You know how?

Figure of speech. As Myles Crawford regales his audience with Ignatius Gallaher's journalistic exploit, he peppers them with directive questions: "You know how he made his mark? I'll tell you"; "Remember that time?"; "Whole route, see?" "Look at here. What did Ignatius Gallaher do? I'll tell you"; "Have you Weekly Freeman of 17 March? Right. Have you got that?"; "Have you got that? Right"; "Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh?" Rhetoricians call this anacoenosis: enlisting your listeners in your cause by asking for their opinions, judgments, or knowledge.

Anacoenosis (AN-uh-sih-NO-sis or AN-uh-ko-uh-NO-sis) comes from the Greek word anakoinoun = to communicate. It involves so-called "rhetorical questions": queries that require a single correct answer or no answer at all. The tactic is employed regularly by teachers who punctuate their lectures with one-right-answer questions. Anyone who offers an answer other than the desired one can be made to feel slow, misguided, unusual, or disruptive. Like synchoresis, this device engages an audience while maintaining tight control of where the argument is going.

Gideon Burton (rhetoric.byu.edu) cites an example from Isaiah: "And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could I have done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?" (5:3-4). The only correct answer is "Nothing." In his funeral oration in Julius Caesar, Mark Antony implies a similar negative answer to a repeated question: "Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?.... You all did see that on the Lupercal / I thrice presented him a kingly crown, / Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?" (3.2.90, 95-97).

This style of instruction suits the newspaper editor in Joyce's chapter. Crawford is opinionated, short-tempered, and drunk––not one to waste time on contrary views.