Interrogosphere: The Power and Plight of Questions in a Highly Questionable World

Author Tom B. Hurley takes the reader on a guided tour of questions - those strange and powerful language devices that voice our curiosity in a highly questionable world. By giving the realm its own name - the Interrogosphere - and bringing it to the forefront, the book offers fresh insight into the many domains where questions play a healthy role. It also takes an unflinching look at the current plight of questions in a world where existential crises have made vital questions all but unaskable as they shrink into the wholly unprecedented Dark Interrogosphere.

As the only creatures in the known universe able to assemble words into questions, we humans pose millions of queries in a lifetime, yet we can scarcely say what these odd grammatical mechanisms are, where they came from, or how they perform their myriad tasks in both private and professional life. Because questions are always being upstaged by the answers we claim to crave, here at last is the book that finally brings flowers to the dressing room of questions themselves. By exploring in depth the what, whence, where, why, and how of what grammarians call the interrogative mood, the book answers all the questions about questions that you didn't know how to ask. And in a world where the din of assertions makes listening painful, Interrogosphere offers a how-to chapter on ways to embrace our neglected power to ask with incisive flair, rather than merely declare.

A highly readable blend of research and reflection with a light touch, the book weaves together for the first time the many strands of the Interrogosphere. It breaks new ground with chapters that explain the "12-Second Rule" in conversation, the manipulative logic of tag questions (you're curious, aren't you?), and the Is/Ought Modal Circle for quickly framing Better Questions. Also on display are the questioning worlds of Plato, poetry, puppets, and children, with side trips to those potent variations known as meta-questions and hypotheticals, along with the question-trifectas that have led to historic breakthroughs in science.

By eavesdropping at the crossroads of philosophy, language studies, anthropology, science, and the arts, readers of Interrogosphere will never hear (or ask) questions in the same way again.