0

Please, what is the function and meaning of the following sentence:

"Oh, was I embarrassed?"

Does it show surprise? Is it a normal question?

asked Jun 23 '13 at 17:18 Noureddine Boutahar New member

0

It is a familiar exclamation which does not indicate surprise but suggests that the speaker was indeed very embarrassed.  It is arhetorical question, in that it does not require an answer.   In fact, a sympathetic  response could be another  question, like "Really?" or  "Oh, were you?" or even another exclamation such as "I'm sure you were!"

I agree. The context is nissing in the example. However, it could also be a normal interrogative (depending on the context).

Ahmad BarnardJun 23 '13 at 23:32

I can't imagine a situation where "Was I embarassed?" could be a normal interrogative instead of a rhetorical question. Even if the speaker suffers from some kind of memory loss, which would be a highly unlikely context to begin with, the question would be silly because only the speaker could know if he\she was embarrassed!

Shawn MooneyJun 24 '13 at 01:11

Write at least 20 characters

Hero of the day

Afiqah

Reputation: 1
Person voted on the most questions.
{"extraction_info": {"found_math": false, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 0, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 0, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 0, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0, "katex": 0, "math-container": 0, "wp-katex-eq": 0, "align": 0, "equation": 0, "x-ck12": 0, "texerror": 0, "math_score": 0.8441554307937622, "perplexity": 2796.986006726986}, "config": {"markdown_headings": false, "markdown_code": true, "boilerplate_config": {"ratio_threshold": 0.18, "absolute_threshold": 10, "end_threshold": 15, "enable": true}, "remove_buttons": true, "remove_image_figures": true, "remove_link_clusters": true, "table_config": {"min_rows": 2, "min_cols": 3, "format": "plain"}, "remove_chinese": true, "remove_edit_buttons": true, "extract_latex": true}, "warc_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501171807.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104611-00313-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz"}