Quotes & Sayings About Rhetorical

Enough already of Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault poured like ketchup over everything. Lacan: the French fog machine; a grey-flannel worry-bone for toothless academic pups; a twerpy, cape-twirling Dracula dragging his flocking stooges to the crypt. Lacan is a Freud T-shirt shrunk down to the teeny-weeny Saussure torso. The entire school of Saussure, inluding Levi-Strauss, write their muffled prose of people with cotton wool wrapped around their heads; they're like walking Q-tips. Derrida: a Gloomy Gus one-trick pony, stuck on a rhetorical trope already available in the varied armory of New Criticism. Derrida's method: masturbating without pleasure. It's a birdbrain game for birdseed stakes. Neo-Foucaldian New Historicism: a high-wax bowling alley where you score points just by knockng down the pins. — Camille Paglia

And then, having made my rhetorical point, I will put my robot eyes on, because I mean, with robot eyes you can probably see through girls' shirts and stuff. Augustus, my friend, Godspeed. — John Green

What is the role of intellectuals in Europe? There's this debate in which all speakers do not appear to me to even be intellectuals. Why is Martin Sommers an intellectual? It is a political journalist who writes mediocre pieces. If that is sufficient to call yourself a 'European intellectual then the question of the debate has already become rhetorical. — Martijn Benders

when a Greek or Roman individual wanted to communicate a concept, he or she would typically write a theological treatise or lay out a rhetorical argument or speech about the topic. When a Hebrew teacher would seek to communicate something, he would often convey the message through a story. — Robert F. Gallaty

The soldier doesn't usually act on his own initiative, he doesn't harbour feelings of hatred or resentment or jealousy, he isn't motivated by long-held desires or personal ambition; the only motivating force is a vague, rhetorical, empty patriotism, for those soldiers, that is, who are moved by such feelings or allow themselves to be convinced. — Javier Marias

Redd's face contorted with a sudden realization. "How could I have been so stupid?"
The Cat was trying to decide if this was a rhetorical question when she roared, "It's a construct!"
With a dismiissive swing of Redd's arm, Alyss and her army began to shimmer, the billon points of engery that formed them monentarily visible before exploding apart into nothing. Redd scoped the queendom with her imagination's eye. "Where are you, Alyss? Where is my dear little niece? — Frank Beddor

People often ask how I got interested in the brain; my rhetorical answer is: 'How can anyone NOT be interested in it?' Everything you call 'human nature' and consciousness arises from it. — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device. — Stephen Jay Gould

Infinite Jest not only says that being human is hard work; it makes us work hard. It not only suggests we put ourselves in service to something larger than ourselves; it is one of those larger somethings. That's its rhetorical genius, and is how Wallace gets his self-help "to fly at such a high altitude": Like AA, it is theory and praxis in a single stroke. Or: It is what it says, which may be the purest form of art. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Though Argaven might be neither sane nor shrewd, he had had long practice in the evasions and challenges and rhetorical subtleties used in conversation by those whose main aim in life was the achievement and maintenance of the shifgrethor relationship on a high level. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The problems seem so easy out there on the stump. Deficits shrink with a rhetorical flourish. — Hugh Sidey

Well," a female voice said. "What have we here?"
"Here," Bethany said, responding to the woman's rhetorical question, "we have a teenager. And she's pissed. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Good writers are avid readers. They have absorbed a vast inventory of words, idioms, constructions, tropes, and rhetorical tricks, and with them a sensitivity to how they mesh and how they clash. This is the elusive "ear" of a skilled writer-the tacit sense of style which every honest stylebook, echoing Wilde, confesses cannot be explicitly taught. Biographers of great authors always try to track down the books their subjects read when they were young, because they know these sources hold the key to their development as writers. — Steven Pinker

When God asks a question, it is always rhetorical. — Ron Brackin

By way of personal instinct, I have an inherent distaste for grandiose rhetorical statements, which don't have any substantive dimension to them — Kevin Rudd

Godwin's law states that the longer any online debate goes on, the likelier it is that someone will play the Nazi card. It's the rhetorical equivalent of going nuclear and stupid at the same time. — John Avlon

The healing power of art is not a rhetorical fantasy. Fighting to keep language, language became my sanity and my strength. It still is, and I know of no pain that art cannot assuage. For some, music, for some, pictures, for me, primarily, poetry, whether found in poems or in prose, cuts through noise and hurt, opens the wound to clean it, and then gradually teaches it to heal itself. Wounds need to be taught to heal themselves. — Jeanette Winterson

What I admire about the modern atheist is not at all his logic, but rather his gift of imagination. There will always be the cartoon versions of Christianity further perpetuated by the extremist atheists who do not possess the humility to ask real scholars and theologians its difficult questions. There is little doubt that the atheist has the bigger imagination: the first reason is due to his persistent caricatures of what constitutes a Christian; the second because of his belief that most of his questions are actually rhetorical. From this I can infer that, instead of laughing at one another (the Christian at modern atheist immaturity and the modern atheist at Christian stupidity), we would have a better chance at productivity laughing with one another as we all dumb down what we don't understand. — Criss Jami

Unlike criticism, contempt is particularly toxic because it assumes a moral superiority in the speaker. Contempt is often directed at people who have been excluded from a group or declared unworthy of its benefits. Contempt is often used by governments to provide rhetorical cover for torture or abuse. Contempt is one of four behaviors that, statistically, can predict divorce in married couples. People who speak with contempt for one another will probably not remain united for long. The — Sebastian Junger

Women are good at rhetorical questions, aren't they? — Stephen King

To set the stage for this discussion, it is necessary to explain that what is at work is an Orwellian strategy of rhetorical deception to represent finance and other rentier sectors as being part of the economy, not external to it. This is precisely the strategy that parasites in nature use to deceive their hosts that they are not free riders but part of the host's own body, deserving careful protection. — Michael Hudson

I'm not sure if the question's rhetorical or if she thinks I have a clue to her metaphysical mystery. And I'm in no state to answer either way because I'm crying. I don't realize it till I taste the sale against my lips. I can't remember the last time I've cried but, once I accept the mortification of sniveling like a baby, the floodgates open and I'm sobbing now, in front of Mia. In front of the whole damn world. — Gayle Forman

It wasn't so much that my mother always had to have her own way; it was more that if you disagreed with her, the rhetorical power this unleashed would shock you into seeing things from her point of view. The minute she sensed resistance, all of her intellect would be summoned into an irresistible arrowhead of purpose, and the most sensible strategic approach was therefore never to disagree with her too forcefully. — James Scudamore

O love-why can't you leave me alone? Which is a rhetorical question meaning: for heaven's sake, don't. — Thomas Merton

I note that warmists are often banging on about the fact that sceptics like Christopher Booker and myself 'only' have arts degrees. But actually that's our strength, not our weakness. Our intellectual training qualifies us better than any scientist - social or natural sciences - for us to understand that this is, au fond, not a scientific debate but a cultural and rhetorical one. — James Delingpole

It became quite clear to me that the Natural Law mystique, in Catholic, libertarian or neo-pagan forms, remains basically a set of rhetorical strategies to hypnotize others into the state which Bernard Shaw called "barbarism" and defined as 'the belief that the laws of one's own tribe are the laws of the universe'. — Robert Anton Wilson

If practice makes perfect, and no one's perfect, then why practice? — Billy Corgan

This was supposed to be the Presidential Suite," she said, gazing into the room at the holes in the wall.
well, even presidents get shot," I said.
I was just going to say that myself," she said, smiling. "But I didn't want to scare you."
I didn't know whether this was interesting
that we were both thinking the same gruesome thing
or even whether it was actually the case. Perhaps it was just rhetorical ESP: Kreskin's Guide to Etiquette. But even if it was true, that we were about to say the same thing, did this connect us in some deep private way? Or was it just a random obviousness shared between strangers? The deeper life between two people I had yet to read with confidence. It seemed a kind of vaporous text that kept revising its very alphabet. An exfoliating narrative, my professors would probably say. The paratext of the possible. — Lorrie Moore

Obama's rhetorical overtures to democracy, it turned out, were just a decoy to conceal his unwavering determination to govern from the far left. — Sean Hannity

Religious speech is extreme, emotional, and motivational. It is anti-literal, relying on metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices, and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers. — Amy Waldman

What is in the air there in Washington, what is in the water? What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No.1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them? — Peggy Noonan

All the great braggarts, victimizing the world, but the end is waiting for them also. Morality and immorality, love, hate, terror, and all that talk of courage and honor--all rhetorical skirts we hide behind to deny our own mortality . It all ends. The greatest gift of all is that it ends. If you realize and accept that, nothing has power over you, good or evil. — Ian Bar

The only candidate to really escape Trump's wrath has been Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and that's because Cruz has spent the entire political season nuzzling Trump's ankles, praising the Donald like a lovesick cellmate. The Texas senator, whose rhetorical schtick is big doses of Tea Party crazy (his best line was that Obama wanted to bring "expanded Medicaid" to ISIS) — Matt Taibbi

A peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is an improbable world. It is a world in which the idea of human progress, as Bacon expressed it, has been replaced by the idea of technological progress. The aim is not to reduce ignorance, superstition, and suffering but to accommodate ourselves to the requirements of new technologies. We tell ourselves, of course, that such accommodations will lead to a better life, but that is only the rhetorical residue of a vanishing technocracy. We are a culture consuming itself with information, and many of us do not even wonder how to control the process. We proceed under the assumption that information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms. — Neil Postman

Why are you here?" he asked, staring around me at Mr. Kent.
Mr. Kent laughed uncomfortably. "Why does anyone go to a gambling house?"
"To gamble," Sebastian answered.
"To find information for our plan," I muttered, Mr. Kent's power inadvertently affecting me as well.
"What plan?" Sebastian asked.
I glared at Mr. Kent. "Nothing, nothing at all."
"No one seems to understand what a rhetorical question is these days," Mr. Kent said to the skies. — Tarun Shanker

It is best to avoid analogy except for purposes of suggestion, or as a rhetorical device for explaining an idea already arrived at by other means. — Henry Hazlitt

We tend to associate humor with lightheartedness, but really, it's a rhetorical mode than can be applied to any subject. It was through researching Chechnya that I came to understand this. — Anthony Marra

Anglo-Saxon tends not to lend itself to long and elaborate words that have strung together three or four affixes to create a rhetorical term for a very obscure thing. While — Ammon Shea

My speaking style was criticised by no less an authority than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a low moment, my friends, to have my rhetorical skills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg. — Boris Johnson

To claim "humanitarian motives" when the motive is envy and its supposed appeasement, is a favorite rhetorical device of politicians today, and has been for at least a hundred and fifty years. — Helmut Schoeck

This is a word that is not a scientific term. This is a rhetorical tool of psychological manipulation ... Because everyone knows if you dare to say homosexuality is wrong ... you are a homophobe, which means you have a mental illness. That's what's built into this terminology. — Scott Lively

Over the course of the 1970s conservatives made the endangered child into a kind of political and rhetorical abstraction, a way of thinking about the country and its citizens that could help advance a wide range of policy initiatives. They opposed the counterculture on the grounds that rock and roll caused adolescents to lose respect for family life. They promoted the War on Drugs with racially tinged morality tales about addicted inner-city mothers and, crucially, the "superpredator" "crack babies" to whom those mothers supposedly gave birth. (That particular epidemic was later shown to be a myth.)40 And when Anita Bryant led a campaign to allow Dade County to discriminate against homosexuals in hiring teachers for public schools, she named the effort "Save Our Children." The fear that tied all of these campaigns together was of the ease with which children could be victimized or else corrupted and turned against the society that was supposed to nurture them. — Richard Beck

For those under the age of 45 it seemed that world events had finally contrived a meaningful test of their capacity for conscientious political thought. Many of my acquaintances, I realized, had passed the last decade or two in a state of intellectual and psychic yearning for such a moment - or, if they hadn't, were able to quickly assemble an expert arguer's arsenal of thrusts and statistics and ripostes and gambits and examples and salient facts and rhetorical maneuvers. — Joseph O'Neill

Where's Parrish?" asked Engle.
"He's right there," Gansey replied.
"Don't know how I missed the wind off the glacier," Engle said. "What's up, man?"
It was a rhetorical question, answerable by a lightly painted smile. The boys were here for Gansey. Where's Parrish? In a place too far away to hike to in a day. — Maggie Stiefvater

The beauty of merism is that it's absolutely unnecessary. It's words for words' sake: a gushing torrent of invention filled with noun and noun and signifying nothing. Why a rhetorical figure that gabs on and on for no good reason should be central to the rite of marriage is beyond me. — Mark Forsyth

The issue regarding the soul's relation to the state is posed with great force by Plato but also by More, not only in his fictional Utopia but also in later life when the issue would arise in a dramatically personal way because he found that neither laws nor rhetorical speech could save him from execution for a silence that he insisted was required by his soul.6 — Gerard B. Wegemer

Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. — Donna J. Haraway

I don't want to become a rhetorical speaker. My effectiveness is mastering all of the data and being able to respond. — Norman Finkelstein

A rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person who is asking it already knows the answer. — Mark Haddon

The baby, not too young to start knowing the ledge, the cold truth, the life-and-death facts of it all. 'What kind of heaven is that, you can't have your records?' The baby, understanding perhaps it was purely rhetorical, made no attempt to answer this question. — Michael Chabon

Trying to navigate the halls of Hogwarts was like ... probably not quite as bad as wandering around inside an Escher painting, that was the sort of thing you said for rhetorical effect rather than for its being true.
A short time later, Harry was thinking that in fact an Escher painting would have both pluses and minuses compared to Hogwarts. Minuses: No consistent gravitational orientation. Pluses: At least the stairs wouldn't move around WHILE YOU WERE STILL ON THEM. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Hypotyposis is the rhetorical effect by which words succeed in rendering a visual scene. — Umberto Eco

HAVE YOU EVER REALLY EMBARRASSED YOURSELF? Don't answer that, stupid. It's a rhetorical question. Of course you've embarrassed yourself. Everybody has. I bet the pope has. If you were to say to the pope: "Your Holy Worshipfulness, I bet you've pulled some blockheaded boners in your day, huh?" he'd smile that warm, knowing, fatherly smile he has, and then he'd wave. He can't hear a word you're saying, up on that balcony. — Dave Barry

How many roads must a man walk down.. Before you can call him a Man.. — Bob Dylan

Attempts to nail down "who we really are" most often serve as rhetorical pawns in unwinnable arguments fueled by competing agendas — Maggie Nelson

Has the casual use of profanity in English reached a high tide? That's a rhetorical question, but I'm going to answer it anyway: Fuck yeah. — Mary Norris

There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless. — Herbert Spencer

There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification. — George Henry Lewes

Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations. — Alexander Cockburn

In any piece of rhetorical discourse, one rhetorical term overcomes another rhetorical term only by being nearer to the term which stands ultimate. There is some ground for calling a rhetorical education necessarily aristocratic education in that the rhetorician has to deal with an aristocracy of notions. — Richard M. Weaver

As we all know, there is no force stronger in the rhetorical universe than that of liberal race-guilt. — Greg Gutfeld

The open letter has always been an interesting rhetorical strategy - a way of delivering a pointed message to a specific individual or group while also reaching a wide audience. — Roxane Gay

We find rhetorical situations everywhere in life, and only our imaginations can get us out of them. — Northrop Frye

Can I ask you a personal question? Of all the rhetorical questions
in the world, that is the one which irritates me most with its
simultaneous gesture towards and denial of the trespass that is about
to follow. — Kamila Shamsie

He wanted to ask whether she were insane, but he had been married long enough to know the price of injudicious rhetorical questions. — Diana Gabaldon

Using rhetorical questions in speeches is a great way to keep the audience involved. Don't you think those kinds of questions would keep your attention? — Bo Bennett

Natural rights, nonsense; natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, elevated nonsense, nonsense going on stilts. — John Stuart Mill

Take a moment to catch your breath and revel in your rhetorical mastery and achievement. — Christopher Moore

Like 'God's Not Dead,' the fundamentalist Christian movie that has become a popular hit, 'Transcendence' is essentially a dramatized debate. And as 'God's Not Dead' stacks the rhetorical cards for the Deity's existence, the Pfister film eventually hangs back with the Luddites. — Richard Corliss

President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience. — William Safire

The peculiar circumstances arising out of the fall of the Syracusan tyranny seem to have produced the first practitioners of the art of rhetorical — Aristotle.

Genuine dialogue, not rhetorical bomb-throwing, leads to progress. — Mark Udall

The only tactic liberals have is to try to intimidate people into thinking the Tea Party is racist. The Tea Party is not a racist movement, period! If they were, why would the straw polls keep showing that the black guy is winning? That's a rhetorical question. Let me state it: The black guy keeps winning. — Herman Cain

The dangerous pileup of modifiers is a hallmark of Joel's rhetorical style. — Michael Pollan

Archaism, in the linguistic order, is not, in any event, synonymous with simplicity of structure, very much to the contrary. Languages generally grow poorer with the passing oftime by gradually losing the richness of their vocabulary, the ease with which they can diversify various aspects of one and the same idea, and their power of synthesis, which is the ability to express many things with few words. In order to make up for this impoverishment, modern languages have become more complicated on the rhetorical level; while perhaps gaining in surface precision, they have not done as as regards content. Language historians are astonished by the fact that Arabic was able to retain a morphology attested to as early as the Code of Hammurabi, for the nineteenth to the eighteenth century before the Christian era, and to retain a phonetic system which preserves, with the exception of a single sound, the extremly rich sound-range disclosed by the most ancient Semitic alphabets discovered, [...] — Titus Burckhardt

The explanation of this perennial quality of Arabic is to be found simply in the conserving role of nomadism. It is in towns that languages decay, by becoming worn out, the things and institutions they designate. Nomads, who live to some extent outside time, conserve their language better; it is, moreover, the only treasure they can carry around with them in their pastoral existence; the nomad is a jealous guardian of his linguistic heritage, his poetry and his rhetorical art. On the other hand, his inheritance in the way of visual art cannot be rich; architecture presupposes stability, and the same is broadly true of sculpture and painting. — Titus Burckhardt

You can be yourself without pursuing yourself. Have you ever seen a dog chase his own tail? He just runs in circles. — Criss Jami

Within the Nation, he [Malcolm] explained that his purpose was to present the views of Elijah Muhammad and to challenge distortions about their religion. In fact, his objectives were to turn upside down the standard racial dialectic of black subordination and white supremacy, and to show off his rhetorical skill at the expense of white authorities and Negro integrationists (185). — Manning Marable

One foreign correspondent came up to be friendly. He asked this man what he should think about what Khomeini had said. How seriously should he take it? Was it just a rhetorical flourish or something genuinely dangerous? "Oh, don't worry too much," the journalist said. "Khomeini sentences the president of the United States to death every Friday afternoon. — Salman Rushdie

Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he's also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes. — Michael Eric Dyson

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense - nonsense upon stilts. — Jeremy Bentham

We might think then of rhetorical production as an extended intentional state in which rhetoric emerges from the dynamic, ongoing intra-actions of human and nonhuman entities all projecting toward each other. — Anonymous

Half the time I have no idea what I'm doing. The other half, I'm trying to undo what I did when I didn't know what I was doing. That leaves, let's see now ... one more half. That last half is divided into three halves, one for working, one for writing, and one for asking the mother of all rhetorical questions ... WTF? — Suki Michelle

Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense. — Stephen Jay Gould

Some of the worst writing around suffers from inert verbs and the unintended use of the passive voice. Yet the passive voice remains an important arrow in the rhetorical quiver. After all, it exists for a reason. — Constance Hale

There's something about rhetorical violence that is ugly and worrying. — Mario Cuomo

Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion. — Virginia Postrel

There is a very real danger present when we suppress our feelings to act on inspiration in exchange for the "safety" of the status quo. We risk sacrificing the opportunity to live a more fulfilling and purpose driven life. We risk sacrificing the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. We risk sacrificing the beautiful blessing of finding a greater sense of meaning in our own lives.
In short, we run the very real risk living a life of regret. — Richie Norton

Mornings are cool like a spy,
cool like a rebel,
cool like a rhetorical street fighter,
cool like an unfilled spot where wit and joy once stood,
cool like the man who can make productive use of his demons,
cool like the deciphered eccentricities of good friends,
cool like the later protest-and-psychedelic era. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Well, yes," she said, looking equal parts amused and bewildered. "But it's the truth! I love my work, and that counts for something, doesn't it?" Those government bureaucrats would trample Sophie to pieces if she couldn't stand up for herself. He walked around the counter until he was standing directly opposite her. "Come on, Sophie! Stand up straight and look me in the eye. Tell me that you are the master and commander of that climate observatory. That there is no one in the state of New York who can operate that office with more efficiency than you. Make me believe it!" "Shhh . . . your grandfather is taking a nap," she said, but she was giggling and at least seemed to be considering his point. It was going to be a challenge to prop her up enough so she could land a position at one of these newfangled observatories, but a fun one. "Let's hear it. Dazzle me with your rhetorical brilliance. — Elizabeth Camden

Here is a fundamental conflict in educated society: We are not supposed to value beauty so highly, and yet who can defend against its sheer power to move, its rhetorical force? — Russell Smith

Chomsky proceeds on the almost unthinkably subversive assumption that the United States should be judged by the same standards that it preaches (often at gunpoint) to other nations he is nearly the only person now writing who assumes a single standard of international morality not for rhetorical effect, but as a matter of habitual, practically instinctual conviction. — Christopher Hitchens

How can I wear a leather suit that does not carry the stains of wine and blood?" asks CT, and Gustav does not answer; of course it was rhetorical — Alissa Nutting

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the rhetorical question — Josh Stern

I am, as it were, the created creating - a paradox, for all its rhetorical trappings, at the beating heart of our shared human journey, and one I invite you to struggle with just as I have while, day in and day out, word by word and line by line, constructing a fictitious autobiography for myself in these pages. — Sol Luckman

I think that when you reveal things that are going to cause pain, you have rhetorical resources in poetry. — Vijay Seshadri

Everything is technocratic - the development of expertise - and everything is ultimately justified in technocratic terms. Elite schools like to boast that they teach their students how to think, but all they mean at this point is that they train them in the analytic and rhetorical skills that are necessary for success in business and the professions. — William Deresiewicz

Whoop-de-do," said Ram.
"What?"
"I'm celebrating."
"Was that irony or loss of mental function?" asked the expendable.
"Was that a rhetorical questions, a bit of humor, or a sign that you are losing confidence in me?"
"I have no confidence in you, Ram," said the expendable.
"Well, thanks."
"You're welcome. — Orson Scott Card

The documentary style is an incredibly flexible and useful one. It's a wonderful tool for establishing the credibility of the version of things that's in the photograph - a kind of rhetorical device or rhetorical strategy. It's always felt very natural to me, because I want a person to end up thinking about the world, and to think about it in a way that is transformed by the experience of art. — Frank Gohlke

Yes," Lisa said with the usual blank honestly. She frowned. "Was that a sincere question? Or a scolding rhetorical question akin to Harilotecca's speech patterns? — Ash Gray