"interrogate the question"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 6/18/2009 07:51 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:
>Looks like a mistaken substituting of "investigate" for
>"interrogate."  And here "question" = "issue."

I'd accept this explanation (excuse?) more readily if I hadn't been
coming across "interrogate" in (perhaps post-modernist or
deconstructivist?)* historical studies not infrequently recently.  I
don't, unfortunately, remember if those other instances are as
lacking in graceful expression as this one.

*No one, of course, can answer this question.  "Any effort to explain
deconstruction is therefore doomed according to the theory
itself.  Any effort to say anything ["anything" italicized], in fact,
must go astray."  (Written by Steven Lynn, in _Texts and Contexts:
Writing About Literature with Critical Theory_.)

>
>Gerald Cohen
>
>________________________________
>
>  Message from Joel S. Berson, Thu 6/18/2009 6:23 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: "interrogate the question"
>
>
>Is there something wrong with the following?  And how might one say
>it in jargon-free, simple English?
>
>"That tradition may ...be considered in terms of five overlapping
>concerns: ... [one being] interrogating the question of black
>nationalism and colonization".
>
>In the OED, I see two possibilities --
>
>"{dag}2. To ask about (something). Obs. rare.", most recent citation
>"1698 FRYER Acc. E. India & P. 132 Interrogating the State of Europe,
>the Government, Policy, and Learning."
>
>"3.b. With question quoted", e.g. "1824 L. MURRAY Eng. Gram. (ed. 5)
>I. 420 We may answer, by interrogating on our part; Do not those same
>poor peasants use the Lever and the Wedge?"
>
>But in both these forms, one doesn't interrogate a question, one
>interrogates (about) the subject of the question.  And my instance
>additionally doesn't fit 3.b. because it doesn't state (ask) the
>question, it merely gives the question (issue) a title.
>
>Joel
>
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