Questions - 2 - Whoever asks the questions has the power

This post follows on from Questions - 1

Knock knock
Who’s there?
The Gestapo
The Gestapo who?
Ve vill ask zte Qvestions!

Whoever asks the questions has the power.

This of course is the reason behind the following exchange between an unknown interviewer and Harold Wilson, one of Britain’s slythier Prime Ministers of the 1960s and 1970s:

Interviewer: Why do you always answer a question with a question?
Wilson: Who told you that?

I like to think that Wilson was being ironic rather than instinctive. Reflexively replying with another question is a technique called “the porcupine” by sales trainers. By catching the porcupine and throwing it straight back you keep the conversation going in the direction you want it to.

Paradise by the Dashboard Light shows us the power of the repeated yes/no question: the Boy is just about to make it when the song segues into Sections II and II (it’s that kind of song) and the Girl shrieks Stop right there, before we go any further! and repeatedly asks the poor sap Do you love me? Will you love me forever? You gotta feel sorry for him. She’s got the upper hand, and they both know it. I hope they use it as an example in Negotiation School.

Probably the most brutal example of the questioner’s power is the infamous Paxman / Howard interview where Paxman asks Howard the same question 12 times. Howard got away with it during the conversation, but it made Paxman’s reputation and destroyed his.

Interestingly, this only happened because the video for the next item was not ready and Paxman had run out of other questions to ask. In normal circumstances he’d have accepted Howard’s first prevarication, so his early reputation as a ruthless interviewer was based on a studio cock-up. Also interestingly, Howard had in fact not threatened to overrule whoever it was, so a simple “no” would have brought the interview to a rapid end, which just goes to show that he really does have the integrity of a corkscrew made of spaghetti. And get those glasses!

The art of small-talk is built around small questions, from the hair-dresser’s standby of “are you going away this year?” to the generic British greeting of “how are you?” Mind you, that one does function only as a greeting.

Doctor: How are you?
Patient: Fine thanks Doc, how’re you?

Hmmm. Not really. You wouldn’t be in the Acute Medicine ward if you were fine, now would you?

If you are shy in social situations you should learn the gentle art of polite enquiry using questions which cannot be answered “yes” or “no”. “How do you know [our host]?” “What are the schools like in [the town you've just moved to?]” “What made you choose dentistry as a career?” (They never ever say “the money” or “the power-kick”. Funny that).

This is a useful skill, unless you are talking to a Tory Politician of course, in which case you should learn the gentle art of not actually assassinating them.

More another day.