A reminder:  in theory, Q-H-Qs are "Question-Hypothesis-Question" heuristics, a useful tool for exploring a text.  You read something, write a leading question about it at the top of your own own blank page, hypothesize a page-long answer to that question by thinking hard about the text, then end the heuristic by asking another leading question to which your hypothesizing has led you.

In practice, they look like the following.  (Note that this one came out of a literary theory class here many years ago; it discusses how theorist Jonathan Culler positions meaning in language.  "Saussure" is Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure who gave us some of the fundamental tenets of a (post)modern understanding of language itself.) 

Does language affect meaning in works of literature?

Well, according to Culler, “meaning is based on difference” (56) and as Culler declares through Saussure “a language is a system of differences” (57).  In other words, the meaning of something depends on what it is contrasted with and, in a language, the identity of each component is based on the differences between that component and the other components that comprise the language.  For instance, darkness has its identity only as it contrasts with light, for without light there could be no absence of light or darkness.  Furthermore, language is arbitrary.  That is to say that there is no natural resemblance between the word “darkness” and the condition of the absence of light which it describes.  In other words darkness is referred to as “darkness” not because the word darkness and the condition darkness are naturally related, but merely because at some point in time someone decided that the condition of the absence of light should be known as darkness rather than hosmage.  [I like that the writer invented her own term there.  MW]

Culler also argues through Saussure that language does not provide its own names for categories that already exist outside of language but, instead, is “a system of concepts as well as forms” (58).  This implies that simply by using one language rather that another, we are forced not only to think through its words but must operate by its concepts as well.

As Culler notes, there are two theories as to how a language with its particular concepts may affect thought (58 -59).  One, the common-sense view, states that language merely provides us with a way to communicate pre-existing thoughts.  The other, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, claims that the thoughts we can think are limited by the language we speak.  This second theory can be better understood by noting that some things that are said in one language cannot be translated into another because there are no equivalent words or phrases.  Thus, if we cannot understand something because it has no equivalent in our language, it could indeed be said that our thoughts are limited by the language that we speak.

According to Culler, it is through works of literature that we explore the habitual ways of thinking through which we subconsciously view the world and often attempt to reshape them - i.e. works of literature may show us how to think something unanticipated by our language (60).  Thus, language may have a very important effect on how we determine meaning in literature as it both determines the categories and concepts in which we can think and, at the same time, is the tool we use to unravel its own meaning.  All this seems to suggest that meaning is greatly affected by language and, therefore, that the study of linguistics should be key to understanding meaning in literature.  Yet, according to Culler, poetics - the type of literary study that is modeled on linguistics and starts with attested meanings and inquires how they are achieved, is used far less often in the modern tradition of criticism than hermeneutics - the type of literary study that starts with texts and questions what they mean (61).

Why does the modern tradition of criticism seem to favor hermeneutics in the search for meaning in literary study? 

Although this author spends a great deal of time restating elements of Culler's (and Saussure's and Sapir-Whorf's) ideas, she does so so that she clarifies for herself what Culler means.  This is not done to fill space or ramble.  She is trying to make clear what Culler is getting at, something she demonstrates in her various restatements and examples.  Finally, however, she moves to answering her initial question in her last paragraph and that naturally leads her into the next question.  A careful, detailed Q-H-Q, this is the sort of thinking which this particular sort of heuristic ought to generate.