Sarcastic Interrogatives

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant.

My name is Chris Fezenmeyer. I’m calling from Reno, Nevada.

Welcome to the show, Chris.

So my late father used to do this thing where if you asked him a question when the answer was just obviously yes, he had three things. Is it pig pork? Or is the Pope Catholic? Or does a bear poop in the woods? And he didn’t use the word poop either.

Right.

And later, like as we all got older, I’m the youngest of five kids, and I think by the time we all were old enough to understand the joke, he would just clip it. Pig pork or pope Catholic? Those are the only three that I have in my arsenal, and I was hoping to add a lot more. A lot more.

Oh, boy.

And also, I was wondering, does this kind of thing span different languages? Is there a thing for this in other languages?

It’s a really good question. And there’s a lot to say about what we call these sarcastic interrogatives. There have been a lot of different terms suggested for it, but the one that seems to have settled in, among folklorists at least, is sarcastic interrogative. And that’s, as you described, it’s when somebody asks a question that’s really, really stupid. And the answer should be obvious, right? And so the response is a question that also has a really obvious answer. And the answer is yes. That’s the formula for it. And that’s called a sarcastic interrogative.

I love that term. I never heard that. I’m going to keep that in the back of my mind.

Well, there’s lots of information about that in an article by Charles Clay Doyle that you can find online. And it’s called Is the Pope Still Catholic? And it’s about, I don’t know, it’s about 30 pages or so. The one about the Pope being Catholic only goes back, as far as I can tell, to the early 1960s. There are earlier versions of this type of question, like, does a duck swim? There are a whole lot of duck swimming ones that go back at least 150 years.

I know, but that sounds funny.

Yeah, right. Or does a one-legged duck swim in circles is another version.

Oh, that one’s funny. The one that I really like is, is the hole close to a donut? That’s something to think about.

But anyway, Charles Clay Doyle goes through all these different languages and historical periods. He even goes back to a saying that he found in ancient Sumeria that is, can one get fat without eating?

So what year are we talking about here then for this kind of sarcastic interrogative?

Well, the thing is, he says that’s not really one of those. I mean, if you think about it, there are passages in classical literature or…

So thousands of years.

Well, but no. No, what I’m saying is that there are somewhat similar versions, but they’re not really sarcastic interrogatives. Like, for example, in the Bible, in the book of John, Jesus says something like, are there 12 hours of daylight? And the answer is yes, but it’s not like he’s doing a sarcastic interrogative where somebody had just asked him a stupid question.

So what I’m saying is that this guy did exhaustive research, and what he found was pretty much the duck one going back about 150 years. So I don’t know that other languages really do this the way that we do. I have seen them in Spanish and French, but only by people that I know to be bilingual. So I’m not quite sure if they were borrowing it from their English or if it exists alone in Spanish and French.

Okay.

But if you want lots more of these, you can find them in this article called Is the Pope Still Catholic?

I’m going to look that up because I did do some, you know, Googling before I called you, and I couldn’t find anything. But sarcastic interrogative, I’m going to look up that, and I’m going to look up that article, Martha.

Okay, great.

Another thing you might look up is echo questions. In general, when you answer a question with a question, linguists call that an echo question. And a lot of times they do play a sarcastic role, or in the Bible bit that Martha quoted, they’re just really about bringing you to an answer without giving you an answer. And they’re an important part of the discourse, how we talk to each other and how we communicate at the secondary level, not on the surface with the words we use.

So echo questions.

Well, that is really helpful. And I’m just so thankful to talk to you both.

Yeah, sure.

Our pleasure.

Sounds great. Take care now.

Thanks a lot for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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