On the use of rhetorical questions in tweets related to the Russia-Ukrainian war: Podolyak vs Polyanskiy

Abstract

The paper explores the use of rhetorical questions in Twitter posts of Mykhailo Podolyak (a Ukrainian presidential adviser) and Dmitry Polyanskiy (a Russian official), in light of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The goals of the paper are, among others, to find out what kinds of rhetorical questions are used, what their main communicative functions are, and what differences or similarities can be observed in the use of these questions on Twitter by the two officials. The obtained results indicate that notable, statistically significant differences in the use of rhetorical questions by the two individuals do exist, regarding the form of such questions, who they are addressed at, as well as in terms of the primary functions that they perform in the analysed tweets.