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Imperatives Ron Graham |
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Here are common uses for imperatives:
Options for creating imperatives:
General v. Specific Audience Imperatives account both for instructions and requests (or orders). With instructions, the subject is generally understood to be the reader ("you"). We'd name a subject in an imperative if the subject is not "you." Polite v. Otherwise When we write instructions, it's not usually necessary for us to be polite. We can't be so certain for other written imperatives, or for spoken imperatives. If I give an order, such as "...sit down and be quiet." I might not see that order readily obeyed. Not even by students in a class I'm teaching or subordinates in a meeting I'm chairing. Then I have to say "please." That changes the order into a request. We will sometimes see our management giving us orders worded as requests to sound polite. :-)"Please have a seat; we're about to start the meeting."
Formal v. Informal A management request (order, whatever) would probably be considered "formal" because of its politeness. Our responses to such requests can also be either polite or, well, not polite. It is possible to respond to a request negatively, however, without being impolite. We might either ask the reason for the request or give the reason for our refusal. And we might apologize. :-) By instinct we usually know better than to answer a formal imperative with a flat "no." :-) Avoiding a flat "no" might mean a formal response: "I'm sorry; my doctor requires me to stand because of a bad back."
Immediate v. Otherwise We also have the option of giving immediate or not-immediate-but-pretty-soon imperatives:
"Please sit down." (immediate) The difference between these two imperatives shows us that there are some preliminary steps in the not-immediate-but-pretty-soon case that we must go through before we reach the speaker's goal of having us sit down. References
Intermediate
Course: Functions, Instructions and Requests
imperatives
english grammar |
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