Editing Question (section)

== Uses ==
[[File:A_Question_of_Honor_(1922)_-_7.jpg|thumb|right|alt=A man asking a woman a question|A man asking a woman a question]]
The principal use of questions is to elicit information from the person being addressed by indicating the information which the speaker (or writer) desires.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Searle |first1=J |title=Speech acts |date=1969 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |location=Cambridge}}</ref>

A slight variant is the [[display question]], where the addressee is asked to produce information which is already known to the speaker.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Searle |first1=J |title=Speech acts |date=1969 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |page=69}}</ref> For example, a teacher or game show host might ask "What is the capital of Australia?" to test the knowledge of a student or contestant.

A direction question is one that seeks an instruction rather than factual information. It differs from a typical ("information") question in that the characteristic response is a directive rather than a declarative statement.<ref name="CGEL"/> For example:

:A: When should I open your gift?
:B: Open it now.

Questions may also be used as the basis for a number of indirect speech acts. For example, the [[imperative sentence]] "Pass the salt." can be reformulated (somewhat more politely) as:

:Would you pass the salt?

Which has the form of an interrogative, but the illocutionary force of a directive.

The term [[rhetorical question]] may be colloquially applied to a number of uses of questions where the speaker does not seek or expect an answer (perhaps because the answer is implied or obvious), such as:

:Has he lost his mind?
:Why have I brought you all here? Let me explain...
:They're closed? But the website said it was open until 10 o'clock.

[[Loaded question]]s (a special case of [[complex question]]s), such as "Have you stopped beating your wife?" may be used as a joke or to embarrass an audience, because any answer a person could give would imply more information than he was willing to affirm.