Do you answer the question you hear or the question asked?
This morning I found a crease on the collar of my new green shirt.
It dawned on me that this is something that happens quite often and I showed it to my wife posing the question: “Is this the result of the ironing process or something else?”. I got a 60 second silence which in my marriage means I said something wrong. “Ask Christina” (our house manager who irons the clothes) my wife said, and there was a dangerous formality in her voice. If you aren’t married or in a long lasting relationship, you will not quite understand what I am talking about, but you will learn when your time comes!
Why was I surprised by the answer?
It has to do with a habit in our society that we answer the question we hear and not the question we are asked. I was curious about the reason why creases such as that seems to appear on shirt collars after the first ironing. The question was understood to be criticism on Christina - and probably a frustration with my middle aged pettiness. (”Middle aged” is just a description as 50 is not middle aged, but somehow the world does not want to believe me).
In any case: how many questions were you asked today to get information, and how many did you answer, not to give information but to reflect your understanding of the motivation behind the question?
On the other hand: how many questions did you ask today not to get information, but for some other reason? The question’s role in language is to gather information. Our society has progressed to such a state that we are able to use a question to convey emotion.
Is that good or bad?
Why do you ask?