Rhetorical questions or rhetorical uses of questions? Džemal Špago

But how can one ever be sure of one’s good faith?
(Miller, 
After the Fall
, 271) 
(5) 
GIEREK: 
(...) 
When did the Party leader ever come to debate with the work-
ers face to face on their ground?
(...)
(Stoppard, 
Squaring the Circle
, 197)
Although Han (2002) shows that 
wh
-questions with 
who
that include 
ever
can 
also be interpreted as answer-eliciting,
10
they are often interpreted as RQs, which is 
supported by he results of this study. Namely, examples of such RQs from our 
corpus can only have rhetorical interpretation: 
(6) 
ALFIERI: 
Who
can ever know what will be discovered?
(Miller, 
A View from the Bridge
, 332) 
(7) 
ROBERTSON: 
(...) 
But at the same time they were putting up the Empire State 
Building, highest in the world.
But with whole streets and avenues of empty store