Christopher asked:

What do you call a question that someone asks you in reply to something you have said — something
that you think (and in reality, is) blisteringly obvious and self-evident?

To give an example, I once asked someone about his obvious New York Brooklyn accent and he
replied, "Do you think I have a thick Brooklyn accent?" Is there a phrase in philosophy (or perhaps
rhetoric) for a question posed like this in which the answer is decidedly yes to everybody except the
person who asks the question?

============

A short answer is that I haven't found a quick answer for you, except one you may have already
thought of and dismissed but I have mentioned some readings you might want to follow up. I have
provided a long answer that might indicate that your response was more complicated than could be
given in adequate treatment by a single phrase or name. Part of the answer leads us into the fields of
language, communication and ethics. The English philosopher R.M. Hare suggested that most
ethic-message bearing sentences contain two elements, a phrastic-propositional element (p) and a
neustic-force/mood element (n) on which there can be p-p logical properties and n-n logical properties
even if we are unhappy about claiming logical properties for combined (np) elements. In particular he
was approaching the 'not deriving an 'ought' from an 'is' problem.

He suggested the pseudo-sentence form:

*
Your doing A, Yes (and not No) = Command and Disagreement Denial.

*
Your doing A, No (and not Yes) = Negative command and Disagreement denial.

*
My doing A, Yes? = Permission request and expected assent/agreement.

*
It is P, Yes! = Strong assertion and counter evidence denial.

*
It is P? Yes ! = Assertion and expected agreement, possible but unlikely dissent.

We can group communications like this into three blocks:

M(0) =

"
1. Sender message M(1)

[Sender Asserts to Receiver an act or proposition]

2. Expected receiver response: M(2)

[Sender Asserts to Receiver response message.]

3. Expected receiver compliance: M(3)

{[Sender Asserts to Receiver Sender-Receiver Disagree if expected receiver response denied] But

[Sender-receiver Agree if expected receiver response affirmed.]}"

If we look at the actual response to the question we can see that it was in the form of another
question:

""Do you think I have a TBA"? (TBA = Thick Brooklyn Accent)"

which came as response to your question in P-N form:

""You're having a TBA? Yes!, Comply!""

Your received response could be translated into P-N form as:

""((My having a TBA? No!, Noncomply!), Yes!, Comply?)""

In which you have been challenged to disagree with the receivers response that has been embedded
into a new question to which have been expected to assent. You could, if you like call it the De Niro
response: 'Are you talking to me!?' (Polite English version).

From the earlier systemic structure you would also be expected to understand that failure to comply is
likely to end in interview termination and possible generalised disagreement with sanctions. I think
this was also the drift of De Niro's speech.

You could also construct a response subtext profile in terms of the tacit satisfactions,
non-satisfactions, promissory and threat values, an approach I am trying to systemise through what I
have called 'SIFT' analysis in which pn junctions are the basic unit of qualitative expectations, the
logical conjugations of which produce the static, (satisfied/non-satisfied) and the dynamic agents of
change that act on them (Promissory and Threat agents) to produce an expectation field through
which a situation may be perceived and acted on. In terms of your situation, the receiver's response
field could be represented as follows:

Positive Satisfactions: 'I am happy with my accent.'

Negative Satisfactions: 'I don't expect it to be mentioned.'

Frustrations: 'Any mention of my accent.'

Dissatisfactions: 'Differentiating my accent reveals my roots and weakens my professional status and
wrong foots me.'

Positive Indifference: 'I am not inhibited by my accent.'

Negative Indifference: 'I don't think with an accent.'

Promissory Value: 'Reduce my embarrassment by not reaffirming attention to my accent and comply
to continue the interview.'

Threat Value: 'Increase my embarrassment by affirming my accent and non-comply with the answer I
want and we discontinue this interview or continue with animosity/antagonism possibly leading to
general disagreement with sanctions (possibly terminal in the extreme De Niro case)'

In reduced heuristic 'Sift' form the response could be understood as the double question:

"
("Has your question improved the interview? I don't think so!") in conjunction with:

("Will countering my tacit 'don't mention my accent assertion' make this interview worse? I think so!")"

The name of the category of response I think you may of thought of but dismissed is that of 'rhetorical
question' in which a question is both asked and answered by the same individual in one sentence.
Which does seem to fit the bill but also hides other interesting complexity.

For example the response you received has some characteristics of a 'performative utterance', the
most general formulation of which describes it as an utterance in which, 'saying it, makes it so', like 'I
promise to...'. In the saying you raise an expectation of a specific performance and simultaneously
commit yourself to the implied performance and consequent sanctions on failure to execute. I think
though that not all aspects of 'performatives' have been thoroughly explored in the literature of the
field. For example such utterances simultaneously name an act and exemplify it and as such could be
considered to contain a 'demonstrative act' that provides a clear paradigm or central case from which
a number of 'prepackaged' inferences can be unfolded. They also have some of the unassailable
characteristics of what used to be the logician's holy grail, the analytical sentence, from which other
indisputable truths could be derived and against which no blaspheming counter evidence could be
produced.

Your respondent has sent you back your original message embedded in two other messages, the
next layer of which denies communication (1) and expects your compliance and your completing the
blanks in the next/ top layer communication (2) to produce communication (3) in which you have
complied with your respondents compliance request and agreed with your respondents evaluation of
your initial assertion i.e. that non-TBA is the case or indifference to TBA is the case. In other word the
multilayered response asked and answered the question demonstrating the required response which
you could perform by an indifferent or non response and continue the interview without sanction, or
terminate the interview since denial was in effect impossible.

Of course if it was said with supporting facial expression and tone your received response could have
been ironic dark humour given that you both probably have a TBA.

Having said all of this, I hope that you have received this message without it engendering a feeling of
extreme terminal prejudice towards the sender!

Readings:

R.M. Hare The Language of MoralsOxford 1952

M.A.K. Halliday & R. Hasan Language, Context and Text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic
perspective(OUP)

J.L. Austin How to do things with wordsOxford 1961

J. Searle Speech ActsCambridge 1969

On rhetoric, fallacies, informal logic:

I.Copi & Burgess-Jackson Informal Logic

A. Fisher, Ed. Critical Thinking, First Conference ProceedingsUniversity of East Anglia 1988

Neil Buckland