ideological assump-
tions and values is crucial. In fact, ‘‘it is the reader who is responsible for
bringing all these contentious assumptions into the process of interpreta-
tion, not the text’’ (Fairclough 2001 [1989]: 69, original emphasis). Edito-
rial discourse with its implicit ideological assumptions thus becomes a
powerful way of imposing these assumptions upon the reader, and read-
ers have to entertain these assumptions if they are to make sense of the
text (Fairclough 2001 [1989]). Audiences thus play a key role in the rhe-
torical construction of media texts and in the way the media attempt both
to conceptualize and measure audiences (Bell 1991; Taylor and Willis
1999). These audiences, however, are not necessarily only those reading
the editorials for information, but also the whole interdiscursive scene of
the various media, political actors, and so forth.
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Rhetorical questions in editorial discourse 641
Editorials have been approached in terms of their structure (Bolivar

1994; Le 2004; Hawes and Thomas 1996), cross-cultural di¤erences
(Reynolds 1993; Tirkkonen-Condit 1996; Pak 2000), indexing of political
moods and reacting to major political events (Hackett and Zhao 1994;
Saft and Ohara 2006; Achugar 2004), their role in international rela-
tions (Suedfeld 1992; Le 2002), and their persuasive strategies (Virtanen
2005; Le 2003). The present article belongs to this latter line of re-
search, but it also aims to show how the editorials of the newspaper in
question index its political position through di¤erent uses of rhetorical
questions.
2. Rhetorical questions
The dynamic role of questions in spoken and written discourse cannot

be ignored (Howard 1989; Heritage and Roth 1995; Heritage 2002;
Koshik 2005; Wang 2006). They are used in discourse for purposes such
as exercising power in casual conversation and institutional dialogue
(Wang 2006), exerting a greater degree of management of the interaction
(Marley 2002), or communicating assertions (Koshik 2005). The editorial
use of the latter variety of questions, traditionally known as rhetorical
questions, is the focus of this study.
Rhetorical questions have the double feature of being both a question
and an assertion, with the second feature being understood as the in-
tended meaning. They are defined as ‘‘questions to which the speaker or
writer already knows the answer and which need not be answered by the
listener or reader’’ (Slot 1993: 3). In contrast with genuine questions, a
rhetorical question is a way of asking that aims to emphasize the content
of the question, produce a particular rhetorical or stylistic e¤ect, or both.
It involves a discrepancy between form and function, but this discrepancy
is not intended to deceive the addressee. Rather, the addressee is ex-
pected to solve this discrepancy on the basis of the context of situation
(Haverkate 1997). This discrepancy between form and function has
generated interest in rhetorical questions in di¤erent types of discourse
(e.g., Frank 1990; Kertzer 1987; Kuntz 1997; Ainsworth-Vaughn 1994;
McQuarrie and Mick 1996). This paper examines the use of rhetorical
questions in editorial discourse to show how they are exploited to support
and advance the argument of the editorial. This will be carried out by
drawing mainly on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of voicing and double voic-
ing, complemented by the theories of Althusser, Barthes, and Vološinov
on language and discourse.

3. Language, voicing, and double voicing
It was previously assumed that a speaker’s meaning can be understood

with reference only to the form and content of utterances regardless of
the speaker’s relations with others (Wortham and Locher 1999). This
approach was criticized by Bakhtin as ‘‘monologic’’ since it treated dis-
course as ‘‘the word of no one in particular’’ (Bakhtin 1981: 276). Instead,
Bakhtin advocates what he calls a ‘‘dialogic’’ approach to language,
whereby ‘‘people enter into dialogue with past writers or speakers, whose
words they are borrowing or disagreeing with, into dialogue with poten-
tial readers and into dialogue with many others who have some claim to
the kind of ideas and language they are drawing on’’ (Matheson 2005: 8).
Utterances in this approach ‘‘are not indi¤erent to one another, and are
not self-su‰cient; they are aware of and mutually reflect one another’’
(Bakhtin 1986: 91). An utterance ‘‘must be regarded primarily as a re-
sponse to preceding utterances’’ and ‘‘each utterance refutes, a‰rms, sup-
plements and relies on the others, presupposes them to be known, and
somehow takes them into account’’ (1986: 91, original emphasis). ‘‘The
expression of an utterance always responds to a greater or lesser degree,
that is, it expresses the speaker’s attitude toward others’ utterances and
not just his attitude toward the object of his utterance’’ (1986: 92, original
emphasis).
For Bakhtin (1981: 272), dialogism means that we are not only inter-
acting with others in using language; we are also using others’ words
that are ‘‘ideologically saturated’’ to represent our own meanings. Two
key senses of dialogism are particularly emphasized. The first is the ability
of an utterance to articulate more than one meaning. The resulting con-
flicts between literal meaning and implied meaning are thus dialogic.
Such dialogic utterances are shaped and oriented by the speaker toward
a listener who is not an abstractly conceived, ahistorical category, but is
rather an active and responsive agent. Besides recognizing the fundamen-
tal participation of the listener in the generation of meaning, an utterance
should be viewed as always shaped with its audience in mind. The second
key sense is of dialogic relations between utterances. This sense refers to
the conflicts of ‘‘heteroglossia,’’ or the ‘‘internal stratification’’ of lan-
guage (Bakhtin 1981: 263), and the di¤ering discourses clashing and con-
flicting in the public and private verbal-ideological arena.
Central to Bakhtin’s dialogic discourse is the concept of ‘‘voice.’’ As a
result of heteroglossia, language inherently has linguistic forms that are
associated with di¤erent social groups which are defined by social posi-
tion and ideological commitments. Thus, particular features of language
‘‘take on the specific flavor’’ of particular groups (1981: 289). Accord-

ingly, speaking with a certain ‘‘voice’’ means ‘‘using words that index
some position(s), because these words are characteristically used by mem-
bers of a certain group’’ (Wortham and Locher 1999: 113). When a speak-
er uses words that are distinctively associated with others, two voices
are interacting: the group which habitually uses these words and the
speaker who is currently using these words. This leads to what Bakhtin
calls ‘‘double voicing’’ (1984: 185). Through this double voicing the
speaker’s meaning forms partly through an interaction with the voice of
another, who also speaks through the current speaker’s words (Wortham
and Locher 1999). The emerging double-voiced discourse is characterized
by conflict as the speaker injects his own intentions into the still live
words of others (Bakhtin 1984). Although originally developed by Bakh-
tin in relation to the novel (Bakhtin 1981), double voicing has been used
in analyzing media discourse (Wortham and Locher 1996, 1999). This
Bakhtinian approach underlies the present analysis of editorial use of rhe-
torical questions.
4. Data and methodology
The textual corpus for the present study consists of 150 rhetorical ques-
tions (see Table 1) from the editorials of the London-based Arabic-
language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. The questions were derived from
the daily electronic version of this newspaper, which includes all of the
original content from its daily printed version. They occurred in editorials
published between October 2005 and December 2007. This period wit-
nessed an escalation in political and military turmoil in the region, fueled
mainly by the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict,
and the war between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah. These events have
resulted in sharp political polarization in the region involving pro- and
anti-Western forces. The editorials analyzed in this study address various
issues related to these political events in the Middle East.
Al-Quds Al-Arabi is an independent, pan-Arab daily newspaper pub-
lished in London. Founded in 1989, it has quickly become one of the
Table 1. Types of rhetorical questions in the data
Type Number Percentage
Rhetorical wh-questions 97 64.6%

Rhetorical yes/no questions 52 34.6%
Rhetorical alternative questions 1 0.8%
Total 150 100%

most-often-quoted Arabic-language newspapers published outside the

Arab region. Needless to say, this newspaper enjoys a margin of freedom
equal to that enjoyed by the British press. It has gained a reputation for
independent investigative reporting and for its hard-line editorials and
opinion pieces which are vehemently opposed to US and Western policy
in the region. It has equally gained a reputation for strongly criticizing
what it perceives as a clear subordination of the Arab regimes to the
United States, their suppression of freedoms, human rights violations,
and rampant corruption. As a result of its outspoken and strong criticism
of Arab regimes, the newspaper has been censored and sometimes tempo-
rarily banned in a number of countries.
In contrast with the mainly expository nature of home-based Arabic
editorials whose main aim is to justify and ratify o‰cial policies, the ar-
gumentative style of this newspaper’s editorials makes them a suitable
source for studying the use of rhetorical questions in Arabic editorial dis-
course. In the study of argumentation, it has been suggested that writers
of argumentative texts often seem to be quite happy to convey things in
an indirect way and that rhetorical questions in argumentative texts are
often used to convey crucial information (Slot 1993). Furthermore, as in
the case of advertisements, persuasion is the overriding goal of editorials,
which often makes the manner in which a statement is expressed more
important than its propositional content (McQuarrie and Mick 1996).
This study’s focus on the use of rhetorical questions in editorial dis-
course is based both upon editorials’ special role in newspapers and the
multifunctional role of rhetorical questions in discourse, especially per-
suasive discourse. Editorials are supposed to be persuasive and are less
constrained by the norm of objectivity. As they represent a newspaper’s
active participation in public debate (Le 2003), they are sites where ideo-
logical biases can be more readily discerned (Hackett and Zhao 1994). In
this article, rhetorical questions are treated as an ‘‘ideological structure’’
(Kress 1985) through which these ideological biases and assumptions are
inserted, especially when used, in the present study, in relation to politi-
cally sensitive and volatile issues.
For the purpose of this study, a rhetorical question is defined as the use
of an interrogative form as an assertion when this assertion could be ex-
pressed in a declarative form. When a rhetorical question was identified,
attention was paid to how it was constituted and utilized through the use
of various features, particularly lexical choices and the structural type of
the rhetorical question. Following Koshik (2005), the rhetorical questions
are considered in the sequential environment in which they occur and in
terms of the argumentative function they are designed to perform. The
discursive significance of these questions is interpreted in relation to the

ideological assumptions and meanings invoked by the rhetorical question

used, the local context, and in relation to the larger political context. It
will be shown that rhetorical questions provide a rich resource through
which the newspaper expresses its political and ideological stance toward
the current political situation in the Middle East.
5. Rhetorical questions as a dialogic device
Persuasive discourse, with its sharp focus on the recipient, excludes the
possibility of give and take that characterizes ordinary conversation.
This defining quality of ‘‘nonreciprocity’’ (Lako¤ 1982) renders persua-
sive discourse overtly and decidedly one-sided, with the explicit goal of
e¤ecting change in the reader’s opinion, ideology, or belief system. Aware-
ness of this nonreciprocal dimension of persuasive discourse plays a role
in the text producer’s attempt to engage the reader in quasi-reciprocal
communication, as in advertisements (Wilson 2000). Rhetorical questions
are a common discursive strategy used to redress this nonreciprocity. By
using them, the writer creates the impression of addressing readers, sug-
gesting an implied interaction and creating a fictive dialogue between the
text and the audience.
White (2003: 259) suggests that linguistic resources can be ‘‘broadly
divided into those which entertain or open up the space for dialogic alter-
natives and, alternatively, those which suppress or close down the space
for such alternation.’’ Indeed, rhetorical questions belong to the first cat-
egory, and in editorials they are commonly, though casually, described as
‘‘dialogic devices’’ (Fowler 1991: 211). In Bakhtinian terms, rhetorical
questions in editorial discourse represent ‘‘heteroglossic’’ interaction as
opposed to ‘‘monoglossic’’ utterances (Bakhtin 1981). In the present cor-
pus, rhetorical questions include and recognize the multiple points of view
of the parties involved in the political scene. Their presence serves to
counterbalance the generally monoglossic discourse of editorials which
typically represents one unifying voice, namely that of the newspaper
and its political and economic a‰liation. The rhetorical question in the
editorial discourse of Al-Quds Al-Arabi thus enables the editorialist to
present to the reader several voices in a dialogic state, as in the following
examples:1
(1) How can the US administration win the hearts and minds of the
Arabs when its president describes Muslims as fascists and one of
his prominent allies, the Pope, flagrantly assaults Islam, and when
UN reports confirm that torture and killing in Iraq are far worse
than they were under the former regime? (24/9/2006)

(2) What has stability brought by dictatorial regimes achieved other

than backwardness, subservience, corruption, nepotism, sectarian-
ism, and tribalism? (7/5/2007)
These questions reflect voices that are dialogically opposed within them
and these voices form a kind of dialogue within these interrogatives. In
(1) several voices are interacting: the voice of the newspaper (which
implicitly represents the voice of Arabs and Muslims); the voice of the
United States; the voice of the Pope, which is presented as pro-American;
and the voice of the United Nations. The voice of the newspaper is clearly
opposed to the voice of the United States and its perceived allies. In
(2) the question contains two voices: the voice of the newspaper, which
is presented as the voice of its readers; and the voice of those who prefer
stability even if it is brought by dictatorships. Not only do these rhetori-
cal questions create a dialogue with the implied reader, but they also con-
tribute to the polyphonic structure of the editorials in which they appear.
The presence of other voices in these rhetorical questions is a strong indi-
cator of their dialogic function in the text.
The dialogicality of these rhetorical questions stems from two sources.
First, the interrogative structure implies the existence of an addressee,
which gives a sense of dialogicality to the text. This dialogicality is there-
fore implicit, giving the text a sense of ‘‘hidden dialogicality,’’ which is,
according to Bakhtin (1984: 197), ‘‘a dialogue of two persons in which
the remarks of the second person are omitted, but omitted in a way that
the general meaning is not violated.’’ The second source of dialogicality
derives from the semantic content of these interrogatives, which suggests
a microdialogue between di¤erent opposing voices or viewpoints.
Two main functions can be achieved through rhetorical questions in
editorial discourse. First, similar to their occurrence in literary discourse
(Tigountsova 2003), these rhetorical questions, in addition to being con-
stituents of hidden dialogicality, are typically used in these editorials in
order to bring the voice of the other into the text. Second, such rhetorical
questions can be viewed as an attempt to shift the tone of the newspaper’s
editorials from ‘‘authoritative’’ discourse to ‘‘internally persuasive dis-
course.’’ The first ‘‘permits no play with the context framing it’’ and it
‘‘enters our verbal consciousness as a compact and indivisible mass’’
(Bakhtin 1981: 343). It is both univocal and unidirectional, and as in reli-
gious and political discourse, we must either a‰rm or reject it completely
(1981: 343). Internally persuasive discourse, in contrast, allows dialogic
interanimation and its semantic structure is open (1981: 346). The news-
paper thus claims openness and participation via rhetorical questions and
creates some space for the reader to interact with the text. By shifting to

internally persuasive discourse through rhetorical questions, the news-

paper suggests that it does not demand allegiance from the reader. Rather,
the editorial seeks to involve the reader in taking sides with one of two
rival and hostile discourses. As a kind of double-voiced discourse, these
rhetorical questions o¤er the reader a discourse which ‘‘contains two live
voices, not one perspective parroted by two speakers’’ as it is the case in
authoritarian discourse ‘‘when a speaker quotes another who has been
forced to espouse the same position’’ (Wortham and Locher 1999: 116;
original emphasis).
6. Rhetorical questions as a ‘‘hidden polemic’’
In the particular case of editorials where di¤erent points of view are com-
peting for legitimacy, and given the predominantly argumentative nature
of this genre, and in view of the aggressive content of the rhetorical ques-
tions found in the corpus, rhetorical questions in the present editorials
can also be seen as a case of ‘‘hidden polemic,’’ which is a double-voiced
discourse that takes a ‘‘sideward glance’’ at somebody else’s hostile utter-
ances. As Bakhtin explains,
[i]n a hidden polemic the author’s discourse is directed toward its own referential
object, as is any other discourse, but at the same time every statement about the
object is constructed in such a way that, apart from its referential meaning, a
polemical blow is struck at the other’s discourse on the same theme, at the other’s
statement about the same object. (Bakhtin 1984: 195–197)
Besides creating dialogical relations, the use of rhetorical questions in the

editorials of Al-Quds Al-Arabi as a double-voiced hidden polemic device
serves to challenge other hostile discourses by interrogatively calling their
legitimacy into question, blaming them, exposing their double-facedness,
or even disparaging them. Within the present data, rhetorical questions
are used to launch a hidden polemic whose targets are mainly the US
occupation of Iraq and the subsequent political process there, perceived
submission to the United States, the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, lack of
democracy in the region, and human rights violations. These themes can
be seen through the following questions:
(3) Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was undoubtedly not democratic, but is

today’s Iraq democratic? Isn’t Iraq now the most corrupt country in
the world according to Transparency International? The Iraqi oppo-
sition, especially the Islamic one, used to say that Saddam Hussein
ascended to power by means of a CIA-backed coup. But how did

this very opposition reach power? Did they reach power on an

Islamic tank? (25/12/2007)
(4) Saddam Hussein’s regime did commit crimes against its opponents
and did execute those who tried to assassinate Saddam or topple
the regime, but is the elected Iraqi government now throwing flowers
at its opponents? Are the American occupation forces showing any
tolerance toward those who oppose their presence (in Iraq) and
who are fighting to liberate their country just like all other nations?
(6/11/2006)
(5) What democracy are Gordon Brown and Sarkozy talking about,
and for which they are boycotting Mugabe under the pretext of his
dictatorship and election rigging, when they are rolling out the red
carpet for two Arab leaders in whose countries there are no elec-
tions, let alone election rigging? (13/12/2007)
(6) If Sunni Muslim countries are so concerned about the Palestinian
people, why do they keep silent about the strangling blockade which
has been imposed on this people for over a year now and why don’t
they intervene to stop the continuous Israeli attacks against this peo-
ple which harvest the lives of innocents on a daily basis? (22/2/2007)
(7) Should an Arab citizen be born with a European nationality so that
there will be a government that cares about them and sets them free
(as did Britain) if they are abducted by the CIA and taken to this de-
tention camp (Guantanamo), which is a shame not only for America
but for the whole humanity, or is it the case that all the Arabs, not
just the governments, are only interested in video clips and are of-
fended only by cartoons? (13/3/2006)
In these excerpts, the rhetorical questions are designed to launch a hidden
polemic against certain political positions perceived by the newspaper as
hypocritical or wrong. The content of these questions is negative and is
built upon the construction of opposition between two hostile discourses:
the pan-Arab pro-democratic discourse of the newspaper and the hegem-
onic discourse of the United States and the West combined with the sub-
servient and anti-democratic discourse of their regional allies. Thus, in
(3), the claim of a new democratic Iraq is disputed, first by interrogatively
referring to the rampant corruption which is corroborated by a world au-
thority, and then by questioning how the former Iraqi opposition reached
power, implying that it is not di¤erent from how the deposed regime
seized power. In (4), the rhetorical question similarly equals the practices
of the United States and its local allies in Iraq with the practices of the
former regime. In (5), the text contests the West’s universal commitment

to democracy by interrogatively highlighting the duplicity with which the

West deals with world leaders when it comes to democracy. In (6), the
rhetorical question is used to challenge and call into question the sincerity
of Muslim nations concerning alleviating the su¤ering of the Palestinian
people. Finally, in (7), the rhetorical question is used to assault the Arab
governments’ inability to protect their own citizens in the face of Ameri-
ca’s sprawling security services.
The reading of these rhetorical questions as a case of hidden polemic
finds support in the juxtapositions that these questions involve. The po-
lemical thrust of these questions can be seen in their semantic content,
which establishes a direct collision between the newspaper’s discourse,
and implicitly that of its readers, and the discourse of the United States
and its allies. A tone of disparagement and irony can be detected: ‘‘CIA-
backed coup’’ versus ‘‘Islamic tank’’; ‘‘commit crimes’’ versus ‘‘throwing
flowers at opponents’’; ‘‘rigging the elections’’ versus ‘‘there are no elec-
tions to be rigged’’; ‘‘concerned about’’ versus ‘‘keeping silent’’. In (7),
the rhetorical question has the sharpest polemical edge as it sarcastically
limits the concerns of all Arabs, governments and individuals, to trivial
issues related to songs and o¤ensive newspaper cartoons.
By using such rhetorical questions with aggressive content, the editori-
als acquire a sharp polemical edge. These rhetorical questions clearly seek
to destabilize and discount the kind of political ethics and discourse
which the United States, the West, and their satellite regimes claim to up-
hold. Furthermore, these rhetorical questions seem to taunt the discourse
of the other by sarcastically questioning its legitimacy and truthfulness on
the ground, which can be most clearly seen in (4). As a case of hidden po-
lemic, these interrogatives involve naming and portraying other discourses
with the aim of indirectly striking a blow at these other discourses.
The politically polarized topics which the above rhetorical questions
are about lend further support to their polemical reading. That is, these
rhetorical questions are used in editorials dealing with political issues of
intense and volatile nature, which, as can be seen from the excerpts
throughout this article, are related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the
US occupation of Iraq, Arab ‘‘submission’’ to the United States and
the West, the so-called ‘‘war on terror,’’ American policy in the region,
human rights violations, and lack of true democracy in the region. These
issues are the subject of intense and heated debate in the region, mainly
between those who are pro-American, viewing the United States as the
savior, and those who are anti-American, viewing the United States as
the archenemy of the nation and its aspirations. There is thus some af-
finity between the intensity, sensitivity, and controversiality of the topic
and the use of a rhetorical question. The editorialist’s awareness of the

divisive nature of these topics is a strong indication of the polemical func-

tion of rhetorical questions in these editorials.
A particular structural manifestation of rhetorical question’s hidden
polemic in the data appears in two forms: rhetorical alternative questions
and rhetorical questions embedded in a conditional clause. The first type
presents two alternatives, or propositions, with the assumption that the
reader will side with the ideologically, commonsensically, or contextually
positive alternative, as in (8) below:
(8) Do Arabs want to live in civilized societies based on the concepts of
state and law, or do they want to live in societies plagued by con-
flicts which achieve none of the nation’s goals but those of its ene-
mies? (11/4/2007)
The argumentative thrust of these questions is to present the negative
proposition for the reader only to undermine, weaken, and defeat it po-
lemically. By juxtaposing a commonsensically negative and unacceptable
alternative to a universally accepted and positive one, the editorial use of
these rhetorical alternative questions turns into a hidden polemic which
reproduces the other’s discourse only to strike a polemical blow at this
discourse in relation to the topic of the editorial. Thus, in (8), the rhetor-
ical question presents the two alternatives of living in civilized versus
conflict-torn societies. Juxtaposing the second alternative to the first one
suggests a hidden polemic in which the second alternative is exploited in
order to be undermined by the first commonsense alternative. This ques-
tion displays ideological stance by implying that the editorial is in favor
of a sound and commonsense ideology or worldview, so the second alter-
native is the one which must be commonsensically rejected. Thus the first
alternative is presented as the sound, sage, and patriotic voice of the
newspaper, while the second is presented as the anarchic and detrimental
voice of the other with foreign agenda.
The second type is rhetorical questions that are embedded in a condi-
tional construction, which is already seen in (6) above. More specifically,
they form the apodosis, or the main clause, of the conditional, as in the
following instances:
(9) If the (Iraqi) interior minister who is supposed to keep security and
enforce law boasts about secret torture chambers in the cellar of his
Ministry, how can others respect the law? (21/2/2006)
(10) If 150,000 American forces, 20,000 British and other multinational
forces, tens of thousands working with private security firms, plus
250,000 Iraqi soldiers, are unable to protect Arab and foreign dip-
lomats and provide security in one quarter of Baghdad, how can

we say that today’s Iraq is better than the Iraq of yesterday and
that things are moving toward the better? (21/5/2006)
(11) If the (Iraqi) prime minister knew about George Bush’s visit to
Baghdad only five minutes before meeting him, what kind of sover-
eignty are these people talking about? (5/7/2006)
(12) If the goal of this operation was to commit a mass massacre, which
consequently required raising security readiness to its highest level
in Britain and the US, why does the British prime minister insist
on going ahead with his vacation plans in the Caribbean, and why
does Bush continue his vacation and not interrupt it to face this
terrorism which is said to be even more dangerous than 9/11?
(13/8/2006)
(13) If the situation in Iraq is improving and victory is close, why are
five million Iraqis homeless, living as refugees in Jordan and Syria
in di‰cult and painful conditions, and why are 50,000 Iraqis leav-
ing their country every month according to the UN? (23/8/2007)
In these excerpts, the discourse, or the voice, of the United States and its
allies is presented in the protasis, or the subordinate clause, in order to be
challenged and undermined through the rhetorical question in the apodo-
sis. As with other instances cited so far, the rhetorical question is ex-
ploited to mark the presence of two hostile discourses or voices. In this
way, the rhetorical question launches a hidden polemic with opposite dis-
courses: claiming that Iraq is better today, claiming that Iraq is a sover-
eign nation now, claiming the presence of eminent terrorist threats to the
West, and claiming that victory is close and the situation is improving in
Iraq. The grammatical conditionality is undermined by the rhetorical
question whose function is to counter the discourse of the United States
and the West on Iraq and terrorism. Thus, these conditional construc-
tions create a space for the discourse of the other only to establish an
anti-US and anti-Western discourse and set the parameters of its pro-
nationalist voice. Rhetorical questions in the editorial discourse of this
newspaper thus work through the construction of opposition, whether im-
plicit or explicit, between two hostile discourses: that of the newspaper on
the one hand, and the discourse of the United States, the West, and their
regional allies on the other.
7. Rhetorical questions and exploiting ‘‘obviousnesses’’
In order for the editorialist to engage the reader through rhetorical ques-
tions, and in order that the audience adopt the position of the editorial,

there must be some common ground which the writer exploits and builds
upon in order to make the argument less intrusive and more palpable to
the reader. For this purpose, the newspaper’s stance needs to be sup-
ported with assumptions which are automatically accepted because they
are universally self-evident. The flagrant violation of these assumptions,
therefore, would be presented via rhetorical questions to provide a further
argument for challenging and rejecting the discourse of the other, i.e., the
United States and its allies. By commenting on what is obvious, the rhe-
torical question is used to undermine the very foundation upon which the
other’s discourse, or voice, is built. This would in turn cast doubt on the
legitimacy and integrity of this other’s discourse.
In order to understand how exploiting what is obvious to undermine
the other’s voice works, one may draw upon the notion of ‘‘obviousness’’
as proposed by Althusser (1984). Obviousness, according to Althusser, re-
fers to the notion of common sense which plays a strong role in inviting
agreement in discourse. Althusser explains that in any text there are ele-
ments which are posed as self-evidently true:
It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so,

since these are ‘‘obviousnesses’’) obviousnesses as obviousnesses, which we cannot
fail to recognize and before which we have the inevitable and natural reaction of
crying out (aloud or in the ‘‘still, small voice of conscience’’): ‘‘That’s obvious!
That’s right! That’s true!’’ (Althusser 1984: 46, original emphasis)
Althusser asserts that these elements which are presented as self-evidently

true are the most truly ideological. As Mills (1996) notes, there is a close
relationship between this notion of obviousness and Barthes’s (1975: 20)
notion of ‘‘cultural code.’’ The cultural code consists of a range of state-
ments at which the reader will simply accept as self-evidently ‘‘true,’’ or
statements at which readers will nod their heads sagely (Mills 1996: 248).
Rhetorical questions in argumentative texts like editorials exploit such
obviousnesses or cultural codes. Through rhetorical questions built upon
such obviousnesses, the reader is led to question the truth-value of the
other’s discourse, since posing such questions with ‘‘obvious’’ answers sig-
nals that the discourse of the newspaper occupies the position of truth
and commonsense in the hierarchy of discourses or voices within the edi-
torial text. Their use also signals that readers can and should recognize
the ‘‘obvious’’ interpretations which the editorial text maps out for them
(cf. Mills 1996).
Rhetorical questions used to signal seemingly obvious information,
which is nonetheless ideological, invite the reader indirectly to adopt the
position of the newspaper, as can be seen in the following excerpts:

(14) The Iraqi soldiers cannot be blamed, for why would they fight for a
corrupt government? And when was fighting with the occupation
an acceptable and honorable act? (16/10/2005)
(15) Does saving a soldier justifies blowing up the only power station (in
Gaza Strip), cutting o¤ water and gas supplies, bombing civilian
places, terrorizing the population and frightening children with
US-made aircraft, day and night? (29/6/2006)
(16) The Pentagon’s report itself says that most of the (Iraqi) National
Guard and police forces are loyal to sectarian parties rather than
the state, and have no sense of citizenship. How can these forces,
then, bring security and stability and carry out orders of disman-
tling sectarian militias with which these very forces share the same
base of loyalty? (30/10/2006)
(17) If the government of (Iraqi Prime Minister) Nouri Al-Maliki can-
not stand up to a private security firm like Blackwater, can they
confront a regional power like Turkey? (23/10/2007)
Through these rhetorical questions, the reader is called upon indirectly to
fill in the gaps, recognize the intended message, and consequently adopt a
position where certain political viewpoints have to be accepted as true,
which forms the basis for the wider argument, namely calling into ques-
tion the legitimacy and wisdom of US policy and its allies in the region.
The rhetorical question thus becomes the means by which the editorial
attempts to co-opt the reader into aligning with the newspaper’s anti-
American position. By appealing to common sense (the unacceptability
of fighting for a corrupt government, the unacceptability of fighting with
the occupation, the unacceptability of bombing civilian places, the un-
acceptability of loyalty to sectarian militias, etc.), readers are led to the
position where they would question the legitimacy of the United States
and its allies. The rhetorical questions thus indirectly give a negative eval-
uation of the United States and its allies in order to cast doubt on their
policies. By pretending to be asking the reader, the editorial text in fact
seeks to constitute a role for the reader: the role of recognizing and as-
senting with the point of view of the newspaper.
In order to make sense of these questions and fill in the gaps, then, the
reader has to draw upon elements of the ‘‘cultural code’’ whereby ‘‘we all
know’’ that collaborating with an occupier is not honorable, that sectari-
anism cannot lead to security, that fighting with the occupier cannot be
viewed in positive terms, and that a government which is unable to deal
with internal security issues will not be able to deal with external threats.
However, given the complexity of the political scene, and although the

editorialist relies on the obviousness of the answer to draw the reader into
agreement, these elements of obviousness can be challenged in a context
where the Americans, for example, are perceived as liberators rather
than occupiers by readers opposed to the former ‘‘despotic’’ regime. Ac-
cordingly, these readers may adopt a position di¤erent from that of the
newspaper. Calling upon the reader via axiomatic information can be
considered a case of what Althusser (1984) calls ‘‘interpellation’’ or hail-
ing. That is, the editorial text interrogatively calls upon the reader to rec-
ognize the irrationality of the other’s discourse. However, when interpel-
lated by a text indirectly via rhetorical questions, there is no guarantee
that the reader will accept what these questions imply. On the contrary,
as Mills (1996: 245) points out in her critique of Althusser’s theory of in-
terpellation, ‘‘although certain texts attempt to address themselves to the
reader, s/he may be critical of them and may decide not to take them at
face value.’’
8. Rhetorical questions and speaking for the reader
In the previous cases of rhetorical questions, the writer opens the space
for the reader to enter into the text, after which this space is closed by
the implied answer. As Kertzer (1987: 245) puts it, a rhetorical question
‘‘invites opening and imposes closure.’’ For such rhetorical questions, a
mental response is supposed to be supplied by the reader, creating some
kind of involvement with the text. However, there are cases of rhetorical
questions where the editorialist poses a question for which an answer is
immediately supplied:
(18) What is the goal behind these elections which are like wallpaper
that hides behind it wrinkles, holes, and aging pillars? Elections
under repressive regimes are part of the regime’s policy. Holding
them is only an attempt to acquire new legitimacy in extremely crit-
ical times. (15/5/2006)
(19) Why are there accurate and daily statistics about American soldiers
killed or injured in Iraq, while there are no such numbers about
Iraqi victims, whether killed or injured? The answer to this ques-
tion is clear: the US administration does not care at all about the
lives of non-Americans. That is why its forces in Iraq are involved
in killing, torture, and rape without any fear of accountability.
(12/10/2006)

(20) The question is: Why is America chasing Taliban and Al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan? Didn’t these groups fight Soviet communism in the
country? Again, it is the American duplicity and Western hypocrisy
in their ugliest forms. (4/01/2007)
(21) Can any country in the world invade, for example, a European
country, overthrow its government, and execute its rulers without
accountability or resistance for this action by European countries?
The answer is definitely ‘‘No!’’ (12/4/2007)
These questions preclude reader participation in the text. They are the re-
verse of the usual pattern of posing rhetorical questions whose answers
are left to the readers to answer on their own. Thus, instead of posing a
rhetorical question and withholding the answer, which is known in classi-
cal rhetoric as the interrogatio, the editorialist chooses to pose a question
and promptly answer it, a type of rhetorical question known as the roga-
tio (see Kertzer 1987). Vološinov (1973 [1929]), in his treatment of the
rhetorical question in literary discourse, explains that the function of this
type of rhetorical questions is to speak for the hero. That is, ‘‘the author
stands in for his hero, says in his stead what the hero might or should
have said, says what the given occasion calls for’’ (1973 [1929]: 138). A
similar function can be seen in the present editorial discourse. By posing
a question and promptly answering it, not leaving the answer for the
reader, the voice of the newspaper and the reader merge. This strategy
suggests that ‘‘a complete solidarity’’ (1973 [1929]: 138) in assumptions
and values exists between the editorial and the reader. The question and
its answer would suggest that both the newspaper and the reader share
the same assumptions regarding the given political issues. Hence, a rhe-
torical e¤ect is obtained: the editorial is forged in the reader’s voice and
the reader’s assumptions are forged in the editorialist’s points of view.
The mental response of the reader is formally delivered by the editorial
itself, suggesting that there is no di¤erence between the political stance
of the newspaper and its readers. Talking in the reader’s stead through
these rhetorical questions presupposes absence of disagreement and helps
in creating ‘‘identification’’ (Burke 1969: 19) with the reader.
9. Conclusion
This article has explicated, by drawing particularly on the works of

Bakhtin, complemented by insights from Althusser and Vološinov, the
use of rhetorical questions in the editorial discourse of an Arabic-

language newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, an independent newspaper not

a‰liated with a particular regime or political party. The analysis suggests
that these rhetorical questions are exploited to achieve four interrelated
discursive functions: engaging the reader dialogically; launching a hidden
polemic against the discourse of the United States, the West, and their
Middle Eastern allies; questioning the very foundation upon which US
and Western discourse is built; and, finally, speaking for and creating
‘‘identification’’ with the reader. Collectively, rhetorical questions are ex-
ploited in the newspaper’s editorials to attack and cast doubt on the legit-
imacy and integrity of the American and Western policy in the region.
Through these questions, the newspaper juxtaposes its voice and dis-
course of political ‘‘emancipation’’ and ‘‘independence’’ against the US
and Western discourse of ‘‘hegemony’’ and ‘‘double standards.’’ Rhetori-
cal questions in the editorial discourse of this newspaper are exploited to
double voice US and Western discourse on the Middle East by taking an
opposing stance toward this discourse. Thus, these rhetorical questions
are used by the newspaper to signal to the reader which position they
should take regarding the discourse of the United States, the West, and
their regional allies.
The use of rhetorical questions analyzed in this article indicates that
they should be studied in a dialogic context, taking into account the ideo-
logical assumptions, sociohistorical and political context, and the way the
rhetorical question itself is structured and presented to the reader. In a
persuasively oriented text like a newspaper editorial, such text-internal
and text-external factors become all the more important in the analysis
of rhetorical questions.
As this Arabic-language newspaper is not home-based, and therefore
not subject to the state guidelines of hailing, promoting, and endorsing
o‰cial policies, whether domestic or foreign, it would be interesting to
see if the publishing location of this newspaper influences its argumen-
tative style. In particular, further research is needed to see if the use of
rhetorical questions in home-based newspapers reflects the same aggres-
sive double-voiced discourse adopted by this o¤-shore Arabic-language
newspaper.
Notes
* I am grateful to the Editor and the anonymous reviewers of Text & Talk for their most
useful and insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Any remaining mis-
takes or shortcomings are, of course, my own responsibility.
1. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

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Exploring the use of rhetorical questions in

editorial discourse: a case study of

This paper investigates the use of rhetorical questions in the editorial

Keywords: rhetorical questions; editorials; dialogicality; double voicing;

Rhetorical questions have been traditionally considered an important

1860–7330/09/0029–0639 Text & Talk 29–6 (2009), pp. 639–659

inherently argumentative genre, namely newspaper editorials, through ex-

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Editorials have been approached in terms of their structure (Bolivar

The dynamic role of questions in spoken and written discourse cannot

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3. Language, voicing, and double voicing

It was previously assumed that a speaker’s meaning can be understood

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4. Data and methodology

Table 1. Types of rhetorical questions in the data

Type Number Percentage

Rhetorical wh-questions 97 64.6%

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most-often-quoted Arabic-language newspapers published outside the

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ideological assumptions and meanings invoked by the rhetorical question

5. Rhetorical questions as a dialogic device

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(2) What has stability brought by dictatorial regimes achieved other

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internally persuasive discourse through rhetorical questions, the news-

6. Rhetorical questions as a ‘‘hidden polemic’’

Besides creating dialogical relations, the use of rhetorical questions in the

(3) Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was undoubtedly not democratic, but is

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this very opposition reach power? Did they reach power on an

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to democracy by interrogatively highlighting the duplicity with which the

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divisive nature of these topics is a strong indication of the polemical func-

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7. Rhetorical questions and exploiting ‘‘obviousnesses’’

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It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so,

Althusser asserts that these elements which are presented as self-evidently

Brought to you by | National Dong Hwa University

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8. Rhetorical questions and speaking for the reader

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This article has explicated, by drawing particularly on the works of

Brought to you by | National Dong Hwa University

language newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, an independent newspaper not

Brought to you by | National Dong Hwa University

Brought to you by | National Dong Hwa University

Brought to you by | National Dong Hwa University

Brought to you by | National Dong Hwa University

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