Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 11:2 (2023) ► pp.176–199

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Rhetorical questions as reproaching devices

ORCiD logo with link | University of Valencia, Spain
Published online: 17 May 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00077.alb
Abstract
This paper studies rhetorical questions containing cognitive verbs that function as reproaches in Spanish. Its two main goals are to determine the degree of specialization of rhetorical questions as reproaches and to examine the characterization of reproaching as a speech act, indicating the distinctive features that distinguish it from other similar speech acts.
Based on a contextual analysis of approximately 500 instances of reproaches in conflict talk drawn from the Spanish Royal Academy’s Corpes XXI corpus, I identify and describe the most commonly used cognitive verbs and syntactic structures used in rhetorical questions. The results show that reproach is a reactive-provocative speech act in which the speaker reacts to a contradiction perceived in their interlocutor’s words, actions or thoughts. The speaker appeals to their interlocutor’s moral conscience, making them think about this inconsistency; finally, the speaker creates the expectation of a duty that should have been carried out by the interlocutor.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1The reproach as a hostile act
    • 2.2The illocutionary force of the reproach
    • 2.3Features that characterize rhetorical questions in relation to reproaching
  • 3.Data and method
    • 3.1Preliminary data: Cognitive perception verbs in RQ reproaches
    • 3.2Final corpus and data retrieval
  • 4.Analysis and results
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1RQs with cognitive verbs as reproaches
    • 5.2Reproaching as a speech act
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (55)
References
Albelda Marco, Marta. forth. 2022. “¿No te das cuenta de que me estás molestando? Las recriminaciones intensificadas mediante preguntas retóricas” (‘Can’t you see you’re hassling me? Intensified reproaches expressed by rhetorical questions’). Lingüística Española Actual. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Albelda Marco, Marta, and Maria Estellés. 2021. “De nuevo sobre la intensificación pragmática: revisión y propuesta” (‘Revisiting pragmatic intensification: revision and definition proposal’). Estudios Románicos 301: 15–37. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Alcaide Lara, Esperanza. R. 2019. “Imagen social y contextos socioculturales en el discurso publicitario institucional español con fines sociales (‘Social face and sociocultural contexts in the discourse of official advertising for social purposes’)”. Sociocultural Pragmatics 7(3): 297–334.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anzilotti, Gloria. 1982. “The Rhetorical Question as an Indirect Speech Device in English and Italian.” Canadian Modern Language Review 381: 290–302. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bach, Kent, and Robert Harnish. 1979. Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Massachusetts: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ballmer, Thomas T., and Waltrau Brennenstuhl. 1981. Speech Act Classification: A Study in the Lexical Analysis of English Speech Activity Verbs. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bertomeu, Pau. 2022. Peticiones en alemán y español: un estudio contrastivo a partir de Gran Hermano (‘Requests in German and Spanish: a contrastive study based on Big Brother’). Bern: Peter Lang. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blanco, Antonio. 2008. “Cómo hacer cosas malas con las palabras: actos ilocucionarios hostiles y los fundamentos de la teoría actos de habla (‘How to do bad things with words: hostile illocutionary acts and the basics of speech act theory’).” CRÍTICA, Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía 40(118): 3–27.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bosque Muñoz, Ignacio. 1980. Sobre la negación (‘On negation’). Madrid: Cátedra.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bousfield, Derek. 2008. Impoliteness in Interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “Face in Conflict.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 1(1): 37–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boxer, Diana. 1993. “Social Distance and Speech Behavior: The Case of Indirect Complaints.” Journal of Pragmatics 191: 103–125. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. “Nagging: The Familial Conflict Arena.” Journal of Pragmatics 341: 49–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boxer, Diana, and Joseph Radice. 2018. “Bickering. A Conflict Speech Behavior of Close Social Distance.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 6(2): 177–202. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Briz Gómez, Antonio. 2017. “Una propuesta funcional para el análisis de la estrategia pragmática intensificadora en la conversación coloquial (‘A functional proposal for analysing intensifying pragmatic strategies in colloquial conversation’).” In Atenuación e intensificación en géneros discursivos (‘Mitigation and intensification in discourse genres’)”, ed. by Marta Albelda, and Wiltrud Mihatsch, 43–67. Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burguera Serra, Joan. 2009. Gramática y pragmática de la interrogación retórica en español. Una aplicación al debate parlamentario (‘Grammar and pragmatics of rhetorical questions in Spanish. An application to parliamentary debate’). Barcelona: University of Barcelona.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clayman, Steven, and John Heritage. 2002. “Questioning Presidents: Journalistic Deference and Adversarialness in the Press Conferences of U.S. Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan.” Journal of Communication 52(4): 749–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cresti, Emanuela. 2005. “Per una nuova classificazione dell’illocuzione a partire da un corpus di parlato (LABLITA) (‘Towards a new classification of illocution based on a spoken corpus’)”. In Tradizione e innovazione: il parlato (‘Tradition and innovation: speech’), ed. by Elisabeth Burr, 233–246. Pisa: Cesati.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
D’Amico-Reissner, Lynne. 1985. “An Ethnolinguistic Study of Disapproval Exchanges.” Ph.D. dissertation. University of Pennsylvania.
Escandell, María Victoria. 1987. La interrogación en español: semántica y pragmática (‘Questions in Spanish: semantics and pragmatics’) Madrid: Universidad Complutense.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles, Paul Kay, and Mary Catherine O’Connor. 1998. “Regularity and Idiomacity in Grammatical Constructions: The Case of Let Alone”. Language 84/31: 501–538.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Furuta, Yumie. 2017. Clasificación de los verbos del español atendiendo a la configuración de sus argumentos oracionales (‘Classification of Spanish verbs according to the configuration of their sentence-level arguments’). Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gancedo, Marta. 2019. Evolución de la imagen de rol familiar en el teatro de finales del siglo XIX a mitad del XX. Su manifestación en la atenuación e intensificación de los actos directivos (‘Evolution of the image of the role of the family in the theatre from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. As shown in mitigation and intensification of directive acts’). Valencia: University of Valencia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar. 2013. “Introduction: Face, Identity and Im/politeness. Looking Backward, Moving Forward: From Goffman to Practice Theory.” Journal of Politeness Research 9(1): 1–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. “Impoliteness and Conflict in Spanish”. In The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Pragmatics, ed. by Dale Koike, and César Félix-Brasdefer, 371–386. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García-Miguel, José María, and Susana Comesaña. 2004. “Verbs of Cognition in Spanish: Constructional Schemas and Reference Points.” In Linguagem, Cultura e Cognição. Estudios de Lingüistica Cognitiva (‘Language, Culture and Cognition. Cognitive Linguistics Studies’), ed. by Augusto Soares, Amadeu Torres, and Miguel Gonçalves, 399–419. Coimbra: Almedina.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García-Ramón, Amparo. 2018. Epistemicidad en interacción: (a)simetrías epistémicas en secuencias de acuerdo y su relación con la construcción de roles funcionales en conversaciones y entrevistas (‘Epistemicity in interaction: epistemic (a)symmetries in agreement sequences and their relation to the construction of functional roles in conversations and interviews’). Valencia: University of ValenciaGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grimshaw, Allen D. (ed.) 1990. Conflict Talk: Sociolinguistic Investigations of Arguments in Conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hancher, Michael. 1979. “The Classification of Cooperative Illocutionary Acts”. Language in Society 8(1): 1–14. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haverkate, Henk. 2006. “Aspectos pragmalingüísticos de la interrogación en español con atención especial a las secuencias de preguntas (‘Pragmalinguistic aspects of questions in Spanish with particular attention to question sequences’).” Cultura, lenguaje y representación 31: 27–40.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 2011. “Territories of Knowledge, Territories of Experience: Empathic Moments in Interaction.” In The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation, ed. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 159–183. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ilgizovna, Ikhsanova. 2018. “The Pragmatic Potential of Rhetorical Questions in English Informal Speech.” Paper presented at 78º Eurasian Scientific Association, Moscow.
Ilie, Cornelia. 1994. What else can I tell you? A Pragmatic Study of English Rhetorical Questions as Discursive and Argumentative Acts. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiskell International.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kasper, Gabriele. 1988. “Variation in Interlanguage Speech Act Realization.” University of Hawai’i Working Papers in ESL 7(2): 117–142.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oh, Choon-Kyu, and David A. Dinneen (eds.). 1979. Syntax & Semantics. Vol. 111: Presupposition. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olshtain, Elite, and Liora Weinbach. 1987. “Complaints: A Study of Speech Act Behavior among Native and Nonnative Speakers of Hebrew. In The Pragmatic Perspective, ed. by Jef Verschueren, and Marcella Bertuccelli-Papi), 195–208. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pérez Hernández, Lorena. 2001. Illocution and Cognition: A Constructional Approach. Logroño: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de La Rioja.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plantin, Christian. 2005. L’argumentation: histoire, théories et perspectives. París: Presses universitaires. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schmidt-Radefeldt, Jürgen. 1977. “On So-called Rhetorical Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 11: 375–392. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Searle, John. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Neilson (ed.) 1982. Mutual Knowledge. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Soler, Amparo. 2021. Semántica de creo. Análisis cognitivo de la polisemia de una forma verbal doxástica en la interacción oral en español. (‘Semantics of creo: Cognitive analysis of the polysemy of a doxastic verb form in oral interaction in Spanish’). Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spanish Royal Academy: Databank (CORPES) [online database]. Corpus del español del siglo XXI [URL]> Last accessed: August 2021.
Steensig, Jakob, and Paul Drew. 2008. “Introduction: Questioning and Affiliation/ Disaffiliation in Interaction.” Discourse Studies 10(1): 5–15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya. 2008. “Stance, Alignment, and Affiliation during Storytelling: When Nodding is a Token of Affiliation.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 41(1): 31–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thomas, Jenny. 1986. “The Dynamics of Discourse: A Pragmatic Analysis of Confrontational Interaction.” Doctoral Dissertation. University of Lancaster.
Traugott, Elizabeth, and Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Uclés, Gloria. 2021. Atenuación y actividades de imagen en México y España a través de marcadores de control del contacto (‘Mitigation and face activities in Mexico and Spain through phatic markers’). Valencia: University of Valencia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Rooy, Robert. 2003. “Negative Polarity Items in Questions: Strength as Relevance.” Journal of Semantics 201: 239–273. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Viberg, Ake. 1983. “The Verbs of Perception: A Typological Study.” Linguistics 211: 123–162. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1987. English Speech Act Verbs. A Semantic Dictionary. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Guerra, Rita, Paula Carvalho, Catarina Marques, Margarida Carmona, Rodrigo Sarroeira, Fernando Batista, Ricardo Ribeiro, António Fonseca, Sérgio Moro & Cláudia Silva
2025. Unpacking online hate speech in Portuguese social media: a social-psychological and linguistic-discursive approach. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12:1 DOI logo
Inbar, Anna & Yael Maschler
2025.  Teasing via the [ lo, ki ‘no, because’ + ironic utterance] structure in Hebrew talk-in-interaction . Discourse Studies 27:5 ► pp. 759 ff. DOI logo
Myrendal, Jenny & Staffan Larsson
2025. Semantic conflict in online discussions. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict DOI logo
Ramos, Gil, Fernando Batista, Ricardo Ribeiro, Pedro Fialho, Sérgio Moro, António Fonseca, Rita Guerra, Paula Carvalho, Catarina Marques & Cláudia Silva
2025. Bypassing the Nuances of Portuguese Covert Hate Speech Through Contextual Analysis. In Progress in Artificial Intelligence [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 14969], ► pp. 241 ff. DOI logo
Sotoca Fernández, David
2025. “If this be Irish gratitude, I could wish myself a Frenchman”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics DOI logo
Carvalho, Paula, Danielle Caled, Cláudia Silva, Fernando Batista & Ricardo Ribeiro
2024. The expression of hate speech against Afro-descendant, Roma, and LGBTQ+ communities in YouTube comments. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 12:2 ► pp. 171 ff. DOI logo
Ordines, Pedro Ivorra
2023.  Por mí como si te operas. Constructional idioms of rejection from a constructionist approach. Yearbook of Phraseology 14:1 ► pp. 89 ff. DOI logo
Silva, Cláudia & Paula Carvalho
2023. When Can Compliments and Humour Be Considered Hate Speech? A Perspective From Target Groups in Portugal. Comunicação e Sociedade 43 ► pp. e023006 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue