Comparative note

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This is not what I was setting out to say, but it is top of the mind.

As I write, Herself is listening to a recording of some preacher - recording source our same house guest. The preacher is one of these guys - house guest pretty centered Evangelical - who throws out questions every few sentences: Like: "Jesus told Satan, 'Man shall not live by' WHAT?" PAUSE "By bread alone."

It is a technique you hear a lot from preachers of a certain background. I tend to find it annoying, our guest rather likes it, - no accounting for tastes.

Now I happen to know that in certain African cultures people telling folktales will toss in the same kind of pseudoquestion - "Then the rabbit said to WHOM?" PAUSE "to the hyena."

Question, then? Do we know of this type of rhetorical trick outside of Africa and Southern US-based preaching traditions? I havde not heard it anywhere else.

Is it possible that the trick comes in - African story teller > African American story-teller > African-American preacher > Evangelical Caucasian preacher?

Rhetorical questions have been used in many languages for as long as there has been an oral tradition.

The strength of this rhetorical device is that it allows orators to reinforce the emphasis that they are trying to establish by having the audience contemplate the obvious answer to the question before echoing the answer (or contradicting it) in the next statement.

The device appears in all manner of forms, and in languages dating back to antiquity.

the rhetorical question, of course. But this is a somewhat specialized version. Instead of a normal interrogative pattern, one replaces a phrase, a word, or in some cases part of a word with an interrogative or a blank.

I took the opportunity to ask R and B, since they were here together tonight, and since both of them have heard a wide variety of preachers and non-church motivational speakers. They know the technique, but could not say they had heard it outside the Pentecostal / Evangelical preaching tradition - and then mainly from Sothern or near Southern [Pennsylvania] preachers.

Of course it does not have to be an African survival - thde odds might be against it. But I understand a lot of Caucasian evangelists out of the south did pick up Black preacher techniques.

You have answered the question within the OP and Visigrunt is right the use of rhetorical questions is widespread and has many variations of use - apparently I do it a lot.

peace j

But ARE you in fact familiar with the truncated sentence as question? That IS the question here.

Bueler? Bueler? Anyone?

Ah I see, yes, we have some american TV preachers here on TV and I have seen them [terrible bombastic propagandists and reptilian snake oil salesmen to a man - crowd responses in one huge temple to Mammon resembled a Nuremberg rally - quite scarry! Also in second form Mr Hemana was overly use of them along with the word 'hence'. And in fifth form 'Yoda' liked to let us do his work for him in this manner [possibly he was checking how well we were listening ]

peace j

Well, I found this - but it does not really clarify fore me:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 152AAqeBTU

Oh, yes, it could get scary if you got the mass response.

Your teacher would take trhe edge off the African hypothesis, then, I have not heard it from teachers in my experience. But a major function IS checking audience alertness. For both the story teller and the teacher - I can see it could be a teaching technique - it is very important to know if your audience is tuned in and following the thread. If I were a student I would hate it - I despise audience participation - but it could be an instant miniquiz.