Interpellative

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Relating to the act of formally questioning someone, especially a government minister, or of calling someone to account
2. Describing something that questions, challenges, or calls a person or body to answer for their actions
3. Serving to question or summon someone to account, or to hail and identify a person within a social or political system

Etymology: In Latin, "interpellare" meant to interrupt, built from "inter-" (between) and "pellere" (to drive or strike). The same root gave English "impel," "expel," "repel," and "compel." Through the past participle "pulsus," it also gave "pulse," a regular beating or driving push. To interrupt someone was, etymologically, to strike into their speech. The sense of an interruption that demands a reply came later. In parliamentary usage, to interpellate is to call a government minister to account by putting a formal question on the floor, a practice common in many continental European assemblies. The adjective describes that kind of challenge or summons. The philosopher Louis Althusser later borrowed the noun "interpellation" to describe how ideology hails individuals and makes them into subjects, so a term about parliamentary questioning became a concept in critical theory.