Aporia
A rhetorical expression of genuine or feigned doubt about how to proceed — the speaker stops to wonder aloud.
Aporia (Greek ἀπορία, 'without passage', 'impasse') is the figure in which a speaker pauses to profess doubt — real or performed — about what to say, which of several arguments to advance, or whether words can meet the occasion at all. Cicero's opening 'I know not where to begin' is the classical form; Hamlet's 'To be, or not to be' is its most famous dramatic use.
In philosophy, aporia is a substantive term: it names the state of genuine puzzlement Socratic dialogues seek to induce in their interlocutors, the moment when a confident belief collapses and the mind has nowhere left to stand. In rhetoric, the figure borrows this weight but usually as performance — the speaker who says 'I don't know where to begin' has almost always decided where to begin.
Used well, aporia creates space. It invites the audience to share the speaker's difficulty, and to feel that whatever comes next has been chosen deliberately from among alternatives. Used badly, it reads as false modesty or as stalling — the audience notices that the speaker has, in fact, prepared, and the figure collapses.
The rule: use aporia only when the difficulty is real enough to be visible to the audience, or when the performance is so plainly a performance that the audience is in on it. Anything between the two reads as trickery.
“I do not know, gentlemen of the jury, how my accusers affected you; as for me, I was almost carried away by them, so persuasively did they speak.”
Keep reading the glossary
A question asked for effect rather than to elicit an answer.
A rhetorical figure in which the speaker asks a question and immediately answers it.
The device of raising a subject by explicitly refusing to raise it — 'I will not mention…'
Anticipating an objection in your own argument and answering it before it can be raised.