Question dodging
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Question dodging is the intentional avoidance of answering a question.
This may happen when the person questioned either does not know the answer and wants to avoid embarrassment, or when the person is being interrogated or questioned in debate, and wants to avoid giving a direct response.[1] Overt question dodging can sometimes be employed humorously, in order to sidestep giving a public answer in a political discussion: when a reporter asked Mayor Richard J. Daley why Hubert Humphrey had lost the state of Illinois in the 1968 presidential election, Daley replied "He lost it because he didn't get enough votes."[2]
A false accusation of question dodging can sometimes be made as a disingenuous tactic in debate, in the informal fallacy of the loaded question. A common way out of this argument is not to answer the question (e.g. with a simple 'yes' or 'no'), but to challenge the assumption behind the question. This can lead the person questioned to be accused of "dodging the question".
Form
Often the aim of dodging a question is to make it seem as though the question was fulfilled. The person who asked the question feeling satisfied with the answer, unaware that the question was not properly answered.
The form of a dodged question, this example being "Why are you here?", could be:
- Refusing to answer ("No comment.")
- Stalling ("Give me a minute.")
- Changing the subject ("Your shoelace is undone.")
- Explaining redundant things to distract one's focus ("Well I arrived here 10 minutes ago and I decided that...")
- Creating an excuse not to answer ("I'm feeling sick; I can't answer now.")
- Repeating the question ("Why are you here?")
- Answering the question with another question ("Why do you think I'm here?")
- Answering things that weren't asked ("I'm in the corridor.")
- Questioning the question ("Are you sure that's relevant?")
- Challenging the question ("You assume I am here for a reason.")
- Giving an answer in the wrong context ("Because I was born.")
