28 – Reflection: asking questions and proposing answers
What
‘What’ has a number of functions. Typically it asks for clarification
about some phenomenon that is being referred to, for example
‘What is expressionism?’ This is a request to establish the connection
between a name (a word) and an object or phenomenon ‘in the world’
which has been observed: we say the name refers to the object, as
the names ‘morning star’ or ‘Venus’ refer to a particular point of
light in the sky. Some ‘what’ requests may seek a description of a
particular object, process or idea in answer to them:
What brings the United States and Europe together, and
what divides them?
What is Rawls’s theory of justice?
Other ‘what’ questions look for more generalised or universal
def initions and theories:
What is justice? (this is the question Rawls asked)
What is a dialect and what is a language? Can any
universally applicable criteria be used to distinguish them?
Definitions are treated at length in chapter 9.
Who, whom
These two words are requests for an identif ication of people
or groups of people. ‘Who’ queries the identity of people who do
things or who are the responsible agents for some event. ‘Whom’, by
contrast, raises a question about the people affected by an action or
event. A question about the one will very often raise a question about
the other. Notice, too, that the range of a ‘whom’ question can be
considerably widened by prefacing it with a preposition (e.g. to, for,
by, with, amongst):
Who was ultimately responsible for the deportation of Jews
in Vichy France to the Nazi death camps?
What
‘What’ has a number of functions. Typically it asks for clarification
about some phenomenon that is being referred to, for example
‘What is expressionism?’ This is a request to establish the connection
between a name (a word) and an object or phenomenon ‘in the world’
which has been observed: we say the name refers to the object, as
the names ‘morning star’ or ‘Venus’ refer to a particular point of
light in the sky. Some ‘what’ requests may seek a description of a
particular object, process or idea in answer to them:
What brings the United States and Europe together, and
what divides them?
What is Rawls’s theory of justice?
Other ‘what’ questions look for more generalised or universal
def initions and theories:
What is justice? (this is the question Rawls asked)
What is a dialect and what is a language? Can any
universally applicable criteria be used to distinguish them?
Definitions are treated at length in chapter 9.
Who, whom
These two words are requests for an identif ication of people
or groups of people. ‘Who’ queries the identity of people who do
things or who are the responsible agents for some event. ‘Whom’, by
contrast, raises a question about the people affected by an action or
event. A question about the one will very often raise a question about
the other. Notice, too, that the range of a ‘whom’ question can be
considerably widened by prefacing it with a preposition (e.g. to, for,
by, with, amongst):
Who was ultimately responsible for the deportation of Jews
in Vichy France to the Nazi death camps?