Editing Rhetorical question (section)

===Vernacular===
In the vernacular, this form of rhetorical question is called "rhetorical affirmation". The certainty or obviousness of the answer to a question is expressed by asking another, often humorous, question for which the answer is equally obvious. Popular examples include "Do bears shit in the woods?", "Is the sky blue?" and "Is the Pope Catholic?"<ref name="Powell 1998">{{cite book |author1=Powell, Chris |author2=Paton, George E. C. | year = 1988 | title = Humour in society: resistance and control | publisher = Macmillan | isbn = 0-333-44070-6 | page = 67}}</ref><ref name="Moon 1998">{{cite book | author = Moon, Rosamund | year = 1998 | title = Fixed expressions and idioms in English: a corpus-based approach (Oxford studies in lexicography and lexicology) | publisher = Oxford University Press | isbn = 0-19-823614-X | page = 158}}</ref><ref name="Fergusson 1994">{{cite book |author1=Fergusson, Rosalind |author2=Partridge, Eric | year = 1994 | title = Shorter dictionary of catch phrases |url=https://archive.org/details/shorterdictionar00ferg |url-access=limited | publisher = Routledge | isbn = 0-415-10051-8 | page = [https://archive.org/details/shorterdictionar00ferg/page/n30 25]}}</ref>

A rhetorical question may be used in [[Sarcasm|sarcastic context]]s. For example, in response to being informed that smoking can increase the possibility of developing lung cancer, someone could respond with the question, "Who knew?" The question functions as an assertion that the truth of the statement should have been utterly obvious.