Loaded questions, half male/half female partners, and missing body parts －誘導的な質問、半分男性で半分女性の恋人、欠けた身体のパーツ－

“How am I to get in?” asked Alice again, in a louder tone.

“Are you to get in at all?” said the footman.  “That’s the first question, you know.”

From Lewis Carroll’s, “Alice’s adventures in Wonderland”

 

Police department web page: If you have committed a crime and want to confess, click “Yes”.  Otherwise, click “No”.

[Man clicks “No”.] 

Police department web page: You have chosen “No”, which means that you have committed a crime but don’t want to confess.  A [police car] is now speeding to your home.

From American tv show, “The Simpsons” 

Some questions aren’t fair.  A famous example is the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”  If you say, “Yes”, then you are admitting that you used to beat your wife.  If you say, “No”, then you are admitting that you beat your wife now.  There is no option being left for someone who has never beaten their wife.  This is sometimes called a loaded question.  The question contains an assumption, which is not necessarily true: in this case, that at some point in the past, you beat your wife. 

I heard another loaded question posed on the radio recently.  There was a gay rights campaigner, who argued that it was wrong to think of people as either one thing or the other – either gay or straight.  He argued that we should instead think of everyone as being on a line, perhaps closer to being gay or straight, rather than wholly one or the other.  He may well be right.  But I couldn’t help but laugh at the unfair way he tried to demonstrate his point.  He asked a question like this: Would you rather your partner was a woman on the top half and a man on the bottom half, or a man on the top half and a woman on the bottom half?  Whichever answer someone gave, he could then show that they at least partly accepted the idea of both a male and female partner.  There was no option to choose someone a little more ordinary.

For a different reason, I got into trouble answering an impossible question many years ago when I was a primary school student.  My teacher had had an unfortunate accident ice-skating, and had lost a large part of two of her fingers.  One day when I was playing in the playground, I hit my head quite hard and sat on the ground feeling groggy.  My teacher came running over and wanted to make sure I wasn’t suffering from concussion.  She held up her damaged hand and asked, “How many fingers can you see?”

I sensed danger and thought hard.  “Three and a half, Miss,” I said, as honestly as I could.  When she got angry I thought it was so unfair.

I am going on a short break from this Thursday, and don’t have as much time as usual to write my blog.  Would you rather read a stupid article, or a lazy and poorly researched one?  Too late!

Vocabulary:

to pose (a question) – to put forward, present or set something such as a question, dilemma or challenge

straight – In this sense, heterosexual; someone attracted to members of the opposite sex

groggy – a feeling of dizziness or lack of mental clarity

concussion – damage suffered after a blow to the head, often causing temporary loss of consciousness