What is 'making a point'?

Making a point is when you make a person understand an idea or fact. Sometimes this is not easy. One way to make a person understand something is to help them to work it out for themselves. The English use this idea with several language functions; including rhetorical questions, irony and understatement. These three things are alike in one way – they make the people think about what they have heard and understand for themselves what it really means.

Rhetorical questions

A rhetorical question is a question which is asked even if the person doing the asking knows what the answer is. For example, if a mother catches her child playing when he should be doing his homework, she might ask 'What are you doing?' She knows exactly what the child is doing – he is playing with a ball. However, the mother asks the question because the child now has to either tell an obvious lie or admit to doing something wrong. In other words the question is asked, not because the mother does not know the answer, but to make the child think about what is happening. That is, he is doing something he knows he should not.

Another use of a rhetorical question is to begin a conversation. 'How do you do?' is not a question that needs and answer. Sometimes this kind of question is asked because even though the speaker knows the answer already, he wants to say 'Do you want to talk and give me more details?' For example when Bill has fallen all the way down the stairs and his wife asks him 'Are you okay?' this is not because she thinks that Bill is fine after the accident, but because she wants Bill to explain exactly how badly he has hurt himself. Sales people often start by asking customers 'How are you?', not because they want to know how you are but because it starts a conversation and then they might be able to sell something.

Rhetorical questions are also used in explanations. Here, the speaker starts by asking a question and then goes on to answer it himself. Here the purpose of the rhetorical question is to get the audience thinking about the subject before the explanation. This section of the text might have started with the heading 'Why do we use rhetorical questions?' This question is not asked because the writers of this text do not know how to use rhetorical questions, because someone who needs to ask the readers how to use rhetorical questions should not be writing this section at all. Instead the question is asked because it's a good idea for people reading the text to have remind themselves about what they know already, as this makes the rest of the explanation easier to understand.

A final use of a rhetorical question is as an indirect insult. When the referee does not see a foul play, one of the players might ask him 'Are you blind?'. Obviously the referee is not blind, or he would not be refereeing the game, and the player knows this. However, the player wants the referee to ask himself how it was that he did not see the foul. He does this by asking a question that suggests that the referee is not competent to do his job because his eyesight is too poor. Other rhetorical questions as indirect insults are questions such as 'Which part of 'no' did you not understand?' or 'What kind of idiot are you?'

Irony

It is often said that one of the most annoying things about the English is their use of irony in conversations. For example if two English speakers meet at a holiday resort where it has been raining for the past two weeks, one might ask 'Did you bring your tanning lotion?' The point of the question is that tanning lotion is useless because there has been no sun to tan under because it has been raining all the time. So even before he has answered the question the other person understands the real reason why it was asked – it is an ironical comment about how bad the weather has been.

Irony is sometimes used as a gentle way to point out when someone is behaving badly. For example if a friend is complaining about how someone always finds something wrong with everything, an English person might remark 'Yes, people who criticise other people can be a bit annoying, can't they?' The use of irony here is to show that the person complaining is acting in the same way as the person he is criticizing, but irony is used to make that person realize it for himself. Or if someone mentions that a person never gives money to charity he might be told 'Because you do that so often.' as a reminder that he himself does not give much money.

Another use if irony is to tell someone to do something he is doing already. So if a shop assistant is being particularly slow about helping a customer, the customer might say encouragingly 'Take your time. There's really no reason to hurry.' The point here is to make the assistant realize that he is already taking his time, and perhaps there is a reason to go faster. Again, a wife doing some housework might tell her husband to 'Get comfortable on that sofa while I'm working' as a way of suggesting that maybe the husband should get off the sofa and help her.

One of the problems with irony is that people from cultures where irony is not used have trouble in recognizing it. As a result it is only later that they realize that statements like 'Well, that was clever of you' might actually be intended to mean the opposite. Or when an English person says 'Not everyone dresses as well as Louisa', he seems to be perfectly serious even though he actually means that Louisa is a fashion disaster. That same person will step out on to the beach on the first day of his holiday and say 'Oh good! It's raining.' as if he thinks that rain is really wonderful. Of course he doesn't actually think that. He's being ironic.

Understatement

Understatement is sometimes confused with irony. However irony makes a point by stressing something so that the listener realizes the opposite is true. Understatement makes the point by making the listener realize that things are more important than the statement suggests.

For example, a few years ago a woman on a country walk fell in the snow and broke her leg. She lay there for over a day before she was rescued. When a newspaper reporter asked her what the experience had been like she replied 'Well, it got a bit cold'. This is a polite English way of saying 'That is a stupid question. Of course it was freezing, painful and terrifying – how could it possibly have been anything else?'

Understatement is often a way of being critical. So if a husband has crashed the car, his wife may remark from the passenger seat 'You might not have wanted to do that.' When someone has done something very stupid, an English speaker might say 'That was not a very good idea'. Here the listener is supposed to think about this and realize that 'not a good idea' was a very bad idea.

Another cause of confusion is that when an Englishman says something is 'rather urgent', or 'quite important' this does not mean that it is not very urgent, or only a little bit important. It means that this is something that needs your immediate attention. To an Englishman it is 'quite important' to remember to wear a parachute before you jump out of an aeroplane, and 'a bit serious' if you do forget.

Sometimes understatements are used to break bad news gently. If an English person tells you that something is is 'not good' be prepared for it to be very bad. On the other hand something that is 'not too bad' might in fact be good or pleasant. But 'a problem', or even a 'small problem' can be very serious indeed.

Here are some famous examples of using understatement to say that something bad has happened.

'Honey, I forgot to duck'
President Ronald Reagan informing his wife that he'd been shot

'The war has not necessarily developed in Japan's favour'
Emperor Hirohito announcing Japan's surrender in 1945

'Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a small problem. All four engines have stopped.'
Captain James Moody as his British Airways 747 fell towards the Pacific Ocean

The English often say things by using a negative. As a result, 'Not bad at all' should be understood as meaning that something is extremely good. Someone who is 'not that young any more' may well be very old, and if he is 'no spring chicken' he is certainly old. A person who is 'not bad-looking' is handsome or beautiful, but if that person is 'no oil painting' he or she is very unattractive. Because English people are not happy discussing money, someone who is 'not exactly starving' is probably rich, and someone who is 'not short of a few pennies' is even richer. Finally, if your boss is 'not very happy' with your work, this does not mean that he is even slightly happy. It means you might need a new job.

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