Remember that time?
Remember that time?
In Brief
Figure of speech. As Myles Crawford regales his
audience with a journalistic exploit, he peppers them with
questions: "Remember that time?"; "Look at here. What did
Ignatius Gallaher do?"; "Have you Weekly Freeman of 17
March? Right. Have you got that?"; "Have you got that? Right."
Rhetoricians call directive questions of this kind anacoenosis––asking
listeners for their opinions in a way that suggests their
judgment will cohere with the speaker's.
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Anacoenosis (AN-uh-sih-NO-sis or AN-uh-ko-uh-NO-sis, from the Greek anakoinoun = to communicate) is one type of so-called rhetorical questions: queries whose answers are not in dispute. Like synchoresis, the device engages an audience while maintaining tight control of where the argument is going. Teachers employ it by punctuating their lectures with one-right-answer questions, knowing that anyone who offers a different answer will feel slow, misguided, 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). In his funeral oration in Julius Caesar, Mark Antony 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)."
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 has no wish to entertain 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.
