Ovvietà e ridondanza della domanda retorica: dalla risposta implicata alla risposta esplicita

The study contains some considerations on the indirect nature of the rhetorical question (RQ). The RQ is a non-prototypical speech act in which the interrogative form does not coincide with the conveyed meaning; it does not perform the function of an information-seeking question, for this reason it is not followed by a verbalized explicit answer. This study will explore the most representative features of RQs, by referring to its indirect status and to the field of possible responses. With regard to the latter aspect, some examples extracted from a speech corpus of spontaneous Italian will be discussed. We will try to demonstrate how the presence of a response is not incompatible with the semantic-pragmatic features of RQs nor with the functions more frequently performed in spontaneous speech.