You know how?
You
know how?
In Brief
Figure of speech. As Myles Crawford regales his
audience with Ignatius Gallaher's journalistic exploit, he
peppers them with directive questions: "You know how he made
his mark? I'll tell you"; "Remember that time?"; "Whole route,
see?" "Look at here. What did Ignatius Gallaher do? I'll tell
you"; "Have you Weekly Freeman of 17 March? Right.
Have you got that?"; "Have you got that? Right"; "Where do you
find a pressman like that now, eh?" Rhetoricians call this anacoenosis:
enlisting your listeners in your cause by asking for their
opinions, judgments, or knowledge.
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Anacoenosis (AN-uh-sih-NO-sis or AN-uh-ko-uh-NO-sis) comes
from the Greek word anakoinoun = to communicate. It
involves so-called "rhetorical questions": queries that
require a single correct answer or no answer at all. The
tactic is employed regularly by teachers who punctuate 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. Like synchoresis,
this device engages an audience while maintaining tight
control of where the argument is going.
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 implies
a similar negative answer to a repeated question: "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).
This style of instruction suits the newspaper editor in
Joyce's chapter. Crawford is opinionated, short-tempered, and
drunk––not one to waste time on contrary views.
