Rhetorical question is a vivid emphatic statement made in the form of a question. It is equal to a categorical pronouncement plus an exclamation and has the force of affirmation or denial. Rhetorical questions with negation are always emphatic affirmations.
J. C. Nesfield wrote that there are at least two kinds of instances in which rhetorical questions are used: (i) when the speaker or writer, having asked a question, leaves the hearer or reader to answer it for himself — an indirect mode of affirming or denying, which is sometimes more forcible than direct assertion; (ii) when a question is asked for purposes of exposition; it is often used in soliloquy, when a person puts a question to himself and gives his own answer.
