passagessuchwhether

Passagessuchwhether is a neologism used in discourse analysis and stylistics to name a class of textual passages that foreground conditionality and deliberation by embedding whether-clauses within descriptive or evaluative statements. The term was coined to capture a recurring pattern in which authors present alternatives and unresolved outcomes through embedded interrogatives introduced by whether, often in academic, political, or literary criticism. The construction functions to portray deliberation, hedging, and conditional reasoning rather than asserting a definite outcome.

Linguistic features of passagessuchwhether include a main clause that mentions a decision or event, followed by one or more embedded whether-clauses that present competing possibilities; it commonly co-occurs with hedges and modals and may appear in both direct and indirect discourse. In usage, passagessuchwhether is used to analyze stance, uncertainty, and dialogic engagement, and to track how authors negotiate conditional commitments in argumentation.

Examples of passagessuchwhether include: The report asks whether the project should be funded and whether it would deliver measurable benefits; scholars weigh whether the data support the hypothesis and whether alternative explanations are plausible.