A rhetorical question is a sentence used to refer to strong mood with the application of interrogative form to express meaning of affirmative or denial. In the communication between Chinese, the application of rhetorical question reflects that the speaker has no intention of doubt but the listener besides the speaker can explicitly understand and know the exact answer of the question. When the foreign students go to Chinese language school, they may get to now that the rhetorical question in a negative form expresses the sense of emphasis while the rhetorical question in positive form indicates the sense of denial.
According to the forms of the questions, the rhetorical question can be divided into two categories. The first kind is the rhetorical question with an interrogative. For example, the sentence is like the following. 这种好事情他怎么可能不知道? This is a rhetorical question. The literal meaning of the sentence is that how could he not know such good thing? The answer to the question is that he actually knows the good thing. The answer is hidden in the sentence. Another example is needed. The example is like 好学生谁不喜欢? The literal meaning of the sentence is that who will not like the good students? The answer to the question is that all like good students.
The second kind of the rhetorical question is the application of 不是…吗? The rhetorical question indicates strong sense of affirmation. The emphasized contents are set between the 不是…吗 phrase. I will give you an example to understand the second kind of rhetorical question. For example, the sentence is like 你不是韩国人吗?怎么会不知道金哲洙呢? The literal meaning of the sentence is that aren’t you a Korean? How it comes that you do not know Kim Cheol-Soo. The meaning of the sentence is that the listener should know Kim Cheol-Soo. For the Korean overseas students in school to study Mandarin, the name may be familiar to them. Well, we’ll take another example. the sentence is 我不是已经告诉你了吗? The meaning of the rhetoric question is that I have already told you about the thing.
The other common forms of the rhetorical question are as the following. The first one is 难道…吗? The second form is 何必…呢? The third form is 何苦…呢? The forms are fixed and the foreign students should learn them by their heart. The teachers should teach the students that the forms are set and the sentence like 她住院了你还不知道,难道你不是她的好朋友呢? is wrong and should be avoided.