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Miscellaneous: Interrogative Intonation

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That hint of a slightly canceled question mark at the end of sentences? You know what I mean? Seems pretty innocuous? Milbank doesn’t think so (The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology):

“People who fondly imagine themselves the subjects of their ‘own’ choices entirely will, in reality, be the most manipulated subjects, and the most incapable of being influenced by goodness and beauty. This is why, in the affluent Anglo-Saxon West today, there is so much pervasively monotonous ugliness and tawdriness that belies its wealth, as well as why there are so many people adopting (literally) the sing-song accent of self-righteous complacency and vacuous uniformity, with its rising lilt of a feigned questioning at the end of every phrase. This intonation implies that any overassertion is a polite infringement of the freedom of the other, and yet at the same time its merely rhetorical interrogation suggests that the personal preference it conveys is unchallengeable, since it belongs within the total set of formally correct exchange transactions. Pure liberty is pure power – whose other name is evil.”

You’ll think twice before you talk that way again?

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 4:41 pm

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Miscellaneous: Interrogative Intonation

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