The Pragmatic Functions of Rhetorical Questions in English Linguistics Textbooks

Abstract

Questions in English linguistics textbooks may introduce explanations, request student responses, or invite acceptance of conclusions presented as recoverable from context. These functions cannot be identified reliably from interrogative form or the presence of an immediate authorial answer alone. This conceptual article develops a contextual framework for distinguishing rhetorical questions from expository questions and instructional prompts in academic pedagogical discourse. It brings research on rhetorical questioning into dialogue with studies of metadiscourse, reader engagement, and discourse commitments. The analysis uses explicitly constructed textbook passages to examine answer availability, expected reader response, explanatory sequence, and the scope of the conclusion invited by a question. It produces a functional distinction between recognition of a textually supported answer, receipt of new explanatory information, and performance of an assigned analytical task. The examples also demonstrate why identical wording can receive different classifications when its discourse setting changes. Rhetorical questions are interpreted as resources for challenging overgeneralizations, consolidating inferences, and anticipating objections, while their possible effects on learner agency remain conditional. The article proposes an annotation procedure that preserves uncertain and mixed cases and outlines applications to English linguistics teaching in Azerbaijani higher education. Its contribution is an operational analytical framework rather than empirical evidence about textbook frequencies or learning outcomes.