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Anacoenosis (AN-uh-sih-NO-sis or AN-uh-ko-uh-NO-sis, from the Greek anakoinoun = to communicate) involves so-called rhetorical questions: queries that require a single correct answer or no answer at all. Like synchoresis, this device engages an audience while maintaining tight control of where the argument is going. Many teachers employ the tactic, punctuating their lectures with one-right-answer questions. Anyone who offers an answer other than the desired one can be made to feel slow, misguided, unusual, or disruptive.

Gideon Burton (rhetoric.byu.edu) cites an example from Isaiah: "And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could I have done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?" (5:3-4). The only correct answer is "Nothing." In his funeral oration in Julius Caesar, Mark Antony repeatedly asks, "Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?.... You all did see that on the Lupercal / I thrice presented him a kingly crown, / Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?" (3.2.90, 95-97). Again, the only possible answer is No.

Stuart Gilbert, who calls this "the put-yourself-in-his-place method," sees it operating in Crawford's questions. Crawford wants buy-in, but he is opinionated, impatient, and drunk, so he brooks no contrary opinions. Robert Seidman agrees with Gilbert. So do I, up to a point, but some of the editor's questions are perhaps better described by the terms hypophora and erotesis.