Thammasat University students interested in cultural history, sociology, technology, and related subjects may find a new book useful.

A History of Asking is an Open Access book available for free download at this link.

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/63112

The Thammasat University Library collection includes several books about different aspects of asking.

The author is Dr. Steven Connor, Director of Research of the Digital Futures Institute, King’s College, London, the United Kingdom, and Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Cambridge.

The publisher’s description notes:

Asking is one of the simplest and most familiar of human actions, and has a right to be thought of as single most powerful and most variously cohering form of social-symbolic gesture. Because so much is at stake in the act of asking, asking, or asking for, almost anything, whether information, help, love or respect, can be asking for trouble, so a great deal of care must be taken with the ways in which asking occurs and is responded.

A History of Asking is the first attempt to grasp the unity and variety of the technics and technologies of asking, in all its modalities, as they extend across a spectrum from weak forms like begging, pleading, praying, imploring, beseeching, entreating, suing, supplicating and soliciting, through to the more assertively and even aggressively self-authorising modes of asking, like proposing, offering, inviting, requesting, appealing, applying, petitioning, claiming and demanding.

The book considers the history of 6 broad modes of petitory practice. The act of begging, both among animals and humans is considered in terms of its theatrics. The institution of the political petition, protocols for which seem to arise in also every system of government of which we have knowledge, is tracked through from late medieval to nineteenth-century Britain.

The act of prayer, central to religious practice, though often the last form of religious behaviour to fall away among those lapsing from adherence, and one of the religious practices that is most likely to be adhered to in the absence of any other religious commitment, is the subject of sustained scrutiny. The appeal of prayer is essentially to the fact of participation in language, and the specific forms of commitment to the condition of being bound, bindable, or biddable by it.

Wooing and the associated economics of seduction and solicitation are tracked through from the formalisation of the conventions of courtly love in the 12th century through to modern techniques of flirtation. The book revives the antique term ‘suitage’ in order to discuss all the forms of sueing and suitorship for favours or advantage, as well as, more broadly the act, pursued almost life-long, of trying to get one another to do things for us, in particular in indirect or vicarious forms of what may be called ‘interpetition’, such as the dedications of books to patrons, the institution of the testimonial or letter of reference and the practices of flattery.

A History of Asking concludes with a discussion of the many ways in which our necessarily parasitic relations on each other in a complex society are both conveyed and dissimulated, especially through the ways in which we summon and salute different kinds of service.

Here are some excerpts from the book:

The intention of this book is to enquire into the ways in which the action of asking is performed, across the full range of its modalities, that is, across the spectrum that runs from the less self-authorising kinds of asking like begging, pleading, praying, imploring, beseeching, entreating, suing, supplicating and soliciting, through to the more self-authorising modes of asking, like proposing, offering, inviting, requesting, appealing, applying, petitioning, claiming and demanding.

Asking, or asking for, almost anything, whether directions, help, love, money, even for the time, can be asking for trouble, so we must take a great deal of trouble with the way we ask in order to head it off. Because asking is largely an intraspecific action – one does not ask animals or mountains for things, except by romantic or religious projection – it always takes place within a landscape of relative advantage and disadvantage, and asymmetrical relations of power, which the act of asking has the capacity to confirm or disturb. ‘I only asked’, we may protest when a request goes wrong; but one rarely if ever ‘only asks’.

To ask is to request some object or service, but it is always also by the same token to seek permission for one’s request, or secure it by enquiring into the acceptability of making it. That is to say, to ask is usually to ask a shadow question about one’s act of asking; hence the familiarity of formulae such as ‘May I ask?’, or the use of modal forms like ‘could I take this chair?’.

The governing assumption in politeness theory is that this kind of delicacy in quisitive actions arises from the fact that making a request may be a ‘facethreatening action’, that potentially threatens the freedom of action of one’s interlocutor. Asking anything of anyone is requesting a gift or benefit that they do not have to give. This can seem like an attempted theft, as neatly described by Gudrun Held: ‘In R[equest] situations ego takes on the role of the “illicit taker”, the person demanding a gift. This is tantamount to an attack on alter’s territory and thus to an unexpected disturbance and inconvenience’.

Since, according to Robin Lakoff, one of the three most important principles of politeness is ‘Give Options’, one must avoid giving the impression that one assumes any right to what one requests, while securing nevertheless one’s right to make the request. Sometimes this acceptability is secured by a kind of excuse or apology in advance for the act of asking: ‘Can I enquire whether…’; ‘Do you mind my asking if…?’

This can take subtle forms: ‘I wonder whether you would be willing to give up your seat?’ sounds like it is asking a question, but is framed in such a way as to ask for some preliminary reassurance as to whether asking the person to give up their seat is likely to offend or to achieve its end.

Asking is difficult not just because asking may seem like an aggressive imposition. For asking is an intimate act, or an act which intimates intimacy, which can be uncomfortable even where it is not aggressive. To enquire even of somebody’s well-being is to reach into their personal space, if only in requiring them to give some sort of account of themselves, which is at the same time an affirmation of their shared commitment to the protocols of social exchange.

Asking any kind of question always sings, like the Mock Turtle, ‘Will you, wo’n’t you, will you, wo’n’t you, wo’n’t you join the dance?’. Requesting or enquiring are both forms of requirement: if any asking simultaneously asks about the acceptability of its asking, it also asks its subject to agree to give an answer, whatever the content of that answer might be. Asking is therefore always attended by moral, emotional and political tension. Asking is difficult because of our awareness that being asked can be what we call an imposition, in that it imposes a demand; that any ask is potentially a big ask.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)