"Can / May I ask you a question?"

Tue Dec 2 05:24:02 UTC 2008

The other possibility, and the one that seems most reasonable in the
case of asking a librarian, is that the speaker is not sure if the
librarian's duties at the moment allow the answering of something that
requires thought. That is,

Patron. Can I ask you a question?
Librarian. Yes. (Requires no thought.)
Patron. Do you know where I can find information on simian habitats?
Librarian. Let me move over to my computer and see if I can help you.
(Requires a great deal of effort.) BB

On Dec 1, 2008, at 8:51 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

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> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Can / May I ask you a question?"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Mark, may I ask you a question?
>
> Can you not see that, when I ask you for permission to ask you a
> question, whether you would choose to allow me to ask you a question
> or whether you would choose not to allow me to ask you a question is
> of no consequence? I have already asked you a question by virtue of
> the very speech act of asking you for permission to ask you ask you a
> question. It's already too late. The war is over before you've even
> had a chance to "LOCK! One round, LOAD!" Game, set, and match to the
> questioner.
>
> -Wilson
>
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 4:20 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: "Can / May I ask you a question?"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 4:07 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> All that's good, Mark. But what you say is rather beside the point.
>>> Off the top of your head, can you come up with any other yes-no
>>> question in English which *necessarily* precludes even the
>>> theoretical
>>> possibility that the person spoken to can exercise his God-given
>>> right
>>> to answer "No"?
>>
>> Outside a rest room: "Is there anyone in there?"
>>
>>> Asking permission to perform this action entails
>>> performing the action, irrespective of whether the person spoken to
>>> wants to grant permission.
>>
>> Would you prefer "May I ask you a substantive question?"?
>>
>>> I find that mind-bending! If someone were to
>>> ask the perhaps somewhat more-threatening version, "May I question
>>> you?", the person spoken to can easily, if he has the 'nads, answer,
>>> "Damn the consequences! I say 'No!', sir! I deny you your
>>> ignorant-arsed request! My desire not to be annoyed trumps your
>>> desire
>>> to annoy me!"
>>>
>>> But yes, I do understand the point that that characteristic of
>>> (only?)
>>> this yes-no question may fail to fire the imaginations of younger
>>> but
>>> more-learned members of our little community, given that, in the
>>> real
>>> world, people freely give a negative answer to this question, as
>>> they
>>> will:
>>>
>>> A) May I ask you a question?
>>>
>>> B) No.
>>>
>>> A) All right. Fuck you, then.
>>>
>>> AFAIK, there's no other such question in English that falls so
>>> trippingly from the tongue as "Can / May I ask you a question?"
>>> Someone may be able to construct another such, but IMO, it'll take
>>> some effort, if it can even be done. Indeed, is it possible to ask
>>> this question in this form in any human language without eliminating
>>> the possibility of "No" as the answer, even though it's a yes-no
>>> question?
>>>
>>> And would you really be snarky enough to answer a polite "Excuse me"
>>> with a snotty "For what?" Mark, you know that that's not you!
>>> Well, I
>>> guess that you could smile and use a pleasant tone of voice tending
>>> toward gallantry without being offensive. ;-)
>>
>> Of course not. I sometimes *do* reply politely "Not at all!" --
>> meaning, and taken to mean, "It's no trouble at all (and so I don't
>> feel that you've done anything that requires any kind of apology).
>>
>> But my point was that we shouldn't take literally that which is not
>> meant literally. How do you feel about indirect speech acts like "Can
>> you pass the butter?" or (from one's spouse) "I think someone's at
>> the
>> door"? I don't recommend replying, respectively, "Yes" (and not doing
>> so), or especially "Yes, I think you're right" and not moving.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 12:55 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>> -----------------------
>>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>> Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>>>> Subject:      Re: "Can / May I ask you a question?"
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 11:12 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> I'd accept Excuse me; Can / Will / Would you help me? Are you
>>>>> familiar
>>>>> with this library? or even Do you work here?, etc. (Widener has no
>>>>> dress code for the lower orders. Hence, there's no way to know
>>>>> whether
>>>>> a random person encountered in the stack is a staff member able to
>>>>> share knowledge or merely another lost soul.) *Anything* other
>>>>> than
>>>>> the mind-bending whatever-it-is-ness of Can / May I ask you a
>>>>> question?
>>>>
>>>> I disagree. You don't answer "Excuse me" with "For what?", because
>>>> unless the person has just bumped into you, you know that this is a
>>>> formula to politely request your attention, whether to notice
>>>> that you
>>>> are in their way and move, or to preface a question or request.
>>>> When a
>>>> co-worker you know only casually asks "How ya doin'?" in the
>>>> morning
>>>> as you're both going into the work place, you don't *tell* them how
>>>> you're doing: you say "Pretty good" or "Not bad" or "Could be
>>>> worse"
>>>> or "Same old same old", or something equally brief and summative,
>>>> and
>>>> not necessarily true.
>>>>
>>>> "Can I ask you a question?" is a similar formula. It means "I'd
>>>> like
>>>> to ask you a question, and I'm getting your attention and asking
>>>> your
>>>> permission." Don't take it literally.
>>>>
>>>> I used to answer, "You just did. Care to ask another?" But that
>>>> made a
>>>> road bump in the discourse instead of smoothing the way, which is
>>>> what
>>>> conventional formulas are meant for, and I decided I was just
>>>> being a
>>>> literalist old fart. It's an idiom that has developed since our
>>>> childhood, and we'd better get with it.
>>>>
>>>> Mark Mandel
>>
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